From my point of view, the lab-leak hypothesis is presented in a political way and not a scientific way, so it's hard to challenge scientifically. This is my g

From my point of view, the lab-leak hypothesis is presented in a political way and not a scientific way, so it's hard to challenge scientifically. This is my genuine scientific take, having worked in a genome lab: If the virus was artificially engineered, then you might expect to see points of artificial cleavage in the genome (which I assume you don't, because that would have been identified by now and would be presented as strong scientific evidence for lab origin). If the virus were stored and allowed to mutate naturally but in a lab, then it might look very much like any naturally-occurring virus, but in lab conditions it seems likely (probabilistically 'almost certain') to evolve in the direction of reduced infectiousness. So, this also seems unlikely. Deliberately engineering a human-infectious virus to appear natural is theoretically possible, but it seems to me that it would have to be deliberate - and is far beyond our current public understanding of science. So, I'd expect the cost to be astronomical. One lab or one group of scientists privately working on this doesn't seem to be enough. The fact that this coronavirus transfers so easily to and between other species (and mink in particular) suggests that it has cross-species potential, and therefore cross-species origin. It suggests that this virus doesn't have any particular connection to humans. Like any scientist, I'm prepared to accept that it's not impossible. Indeed, I have laid out three routes in this comment. But, the arguments for a lab-leak it are not scientifically convincing, to me, and it seems vanishingly unlikely. I haven't seen any hint of evidence that would make me sit up and pay attention.