4 ms·

Occam's Razor by far leans in the other direction. Species jumps are incredibly rare and lab leaks while not common have also happened before. Add in the fact t

• sudosysgen 5y ago
  Species jumps are definitely not rare. This virus already jumped to literally a dozen species in a year. It's estimated that dozens of viruses jump to humans every year, it's just unlikely that they survive long enough to mutate to adapt to the human body.
• elliekelly 5y ago
  Coronavirus species jumps have happened at least twice (three times if you include Covid-19) in my adult memory. Perhaps they’re just not as “incredibly rare” as they once were?
• XorNot 5y ago
  In the wake of COVID-19, one of the interesting bits of research was the use of a much broader COVID-19 type test to try and find new novel viruses. And pretty much the moment it was developed, a new coronavirus in the midst of jumping species was found in hospitalized patients with pnuemonia-like symptoms [1]. Basically once they went looking, in 2% of the sample group they found people who were infected with a canine coronavirus, but who did not seem to be able to infect other people with it. The likely scenario is that viruses are jumping species all the time, but rarely succeed in causing illness we don't simply write off as "a bout of pneuomonia from a seasonal something" due to lack of severity or lack of ability to spread human to human. [1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/05/another-new-coronavirus-has-jumped-people https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/05/another-...