5 ms·
I seem to recall one of the original arguments for the “artificial origin” hypothesis last year was that the virus was too different from other known viruses an
by jl6 5y ago
I seem to recall one of the original arguments for the “artificial origin” hypothesis last year was that the virus was too different from other known viruses and therefore it was implausible that it had developed naturally.
But if we see here an apparently-sudden jump to a significantly different variant, does that make it less surprising that the original strain was novel?
- vadfa 5y agoWhat if that new variant is also engineered?
- technobabbler 5y agoWhat if new variants inevitably emerge given global mutations and lackluster vaccinations?
- grlass 5y agomost "artificial origin" hypotheses centre around a lab-leak. The number of scenarios where the new variant is engineered are vastly reduced, since it's less likely that this variant is a lab leak. Other scenarios can still be within the realm of plausibility, but there are fewer of them.
- JamesBarney 5y agoI think there are few differences. 1) Covid-19 was more dissimilar from previous coronaviruses than Omicron is from current ones. 2) There is a lot more covid-19 in the world now so rare occurrences are more common. 3) There was other evidence for the lab leak hypothesis. A cover up from China, a viral research lab in the city with the outbreak, etc...
- waynecochran 5y agoJust to be pedantic. Covid-19 is the disease, not the virus. SARS-COV-2 is the virus.
- manojlds 5y agoBut entire world has the virus now, every human is a potential "lab" for variants to come. And I still don't think Omicron is as different from original Sars-Cov-2 as Sars-Cov-2 was to known predecessors.
- dnautics 5y agoNot "too different". If it were too different it would be very unlikely to have been made by human hands. Different enough, in "suspicious places". For example, one of the major differences came from a spot on the spike protein. We now know that EHA had unsuccessfully applied for grants to study splicing in sequences from other coronaviruses into this spot of SARS (non-COV-2) at the WHI. It's not a stretch to think someone in an adjacent/partner lab was doing the same experiment on the actual COV-2 precursor.