> I don't think he's a lab leak conspiracist but I do think he's got as much of a motive to shift blame elsewhere -- namely outside of China -- as anyone in the

> I don't think he's a lab leak conspiracist but I do think he's got as much of a motive to shift blame elsewhere -- namely outside of China -- as anyone in the world, [...] George Gao is clearly beholden to the CCP's official story that SARS-CoV-2 originated outside China. I don't see why that would require him to disregard strong genomic evidence for two introductions into the market, though--he could simply propose two packages of frozen fish, or two of whatever other story they're claiming now. In my own limited judgment, I don't see what in the genomic evidence excludes evolution of the two lineages in humans--it seems entirely possible to me that sampling of human cases simply wasn't thorough enough to pick up all intermediates (if they even exist). None of your responses address that question of sampling coverage. I also see many highly-credentialed experts who consider evolution in humans to be possible. This makes me believe that you, Worobey, and quite a lot of media headlines are greatly over-representing the significance of two lineages separated by two SNPs. > As recently as 2019, scientists from the WIV were researching Hubei bat populations... people are acting like it would be completely impossible for betacoronaviruses to show up in Wuhan but it's a misconception that dishonest people are happy to promote. Non-specialists often use sloppy language, but the important question is clearly one of probabilities, not of possibility vs. impossibility. The greatest diversity of SARS-like viruses lies in SW China and SE Asia, including BANAL-20-52 with its extremely close spike, closer than omicron is to the original Wuhan virus. That SARS-CoV-2 spilled over in Wuhan certainly isn't dispositive evidence of unnatural origin, but it's not what anyone expected. It would be nice if you could make that clear when you correct people. > Loosely, much GoF work is akin to controlled burns, I used that analogy in another comment here--when a recent controlled burn in New Mexico got out of control and destroyed hundreds of homes, everyone involved realized they'd screwed up. They're forming committees to understand what went wrong, and to compensate the victims, and to change their practices so this doesn't happen again. If a disastrous controlled burn somehow killed 700k people, then I'm not sure the practice would ever be re-attempted. And yet the 1977 flu pandemic did just that, and no one really noticed or cared. Don't you find that remarkable?