3 ms·

How would we know if there would be a genomic signature if the database of viruses Wuhan worked with wasn't opened up? There is not plausible mechanism for any

How would we know if there would be a genomic signature if the database of viruses Wuhan worked with wasn't opened up? There is not plausible mechanism for anyone from the Wuhan laboratory to get sick with a virus they are studying? This happened several times, and happens 100's of times a year (not Wuhan specifically but labs). There is some circumstantial evidence it was a lab leak. Like the virus doesn't naturally occur in the Wuhan district, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of the few in the world that study coronaviruses and do gain of function research. Unlike SARS and MERS where we discovered the origins quickly, we still don't know the origins of covid-19. I don't know how you leap to the conclusion it was of natural origins when we don't even know what those natural origins are. We don't know if it's a lab leak or not, but they do happen and they've fairly common. (10's-100's per year)

bayesian_horse 4y ago
The Virus has been sequenced to death. Gene editing technology leaves traces. Hard to explain, but it's partly because of the technology and partly because evolution erodes statistical anomalies in a certain way. There is no plausible way to "gain of function" your way into a pandemic Virus. Researchers can make a Virus gain a function. Usually by making it lose a few others. There is also no plausible way that an unmodified Virus collected from labs just happens to be the next hot shit on the pandemic scene. If there is a Virus with that potential, you wouldn't need researchers and a leak from a BSL-3 lab to make it go viral, it would just happen on its own.