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I had some relatives ask me about this at the time. My work is tangential to the biological sciences so sometimes they think I know things I don't :) I always

by jghn 3y ago

I had some relatives ask me about this at the time. My work is tangential to the biological sciences so sometimes they think I know things I don't :) I always chose my words carefully. To them, when they'd ask me if it was a "lab leak" they always meant something untoward was happening at the lab. Researchers studying artificial superbugs, etc. But there's a very big difference between "natural phenomena that found its way to a lab and then out" and "artificial phenomena created in a lab and then out". So I'd respond with things like "probably not man-made", which they often took as me saying not a "lab leak". EDIT: to be more clear about the point I was raising, I was agreeing with the parent's point. Some of this language is politically/socially charged, and one needs to take that into account when discussing the matter.

baja_blast 3y ago
But lots of aspects and features of SARS-CoV2 point to it being a natural virus with a human specific furin cleavage site inserted into it. In fact it looks almost exactly what you would expect from the type of experiments outlines in the DEFUSE Proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop... The fact that the location happens to be in the exact location proposed in experiments and commonly used in virology, and the fact that SARS-CoV2 binds to Human ACE2 more efficiently than any other species really stands out: > Spike protein exhibited the highest binding to human (h)ACE2 of all the species tested. . . > These findings show that the earliest known SARS-CoV-2 isolates were surprisingly well adapted to bind strongly to human ACE2, helping explain its efficient human to human respiratory transmission https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225877/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225877/ > Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1 Not to mention that it's absurd to think that such an infectious virus would have been circulating in Raccoon Dogs or Civets and just simply disappear after the first human was infected with zero traces to be found. Like when humans passed covid to white tailed deer that did not stop the virus from circulating in humans. Are we supposed to just accept SARS-CoV2 spillover was the result of an "Immaculate Infection">?

by jghn 3y ago

baja_blast 3y ago

But lots of aspects and features of SARS-CoV2 point to it being a natural virus with a human specific furin cleavage site inserted into it. In fact it looks almost exactly what you would expect from the type of experiments outlines in the DEFUSE Proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-prop... The fact that the location happens to be in the exact location proposed in experiments and commonly used in virology, and the fact that SARS-CoV2 binds to Human ACE2 more efficiently than any other species really stands out: > Spike protein exhibited the highest binding to human (h)ACE2 of all the species tested. . . > These findings show that the earliest known SARS-CoV-2 isolates were surprisingly well adapted to bind strongly to human ACE2, helping explain its efficient human to human respiratory transmission https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225877/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8225877/ > Our observations suggest that by the time SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic SARS-CoV. However, no precursors or branches of evolution stemming from a less human-adapted SARS-CoV-2-like virus have been detected https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1 Not to mention that it's absurd to think that such an infectious virus would have been circulating in Raccoon Dogs or Civets and just simply disappear after the first human was infected with zero traces to be found. Like when humans passed covid to white tailed deer that did not stop the virus from circulating in humans. Are we supposed to just accept SARS-CoV2 spillover was the result of an "Immaculate Infection">?