zlacker

>>delbar+(OP)
For what it is worth, they say there is an 81% probability, based on their analysis, that it was a lab leak. That is not the same thing as "claims COVID-19 originated in a lab" - so I think the title is a little misleading - which is probably why the title actually seems to be "What is the source of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2)?"

>>stanri+s4
Looking at the report, most of the likelihood is from a single "prior".

The whole likelihood basically hinges on the fact that the outbreak occurred in Wuhan and that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been working for decades on enhancing coronavirus strains. That's quite strongly circumstantial but it's not evidence. Possible chimerization and furin-cleavage insertion seem a lot more interesting imo but are weighted much lower.

Based on their report [1], most of the likelihood of lab-escape (almost 50x weight) just stems from the fact that the outbreak is in Wuhan. They state that it's because of the proximity to Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the lab's gain-of-function research - only one of 5 locations world-wide.

That single "bullet-point" re-weights zoonotic origin from 97% to 56% and lab-escape from 1.4% to 42%. Otherwise their final likelihoods would be: "zoonotic" 85.5%, "lab-escape" 8.5%, "bioweapon" 6%.

[1] https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/what-is-the-source-of-cov...

>>altari+Di
In addition to that, one of their other priors supporting lab escape appears to be plainly wrong:

>Furin cleavage sites are not common in other related coronaviruses.

However, this claim appears to have been investigated and debunked [1]

>Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612...