zlacker

>>ruarai+(OP)
This article is written by a journalist who is clearly knowledgeable about safety practices and mistakes in US labs, but does not consider the extensive knowledge we have about the sequence of SARS-COV2. The preponderance of evidence supports a natural origin of the virus.

This is no way exonerates the Wuhan government from possible culpability—indeed government officials did deliberately suppress information—but this investigative opinion doesn’t pass scientific muster. Misinformation.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

>>tbenst+Zu1
From that paper's conclusion:

>However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.

The fact that covid's features are found in nature seems a weak argument to disprove lab involvement.

On the other hand covid seems well adapted to humans which could have come about by serial passage in a lab. Perhaps they were doing something like in vivo characterisation of spillover risk as mentioned in Daszak's grant application for the WIV?

Or something like:

>We performed in vivo experiments in transgenic (human ACE2 expressing) mice and civets in 2018 and 2019 in the Institute’s biosafety laboratory. The viruses we used were bat SARSr-CoV close to SARS-CoV. (Shi Zhengli)

?