zlacker

>>todd8+(OP)
We should really be considering this if we want to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

Unfortunately this theory coming out during the Trump era made people knee-jerk shoot it down for political reasons, and you can also say the CCP is very invested in making sure they don't have pie on their face if this ends up being what truly happened.

>>zthrow+Ai
The problem is evidence. What is the evidence? As far as I can tell, what we have is either circumstantial (for example, the location of the first detected cases) or outright hunches (the virus seems to be more adaptive than expected for normal corona viruses).

Compare that to what we know: it's a SARS variant, in a place where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in the past, with DNA showing it came from pangolins, in a place where pangolins are caught, sold, and eaten by people.

>>metall+2k
There is a lot of evidence. The lab in question was specifically warned about by the US State Department for studying coronaviruses that affect human ACE-2.

I mentioned this in another comment, but here's the 2018 State Department warning.

Please note part (6) about human ACE2 coroniavirus:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart...

> with DNA showing it came from pangolins, in a place where pangolins

This is false. You can read the science here (note the "receptor binding studies of reconstituted RaTG13 showed that it does not bind to pangolin ACE2."

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.2020002...