1. Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature, and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural"
2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the possibility of a lab leak, because the US was itself funding gain of function research on novel coronaviruses in the Wuhan BSL4 lab
3. Lab leaks happen more often than most people realize[1]
[1]https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/20/18260669/deadly...
And in there, I describe exactly how wrong your point 1 is. And how misguided your point 3 is.
The post also won a "best of r/science 2020" award!
You can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
1.1 Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature
1.2 and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature.
1.3 If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural"
You can't do it in the time we've been able to handle viruses like this or modify them in the ways we can. You'd have needed to start a few decades ago, have tools that we've only just invented, and a huge number of willing test subjects.
I cover this in extreme detail in the post I linked under Q2 and Q3.
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpbt6o
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpc7c8
One of the most compelling pieces of evidence is the synonymous/nonsynonomous ratio of the genome and it's mosaic mutations.
That's not something you can just cook up over night, it takes many millions of viral generations which require A) diverse hosts (like you find in a natural ecosystem), B) many millions of hosts, like you find in nature, and C) decades of time.
The chinese virology labs don't have the resources, time, or space to do something like that. And maybe it would be kind of possible today with CRISPR and many thousands of oligonucleotides printed off of a desktop printer, but that technology hasn't existed for more than a few years. The timelines just don't add up.
Assuming everything you say is true, that still would not rule out a lab leak of a virus collected from nature, would it?
>You can't do it in the time we've been able to handle viruses like this or modify them in the ways we can. You'd have needed to start a few decades ago, have tools that we've only just invented, and a huge number of willing test subjects.
Does this imply that covid19 has been circulating among humans for a very long time?
But the epidemiological evidence points to covid-19 originating outside wuhan entirely, that's why I find that theory less likely, among other reasons. See here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpcfs2
Also if they had collected it in nature, it would have been in their freezers, or likely that people involved in that research would have been patient zero etc. See here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpcf33
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpce2z
Wuhan institute of virology also aren't the labs I'm worried about. They were built and designed by very reputable people in the virology community. Not saying you should trust them, but at least recognize that the people who are most qualified to distrust them think it's unlikely.
See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/-/fqpccr1
>Does this imply covid-19 has been circulating in humans a long time?
No, it implies it was relatively stable passing amongst several species of bats (and other related mammals) before a single or a few crossover events into humans recently.
It's behaving exactly like we would expect a zoonotic transmission to behave. It's not very well adapted to bats, it's not very well adapted to humans. It's sort of "promiscuous" likely because it has infected several different species over several decades before arriving in humans.
Anyone under the thumb of communist party minders is by definition not in a position to freely act as a very reputable person. They may very well have a reputation, but they are not free to fulfill it well.
They left that behind a long time ago in favor of "The US did it."