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>>todd8+(OP)
Judging by the comments in this thread, it seems a lot of people are still unaware that:

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...

>>loveis+Oj
Hi, I have a PhD in virology focused on emerging viruses, and a few months back I wrote a very lengthy and involved piece full of sources.

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...

>>jedueh+I31
Which part of #1 is false?

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"

>>loveis+ey1
1.3. you cannot take any virus known in nature (like Ratg-13 for example) and "cook" it for long enough or in any specific way to make it look like SARS-CoV-2.

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.

>>jedueh+sB1
> you cannot take any virus known in nature

That is such a straw man. I seriously doubt anyone, much less a signatory to the recent open letter (many with experience and knowledge far beyond yours) would have claimed they can take ANY virus and transform it to ANY OTHER virus. Your green handle just lost any respect I might have extended to it.

>>natch+7R1
I feel their intention was to say that there is no known virus in nature that could be transformed to specifically SARS-CoV-2?

>>mushis+3z2
yeah, not in the time frame available or with the tools available. It would either have to be some hidden virus that they all lied about, or somehow an unknown contaminant in their samples that then also disappeared when they looked.

All new assumptions that make this theory less likely.