zlacker

I agree that the leak was likely accidental. That said, I think you gloss over the fact that Gain of Function Research (artificial selection) was certainly taking place inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and that US intelligence has concluded that the WIV was engaging in classified research for the Chinese military, unbeknownst to the rest of the world.

So, its not quite as simple as a collection mistake.

>>pagean+(OP)
...and importantly, there was specifically Coronavirus bat research in that specific facility.

>>pagean+(OP)
I don't find that compelling. Our own US scientists specifically stated they did not see the biological markers of tampering, and I don't see any reason we shouldn't be trusting them. I think there are a lot of people who want to believe China is evil incarnate and things are just as black and white as that. I think that's a mental shortcut with easy emotional payout. I would encourage you to read the link.

Here is a direct link to some gain of function research being done at the lab for anyone interested: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2258702/

Relevant line in abstract:

> In this study, we investigated the receptor usage of the SL-CoV S by combining a human immunodeficiency virus-based pseudovirus system with cell lines expressing the ACE2 molecules of human, civet, or horseshoe bat.

>>hayst4+E6
I don't think China is evil incarnate, but I do know that it is confirmed that they have performed GOF research (https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments...), that there were reports in 2018 that they were not following proper lab safety practices (https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-raised-alarms-a...), and that the Chinese military was engaged in secret experimentation.

This is all circumstantial, of course. But, that combined with the fact that COVID originated in Wuhan, thousands of kilometers away from the bat caves of Yunnan province, yet in the same city as the only BSL-4 laboratory in China, that's hard to ignore.

>>hayst4+E6
"Did not see evidence of tampering" is too weak to trust for me.

Military-funded scientific biowarfare research should be different (use different, more advanced, tools) than run-of-the-mill bioinformatics research which US scientists work with. So if the scientist is not working on military research, their guess is as good as: "it was not engineered using common industry-standard known methods". It is misattributing authority, like quoting bio science experts saying "COVID can't be a weapon because the mortality is too low". No, you have zero idea about the military applications of biowarfare. If the scientist really was a military researcher, then they won't disclose signs of tampering to a news outlet or academic journal.

Another is that, for obvious reasons, military research would like to obfuscate its engineering. So it is unlikely they use easily detectable methods for that. It is perfectly possible to breed viruses in a lab, inside natural hosts. Then you won't see any biological markers of tampering, but the virus was still engineered by cross-breeding captured fruit bats or manually creating a zoonotic transmission chain to humans. So even without biological signs of tampering, the lab leak remains plausible.

>>hayst4+E6
“ I think there are a lot of people who want to believe China is evil incarnate and things are just as black and white as that.”

IMO the CCP is evil because they have internment camps just like Nazi Germany. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/uighurs/