zlacker

> Nobody ever dismissed it

There was at least one paper calling it "natural selection", and some folks who read it agreed that it ruled out laboratory accidents:

"The high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation."

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

https://twitter.com/ehundman/status/1246597925288816640

https://www.newsweek.com/claim-that-coronavirus-came-lab-chi...

>>datafl+(OP)
That is not addressing the same claim though. That was refuting the theory that people were spreading about it being genetically engineered to be infectious towards humans.

>>beowul+m
> ...it being genetically engineered to be infectious towards humans

That's literally what a gain-of-function experiment is. These are done to study how viruses interact with humans so that we can deal with them better. There's nothing sinister about it, such experiments are happening all over the world and they did happen in Wuhan.

>>beowul+m
> That is not addressing the same claim though.

Did you just reply to the sentence I quoted or did you click the links? The tweets are very obviously not limited to that: https://twitter.com/ehundman/status/1246598376377831425

And honestly, it's hard to go from "this happened via natural selection" to "nobody dismissed this coming from a lab". Even if it's technically possible, surely you can understand why readers' message from this is not "this could have come from a lab".

>>datafl+z1
Alright, I’ll concede I should not have used the phrase “nobody”

>>incrud+41
Maybe it's time for us to realize that some "gain of function" research can be weaponized and made sinister.