zlacker

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+(OP)
It originated in a city with a research lab that was criticized for bad safety practices. That lab performed gain of function research on coronaviruses, and the strangest element of covid-19 is the spike protein furin site, which enables the infectivity in humans, and is not present in other coronaviruses.

Or we can take the Bayesian approach, and look at the base rate of novel pathogens coming out of China over the past 70 years and determine how many were lab leaks versus not, and realize the majority were lab leaks.

This doesn't mean it for sure was a lab leak, but it does mean it should be investigated, which is all any one reasonable has been saying for the past year anyway.

>>metall+(OP)
> in a place where SARS outbreaks have already occurred in the past,

Not correct. All previous SARS outbreaks were in a totally different places (~1000 km away).

Prof. Shi (石正丽, the head of the Wuhan virus lab) herself said in her March 2020 interview that she was totally surprised of a SARS outbreak in Wuhan. It is not a location where it was expected.

>>metall+(OP)
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...