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?
Who said the test subjects have to be willing? That's never stopped our government before.
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.
The conspiracy becomes so immense it's absurd the many thousands of people who would have to keep quiet.
[0]: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/coronavirus/corona...
[1]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro...
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.
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.
Military lab can do it. Virus can be cooked long enough in hosts with depressed immune system. Soviet Union did such experiments before.
Is this the main stream opinion now? Can you provide a link?
Or is this just your personal opinion?
This really indicates you have idea about China. The CCP can easily make millions and tens of millions not only quiet, but enthusiastically deny what happened to them.
They left that behind a long time ago in favor of "The US did it."
I actually provided several links filled with sources above.
here is the main one you're referencing again: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
Thanks
It's not super likely, because we don't have the epidemiological data (increased deaths from non-influenza pneumonia at a large scale) to support that, to my knowledge.
It's certainly possible. And it is true that our methods of detection of viruses are ill-equipped so you can assume we're almost always behind the curve a bit.
But there also isn't much more than anecdote to support this. Lots of people get influenza-based pneumonia in the winter. Could you consider the possibility that your recollection is now tainted? And that you are primed to notice those events more? It was also already a very bad flu season. See here:
-https://time.com/5758953/flu-season-2019-2020/
-https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/924728
Another kind of issue is that early reports of "SARS-2 positive serum!" were overblown, which colored a lot of news reports on this. They basically made the tests too "promiscuous" so they also detected antibodies against common cold coronaviruses. That was a big problem. If you're curious about how tests like this work, you can check out this other post I wrote on that! Antibody tests are actually my specialty!
https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/g1ty3g/are_immuni...
All new assumptions that make this theory less likely.
We don't know how many nukes Russia has, even though that's knowledge shared by thousands of people. There has only been a single point of information about Israel's nuclear weapons program, Mordechai Vanunu, and we still barely know anything. Heck, we don't even know if and when the Nintendo Switch 2 will be released, even though again thousands of people must be privy to that information.
I don't see what people find so unrealistic about conspiracy theories in general, especially when massive nationstates are involved.
China's low death count is exactly what you'd expect for a country that had a severe lockdown early on, and which has not had significant community transmission since.
Beginning in late January 2020, there was a strict lockdown throughout China. In Hubei, people were essentially told not to leave their homes, food was delivered door-to-door, local volunteers went around checking people's temperatures at home and sending sick people to hospital or quarantine, in order to prevent even family members from infecting one another. The virus was starved of hosts and driven to near extinction in the country.
When China opened up again, there were sporadic cases in some cities, which were finally dealt with through mass testing campaigns. In Wuhan, for example, the government tested nearly all residents (about 10 million people) over the course of a few days in June 2020.
There have been a few outbreaks since. China has very strict quarantine rules, but the virus somehow finds a way in every few months. Most recently, someone who was infected walked over the border from Myanmar, without being tested or sent into quarantine. When these outbreaks occur, the government tests nearly every person in the affected region (the newest twist is now that there are vaccines, the government is vaccinating every person in the affected border town - in previous outbreaks, they would have just done PCR tests on everyone). When you have the resources of a massive country to throw at a small, localized outbreak, you can actually contain it.
So the basic situation is that China had one major outbreak in Hubei province early on, but that the virus has been nearly completely absent from the country for more than a year now. China's death toll is exactly what you'd expect for an outbreak in one province that infected <5% of the population of that province before it was stamped out.