zlacker

Recombination virus is commonly made everywhere, including US or China. Researchers made it mostly for getting genes for later use, antibody/antigen analysis in this case. Using virus/BAC is a very common lab technique and is very different from "intentionally making virus as a weapon to kill human". You can reconfirm with any of your wet-lab biotech majored friends. Please run an sequence analysis between rWIV1-SHC014S and the current COVID-19 virus before drawing misleading conclusion.

One analogy for developers: Bad persons are using git to develop ransomware, and company X is also using git, therefore company X is developing ransomware.

>>xjlin0+(OP)
you are right, except sars-cov-2 happened to appear 500 meters away from said lab...

>>flaviu+P9
Maybe the reason the lab exists there is because wild coronaviruses appear in that region.

Which ever way you frame it, it is correlation, not causation. Poor evidence at best.

>>searin+R01
SARS1 appeared in China, 2 provinces over, so quite far. And I was not talking necessarily about the Hubei region, but about the proximity of the first case to the lab: half a mile. City of Wuhan has a population of 11 million. The Hubei province has a population of 58 million.

Out of all the wet markets that serve that much population, the coronavirus just happened to appear at the market nearest to the lab studying coronaviruses. To have such a coincidence is like winning the lottery.

It's not evidence, sure, it's correlation at best. But this alone should make you investigate that lab much much better, it should be the first possible cause you research.

But looking at the lab first might be hard if you have a severe conflict of interest https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4119101

I am not saying this to "make China pay". After all, the US itself was sponsoring coronavirus research at that lab. But we should establish a worldwide safety standard in dealing with such research, and establish periodical inspections. Just like we do with Nuclear power plants, only better.

>>searin+R01
Circumstantial evidence is a better term. Judging the article the number of such pointing to the lab are piling up and should be hard to ignore, while those pointing in other directions are still very few.