zlacker

The optimal binding for humans would have been SARS-COV1 at that time, so the fact it was not reused shows the suboptimality.

>>henear+(OP)
There is a vast amount of unpublished research, not because of malicious intentions, but because it's either still ongoing, or abandoned, or postponed, or waiting for other results, or for review, or qualified specialists to help, whatever.

The VF article specifically mentions that the closest known virus was 96% similar (vs 90% for SARS-CoV-1), and had actually been renamed by the scientists studying it and that fact hadn't been put forward to the community.

It can still be shown that this has a completely natural (i.e. no human error involved) origin, but the burden of proof gets higher every day. It's much more probable that human error is involved, which is something that happens every day.

>>tpfour+OP
General closeness does not guarantee that the binding site was as much efficient.

The SARS-CoV-1 had a spike protein binding very efficiently to humans, but that was not the case for the other, hence the above said suboptimality.