zlacker

At the end of the day we also have zero evidence of the animal transfer hypothesis. The SARS-CoV-2 virus was never documented in bats (prior to its spread among humans). No one has been able to demonstrate the capability of the virus to acquire it's current features in vivo in bats.

But that doesn't invalidate the animal transfer hypothesis. Because that isn't how science works -- or even just how KNOWLEDGE works. No one[1] operates under perfect certainty; we collect stronger or weaker evidence for various possibilities.

This grant application doesn't "prove" that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from a lab. But nothing "proves" it wasn't. The existence of this grant application is evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis, demonstrating conclusively that someone in the world was thinking, prior to the pandemic, about performing modifications to coronaviruses similar to what we have observed in the virus.

[1] Except mathematicians: https://xkcd.com/263/