OTOH, there is the furin cleavage site issue. Have your read the OA?!
> Since the genetic code of the coronavirus that caused the pandemic was first sequenced, scientists have puzzled over the “furin cleavage site.” This strange feature on the spike protein of the virus had never been seen in SARS-related betacoronaviruses, the class to which SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the respiratory illness Covid-19, belongs.
> Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who has espoused the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in a lab, agreed. “The relevance of this is that SARS Cov-2, the pandemic virus, is the only virus in its entire genus of SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a fully functional cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction,” said Ebright, referring to the place where two subunits of the spike protein meet. “And here is a proposal from the beginning of 2018, proposing explicitly to engineer that sequence at that position in chimeric lab-generated coronaviruses.”
* None of the known coronaviruses closely related to covid have such a feature. There is a lot of FUD in this space, which amounts to saying: Horses and seals are mammals, seals have flippers, therefore that horse with flippers you just saw has occurred naturally. Those stallions might have been quite horny.
* The OA 2018 grant proposes to perform gain of function work and create a FCS in SARS viruses at WIH. This research proposal has not been publicly disclosed by scientists that supposedly are investigating covid origin. WTF?
* The OA 2018 grant proposal mentions a database of 180 coronaviruses that are not publicly disclosed to this day. Apparently WIH stopped publishing coronavirus sequences after 2015. WTF? https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/14160891976650014...
The closer relatives of covid without a FCS at the S1/S2 junction we find, the more damning for the WIH and their American friends. And perhaps we'll find the genetic ancestors of covid in the wild, and the WIH (proposed) work might have been a bizzarre coincidence. We don't know. But the stonewalling and the sneering at the public asking legitimate questions must stop.
I raise you a platypus.
Your analogy doesn't really work in my opinion; a horse with flippers would be far more unexpected than that cleavage site. The cleavage site might be novel - as far as we know - but it's not jar-dropping surprising either, and something that can occur naturally in a reasonable time frame.
>But the stonewalling and the sneering at the public asking legitimate questions must stop.
I can agree with this sentiment. In fact, I think I was asking a legitimate question when I asked for sources to the assertion that there is evidence it was lab-made.
I already conceded it is entire possible it's lab made. However, with what I read thus far, personally I still think signs point to natural occurrence than lab.
Chances are we will never know. If it was naturally occurring, then we may never find the "natural source" even if we tried. And it's not like we dispatched an army of scientists to look for such a source. It's more or less the same few people who did the collection of samples before the pandemic who are the ones still doing it now, probably even less so with travel restrictions still in place in a lot of locations.
If it was a lab escape - or worse a deliberate unleashing of a lab made virus - then whoever is responsible will try to keep it calm and seems to be doing a good enough job plugging any leaks as there have been none.
I also have to admit that I confused you with the person to whom my original reply was made, who seemed far more adamant that there is actual evidence (a proposal is circumstantial evidence at best, and certainly not scientific evidence), and ended with
>There’s too much damn smoke in this whole thing for there to be no fire.