[eloff]

You misunderstand me. Lab origin does not imply engineered. That's a possibility, of course, but far more likely is it is a natural virus, possibly altered in experiments, where the mechanism can be a form of selection, not necessarily engineering of any kind.

Lab origin, to define the term clearly here, means a virus, natural or otherwise, that escaped a lab, likely by accident.

This is not farfetched, it happened with SARS-1 twice in Beijing: https://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_04_23/en/

It seems, just by the coincidental location of the emergence of SARS COV2 in Wuhan of all places, to be the most likely origin scenario, just on a probability standpoint.

[ceejayoz]

Demonstrating that - that it's a natural virus released (accidentally or intentionally) from a lab - would be the realm of an intelligence agency or police forensics, not a genetic analysis of the virus like the debunked article linked upthread.

[eloff]

I won't grant that. If you were to find a close enough genetic match to a strain known to be in a lab, that would indeed constitute strong evidence.

Now the "debunked article" cites 89% similarity to a published strain, but that's hardly a smoking gun. That's not to say genetic analysis cannot constitute proof, however.

I think the problem is, if there ever was such a strain in the Wuhan lab or elsewhere, it's very likely that the evidence had been intentionally destroyed by now, making it unlikely we'll ever know the truth.

It's not like you can prove it didn't leak from a lab either, at least not unless you're lucky enough to find a very close match in nature somewhere.

[ceejayoz]

> If you were to find a close enough genetic match to a strain known to be in a lab, that would indeed constitute strong evidence.

In two possible directions. You'd still need additional evidence demonstrating it was lab --> nature, not nature --> lab.

> Now the "debunked article" cites 89% similarity to a published strain, but that's hardly a smoking gun.

Right, and virologists say citing 89% similarity is bogus, as that's actually substantial difference in genomes. It's evidence in the opposite direction asserted by the paper.

[eloff]

> In two possible directions. You'd still need additional evidence demonstrating it was lab --> nature, not nature --> lab.

Yes.

> Right, and virologists say citing 89% similarity is bogus, as that's actually substantial difference in genomes.

The same virologists that were quick to say 96% similarity to the alleged previously discovered bat coronavirus named RaTG13 is significant? Is 89 to 96% such a big leap, or are they trying to have it both ways?