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by btilly
1948 days ago
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Do we / did we even have the tech co be able to build this in a lab? I don't think we do. A random virus, no. This one, we do. We can't build a virus from scratch. But we can combine pieces of different viruses to build a new one. The same thing also happens naturally when an animal is sick with 2 viruses at once. If both get into the same cell, you get various mixes created and sometimes a mixture will turn out to be a better virus than either parent. This virus looks like a combination of apparently unrelated viruses. See https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analy... for confirmation. That happens to be something that can happen either naturally or artificially. Where conspiracy theorists get going is that a few years ago there were papers from the lab near Wuhan suggesting that a combination much like COVID-19's actual combination should be particularly effective in humans. So this looks like an extension of a known line of research from a lab involved in military work. Combine that with the local coverup and you can see how people go down the rabbit hole. |
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I would discount the possibility that this was bioweapons research - the US was funding serial passage and gain-of-function research at this lab, of which the express purpose is to make viruses more infectious in different species, including humans.
At any rate, I don't think we can expect anything to be definitively proven. It is absolutely possible that this came out of the wild. But as the NY Magazine "Lab Leak" article illustrates, we should probably be open to the idea it came out of a lab. I also think we should reconsider whether or not serial-passage and gain-of-function research is something that can be ethically conducted. Anywhere.