[bayesian_horse]

Hindsight is 20/20.

Whatever really happened, there never was a vial in that lab that said "potentially pandemic virus - handle with extreme care". Even if the virus came from (or rather through) a lab, there is no evidence what the researcher's actual intentions were. We don't even know which researchers were responsible.

[thu2111]

I don't think that's quite true. The grants and papers talk about what the goals were and the biosafety labels being used.

[bayesian_horse]

Yes, but SARS-CoV-2 can't have come from any of those papers or grant proposals directly. It has never been sequenced before.

If it evolved in a lab through any kind of "gain of function" research, this must have happened completely off the radar. The existing evidence just doesn't prove anything. On the contrary, the evidence that there was "gain of function research" going on with viruses that weren't nearly identical to Sars-Cov-2 makes it less likely that this virus originated from such research.

[thu2111]

Given the massive levels of evidence destruction involved, that seems like quite a stretch.