[yawpitch]

Given that furin cleavage sites have been found naturally occurring on other, earlier in the phylogenetic tree of coronaviruses, viruses than SARS-CoV2, the natural assumption is that such a site is not only possible to develop, but likely to develop, in wild sarbecoviruses. Shifting the goalposts in no way whatsoever implies or allows the idea that this furin cleavage site tack of yours is evidence of anything but natural selection.

[tim333]

But it's about probabilities and timing. No sites seen naturally. Then in 2018 or so there is a proposal from a guy who works with the WIV:

>We were interested in it because most other coronaviruses in family had those sites. Why didn't sarbecovirus? So the way the grant was designed... ... The third thing was we would probably build virulent viruses and study pathogenesis...

And lo the next year (approx) a virus just like that pops up by the WIV. Bit of a coincidence?

Same guy by the way who after the breakout when Daszak said BSL 2 research at the WIV was ok emailed back

>...don't insult my intelligence by trying to feed me this load of BS

Which doesn't seem to show great confidence is the goings on there.

[yawpitch]

> Bit of a coincidence?

On the balance of probabilities and with plenty of evidence of the first human infections being in the market and absent any evidence whatsoever of the first infections being in the lab then, yes, absolutely, just a coincidence.

These viruses are always mutating, in situ, and the fact other coronaviruses have these sites means it’s only a matter of time and iterations before one of these sarbecoviruses both develops the mutation and infects a human host, given proximity between bats / pangolins / civet cats + humans. That wet market was, effectively, trying to create and release this thing millions of times a day, way faster than any lab could hope to do the former, and way more often than any lab would accidentally attempt the latter.

The entire reason anyone would be interested in trying it in a lab is to see if that, again more or less inevitable, wild mutation would actually be a problem for humans. It very likely would be, hence the interest in finding out… but absent evidence of both intentional genomic intervention and a vector of release (and you are very absent evidence of either) that interest correlation very much does not equal any substantive reason to believe in a causation event.

You don’t have a smoking gun. You don’t have a gun. You don’t have smoke. What you have is a guy asking if maybe it would be a good idea to check if pulling a trigger on a bullet by your head is a bad idea while a few miles away an endless parade of people were playing Russian Roulette over and over and over, millions of times every day, and you have the first dead bodies and the shell casing there, not where your supposed antagonist worked.