re: COVID Lab Leak Theory Resurfaces After Controversial New Study

The point


Your head

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SARS2 possesses a furin cleavage site, found in NONE of the other 871 known members of its viral family, so it cannot have gained such a site through the ordinary evolutionary swaps of genetic material within a family.

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This is disputed. For example:

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The genesis of the polybasic (furin) cleavage site in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 has been subject to recurrent speculation. Although the furin cleavage site is absent from the closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 (Andersen et al., 2020), this is unsurprising because the lineage leading to this virus is poorly sampled and the closest bat viruses have divergent spike proteins due to recombination (Boni et al., 2020; Lytras et al., 2021; Zhou et al., 2021). Furin cleavage sites are commonplace in other coronavirus spike proteins, including some feline alphacoronaviruses, MERS-CoV, most but not all strains of mouse hepatitis virus, as well as in endemic human betacoronaviruses such as HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1 (Gombold et al., 1993; de Haan et al., 2008; Kirchdoerfer et al., 2016). A near identical nucleotide sequence is found in the spike gene of the bat coronavirus HKU9-1 (Gallaher, 2020), and both SARS-CoV-2 and HKU9-1 contain short palindromic sequences immediately upstream of this sequence that are indicative of natural recombination break-points via template switching (Gallaher, 2020). Hence, simple evolutionary mechanisms can readily explain the evolution of an out-of-frame insertion of a furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 2).

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You likely don't have the virological chops to evaluate the first order evidence and neither do I.

What are citizens to do under the circumstances?

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Coronaviruses are known to spill over (for example, SARS-1 did this). There is evidence of two separate spillovers occurring at the market, weeks apart, two separate viral lineages. All early cases were there. Photos of SARS-2 susceptible animals were photographed there before the cases emerged.

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and ... what is the rest of the story?

Ah yes ... those SARS-CoV-1 susceptible animals were brought into a lab, and exposed to the virus. They contracted it, then readily transmitted to others under natural conditions.

As you know, that is dissimilar from our experience with SARS-CoV-2.

But there was a major epidemiological similarity between the two. As with SARS-CoV-2, the crappy Chinese lab system also leaked SARS-CoV-1 from a lab into a major metropolitan area ..... TWICE.

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THERE IS NO IDENTIFIED INDIGENOUS CHINESE ANIMAL CAPABLE OF ORIGINATING A CV19 ZOONOSIS.
That fact is kind of a fly in the ointment of any natural origin thesis.

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“The ocean is salty, water is wet. Therefore, the ocean is not wet, because it’s salt water”

Got it?

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The most widely accepted hypothesis in the scientific community is that the virus naturally emerged from an animal source.

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Repeat a lie often enough…


I don’t think it’s even the most widely accepted theory in the scientific community anymore. Unless you narrow the scientific community down to those scientists with commercial interest in the hoax.

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You keep saying this, but this is not what people publishing in the field believe.

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TD, they do not have a demonstrable vector of origin. They have animals which can only be infected in unnatural ways, or animals which though capable of zoonotic sourcing, were nowhere remotely in the vicinity.

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Ah yes ... those SARS-CoV-1 susceptible animals were brought into a lab, and exposed to the virus. They contracted it, then readily transmitted to others under natural conditions.
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I'm not following. You're now wanting people to believe that SARS-1 was intentionally human caused?

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Let's try again

SARS-CoV-2 => No natural animal vector identified. No indigenous animal demonstrated capable of natural intraspecies transmission, much less zoonotic transmission.

SARS-CoV-1 => Several natural animal vectors identified. Indigenous animals (Bats, Roof Rats, Pangolins, etc.) demonstrably capable of natural intraspecies transmission, and by extension, zoonotic transmission.

So ... SARS-CoV-1 susceptible animals were brought into a lab, and exposed to the virus. The SARS-CoV-1 susceptible animals contracted it, then those SARS-CoV-1 susceptible animals readily transmitted to other SARS-CoV-1 susceptible animals under simulated natural conditions in the lab.

Are you following yet?

After establishing animal/natural origin, a Beijing BSL-3 Lab (highest BSL rating in China at that time) collected SARS specimens for study. In that process, they leaked SARS from the Lab into Beijing ... twice. ... because they were and are effing incompetent, unsafe, and irresponsible.

Are you following?

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It's not really evoking policy responses or being made into a political issue in the usual way like climate change but it seems most virologists and infectious disease epidemiologists think it's a zoonosis.

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Interesting interesting









what is that

You want more evidence before you become a zoonosis believer. I get it.

What makes it tricky when you put a CT up against a natural causation theory, you have to account for different epistemic standards for the two. Conspirators intentionally hide evidence, but viruses don't. That's got to account for a substantial portion of the reason there's so much more public support for the lab leak theory despite a lot less evidence.

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At this point, it's obvious to anyone with a brain it came from a lab.

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This is conspiracy theory number what that has proved to be correct years later that democrats denied? I lose track….