re: Has biological weapons become a bigger threat than nukes?

No dude the fact that china studies a virus tree that they naturally get hit by novel strains of has to be proof of a new bio weapon used that escaped the highest level bio safety facility that exists.
Much more likely than another strain evolving from that viral lineage that has a few other recent examples of naturally evolving novel strains in that region.

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is made up supposition by you.

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Shockingly: so is the bat-> pangolin -> human hypothesis.

Where's patient zero, arse?

I'm sorry, I missed where you established patient zero or any direct evidence of the claims that this is definitively bat->pangolin->human random.

Also, the claim of wet market origin.

Proof?

You are full of shite.

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Perhaps I should first teach you about ssRNA viral replication for encapsulated virion particles: hint-- mutations are COMMON (error prone replication utilizing host machinery)... significant structure/function mutations are NOT PENETRANT, a significant mutation allowing brand new species vector interaction is FAR LESS COMMON. Doing that again is LESS COMMON STILL.

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All of the caps lock and snide in the world doesn't change the fact that it has been experimentally proven to be possible absent multiple changes. Or that the coding region associated with the active site of the S protein has shown to be commonly affected by coinfection overlap.

All it took to convert a SL-coronavirus from bat to both human and intermediate species was a single alternation in a single codon: from UAU to CAU. Absent that change, it is only about a 60 bp region that is relevant for inter species binding and this easily interchanged.

Which, as you so astutely pointed out, is really easy to pull off.

But word of advice? Before you try to slap your dick on the table to show off your technical prowess, you might want to get your sophomore level cell biology correct:

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Perhaps I should first teach you about ssRNA viral replication for encapsulated virion particles: hint-- mutations are COMMON (error prone replication utilizing host machinery)...

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The primary source of the viral replication error for ssRNA is the virally encoded and provided reverse transcriptase, not the host machinery. Without the proofreading ability our transcription enzymes typically have, and no complementary strand, it is this step converting the RNA to DNA that the mutations mostly occur, not the subsequent steps of viral amplification inside the host cell.

Tootles.

But you are right....not a word was understood.

First read

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error prone replication

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Then read

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utilizing host machinery

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Since you can't follow me, I broke a single sentence of my post in half for you to read slowly.

Maybe I should go further back in my lesson. It took you almost 2 hours to google what you did, imagine how long it will take me to teach you the fricking ABC's too...

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The problem with bioweapons is control; if you have a super effective one, you aren't likely to be able to protect yourself from the blowback, so the threshold for use is higher.

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Bioterrorism should really be the greater concern than a coordinated attack by another nation. The capabilities that lunatics with a good understanding of genetics have nowadays should scare the shite out of people.

There was a really good TED Talk on this, wish I could remember the guy’s name. But he framed it very well:

Think about a Venn diagram. In one circle, you have people who want to destroy civilization. In the other circle, you have people who can destroy civilization. For most of history, there has been little to no overlap between these groups. However, advances in gene editing technology are starting to make the “people who can destroy civilization” circle grow. How long until they overlap?