> There's evidence that COVID-19 was not created by direct genetic manipulation.
There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (or well, with such a low chance it may as well be) have occured naturally.
What am I supposed to believe here? Even the people on my side of the fence, even the people that research this stuff themselves all seem to have an agenda and when research turns up one thing, I can practically guarantee that other research turns up the opposite.
There’s too much damn smoke in this whole thing for there to be no fire.
Yes the football players were on the field, they talked about kicking the ball, they requested to kick the ball but suggesting they might have kicked the ball is a conspiracy theory.
People have asserted in this thread that it would take 30-40 years for the closest known natural covid relative to aquire the necessary 1000 mutations and turn into covid. And yet here we are, almost 2 years since the pandemic started, with no identified natural reservoir for covid.
Where is the covid source?
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Consider https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00991-0.pdf, a pro natural origins review of the literature. They tie themselves into knots to explain that the infamous furin cleavage site, while absent in the closest covid relative, could have naturally occurred, even if they admit they have zero actual evidence for that.
> 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).
On the flip side, Nicholas Wade claims that Peter Daszak grant application proposes exactly that:
> The..grant proposal..now puts beyond doubt that engineering cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses was a technique to be explored at..Wuhan
Probably in bats or other animals prone to corona viruses. Likely some animal that naturally does not interact with humans a lot, and has significant populations in remote habitats. Basically everything that can live in difficult terrain is rather likely. Less likely, but far from impossible: it mutated over extended periods of time in some animal meat factory farm on an accelerated schedule thanks to how these farms operate, with animals showing few if any symptoms thanks to the young ages of the entire population (no old animals in your factory farm ;), until it finally made the jump to humans.
>to aquire the necessary 1000 mutations
They compared strains we already now about because somebody sequenced them; the important word there is "known". The thing about that is that there is a ton of strains we do not know about because nobody sequenced that particular local cohort of animals. Hell, we do not even know every species of animals are on planet at all, if the still hight rate of discovering new species is any indication - and we do constantly discover species that we can see with our naked eyes without having to whip out lab equipment.
>And yet here we are, almost 2 years since the pandemic started, with no identified natural reservoir for covid.
There is a real good chance that this "natural reservoir" is just a place nobody looked at with a sequencer hunting for virus strains, i.e. most of the Earth.
Or it might have been created in a lab.
The thing is, we do not know. But there is some evidence apparently that it was a natural origin because a) it looks like a natural progression from previously known strains and b) because there are no hallmark indicators for direct manipulation. Not entirely conclusive evidence, but sound argumentation making a case for the possibility of natural occurrence. And the theories you recapped arguing it cannot be natural just do not use a sound argumentation in my opinion as even I myself - not a domain expert and thinking about it for a few minutes - can poke gigantic holes in it.
Frankly, the "no natural source" argument as you presented it immediately reminded me of the pro-Creationist "missing link" argument.
All the while the evidence you mentioned is that there probably was a lab in Wuhan which probably did stuff with Corona viruses... which is rather vague argumentative. Sure, it's a clue furthering the lab theory a little, but it's hardly conclusive. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
We don't know. That's the point. Very strange that the science establishment is adamant that they do know, specifically they do know it was zoonotic, even if they also admit they have no scientific evidence for such statements. What is a scientist supposed do, absent scientific evidence? Seek for evidence.
OTOH, there is the furin cleavage site issue. Have your read the OA?!
> Since the genetic code of the coronavirus that caused the pandemic was first sequenced, scientists have puzzled over the “furin cleavage site.” This strange feature on the spike protein of the virus had never been seen in SARS-related betacoronaviruses, the class to which SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the respiratory illness Covid-19, belongs.
> Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University who has espoused the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated in a lab, agreed. “The relevance of this is that SARS Cov-2, the pandemic virus, is the only virus in its entire genus of SARS-related coronaviruses that contains a fully functional cleavage site at the S1, S2 junction,” said Ebright, referring to the place where two subunits of the spike protein meet. “And here is a proposal from the beginning of 2018, proposing explicitly to engineer that sequence at that position in chimeric lab-generated coronaviruses.”
* None of the known coronaviruses closely related to covid have such a feature. There is a lot of FUD in this space, which amounts to saying: Horses and seals are mammals, seals have flippers, therefore that horse with flippers you just saw has occurred naturally. Those stallions might have been quite horny.
* The OA 2018 grant proposes to perform gain of function work and create a FCS in SARS viruses at WIH. This research proposal has not been publicly disclosed by scientists that supposedly are investigating covid origin. WTF?
The closer relatives of covid without a FCS at the S1/S2 junction we find, the more damning for the WIH and their American friends. And perhaps we'll find the genetic ancestors of covid in the wild, and the WIH (proposed) work might have been a bizzarre coincidence. We don't know. But the stonewalling and the sneering at the public asking legitimate questions must stop.
>Horses and seals are mammals, seals have flippers, therefore that horse with flippers you just saw has occurred naturally.
I raise you a platypus.
Your analogy doesn't really work in my opinion; a horse with flippers would be far more unexpected than that cleavage site. The cleavage site might be novel - as far as we know - but it's not jar-dropping surprising either, and something that can occur naturally in a reasonable time frame.
>But the stonewalling and the sneering at the public asking legitimate questions must stop.
I can agree with this sentiment. In fact, I think I was asking a legitimate question when I asked for sources to the assertion that there is evidence it was lab-made.
I already conceded it is entire possible it's lab made. However, with what I read thus far, personally I still think signs point to natural occurrence than lab.
Chances are we will never know. If it was naturally occurring, then we may never find the "natural source" even if we tried. And it's not like we dispatched an army of scientists to look for such a source. It's more or less the same few people who did the collection of samples before the pandemic who are the ones still doing it now, probably even less so with travel restrictions still in place in a lot of locations.
If it was a lab escape - or worse a deliberate unleashing of a lab made virus - then whoever is responsible will try to keep it calm and seems to be doing a good enough job plugging any leaks as there have been none.
I also have to admit that I confused you with the person to whom my original reply was made, who seemed far more adamant that there is actual evidence (a proposal is circumstantial evidence at best, and certainly not scientific evidence), and ended with
>There’s too much damn smoke in this whole thing for there to be no fire.
Yes, I remember this being a big point of contention with scientists going both ways. I saved this link [1] with the quote:
>“I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” Andersen added.
Although that was from Jan 2020 and I'm sure more evidence has come in since then to shed more light.
Not how probability works. What's the probability the entire universes atoms are arranged the way they are? The number is so finitely minute it's "impossible", because you're trying to make predictions on specific order out of chaos. The probability of any viruses currently existing would be equally infinitely tiny.
Research is not equivalent. Just because two people make an argument does not make them equally valid. Unless you are a medical researcher you're not meant to somehow know how medical research papers work and what their results are on your own. It's not black and white. It's the same as trying to take electrical engineering papers and base opinions on it without any knowledge of the math or how it works.
It's not the probability of any specific configuration, but the probability of a specific configuration over any other particular configuration.
All configurations could have an infinitesimal chance of occurring, but one configuration could still have a billion to one chance of occurring over another particular configuration.
Which is especially relevant if we have a relatively recent basepoint of comparison.
An infinite number of monkeys with typewriters might eventually reproduce Shakespeare, but 10000 monkeys doing it on their first try points to causation beyond "chance".
> There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (...) have occured naturally.
I feel this claim is simply not believable nor possible to take at face value, given that in order for a proof of impossibility to even be considered you need supporting evidence and a falsifiable model, which you have none.
Given this, do you have any reference that supports your assertion? I'd like to hear your rationale to claim that something like this is outright impossible.
You cut off the critical part of the parent's comment: "(or well, with such a low chance it may as well be)".
If you're objecting to the idea that well-accepted scientific theories can't put a "very low probability" on certain things being observed ... what? That's exactly what a scientific theory -- or indeed, any well-posed belief -- should do!
Either GP's claim is factual and indeed he is aware of proof of impossibility, or he is not and he's just knowingly spreading disinformation.
> If you're objecting to the idea that well-accepted scientific theories (...)
I object to the idea of random people on the internet knowingly spreading disinformation with baseless claims that fly on the face of critical thinking, and then resorting to vague appeals to authority, inversions of the burden of truth, and outright bullying to force-fed their disinformation.
If there is any proof whatsoever supporting the claim that such thing is impossible then just support your claim and present the evidence or source. Don't expect everyone to just take your word for it, specially after you tried desperately to invert the burden of proof.
>No, I left out the weasel words from the original claim.
It's not a "weasel word", "Scientific theories placing a low enough probability to match lay usage of 'impossible', and clarifying that you mean as much" isn't a weasel word; it's being precise, and scientific theories do classify things that way.
>Either GP's claim is factual and indeed he is aware of proof of impossibility, or he is not and he's just knowingly spreading disinformation.
There's a third possibility: OP is aware that some scientists think the mainstream scientific theory places a low probability on the claim in question, but does not rise to the level of an impossibility theorem.
>I object to the idea of random people on the internet knowingly spreading disinformation with baseless claims that fly on the face of critical thinking, and then resorting to vague appeals to authority, inversions of the burden of truth, and outright bullying to force-fed their disinformation.
I don't see how the parent did any of that, just how another commenter is overreacting to ideas they don't like.
Are you seriously telling me that if I look through your posting history, I won't find a single case of you suggesting something without posting links to rigorous proof?
If you're going to scream bloody murder at the idea that any unsupported idea would ever be uttered here, you could maybe glance at the sibling comments in the thread, like mine:
There’s also evidence it cannot possibly (or well, with such a low chance it may as well be) have occured naturally.
What am I supposed to believe here? Even the people on my side of the fence, even the people that research this stuff themselves all seem to have an agenda and when research turns up one thing, I can practically guarantee that other research turns up the opposite.
There’s too much damn smoke in this whole thing for there to be no fire.