The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

Lead author on January 31, 2020:

> ... the problem is that our phylogenetic analyses aren't able to answer whether the sequences are unusual at individual residues, except if they are completely off. On a phylogenetic tree the virus looks totally normal and the close clustering with bats suggest that bats serve as the reservoir. The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered[1].

See also https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/science/covid-lab-leak-fa...

[1]: p. 3186 in https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20793561/leopold-nih-...