Keep in mind that circumstantial evidence is also evidence: such as the earliest cases happening in a single-digit mile radius from one of the worlds few labs studying gain-of-function in coronaviruses, while bats are hibernating, a thousand miles from the nearest bat colony, and the extraordinary response and threats re calls for investigation from officials.
To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL - researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it was very smooth.
> Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types. [0].
The above would imply that the markets in Wuhan were a super-spreader site for covid-19, but not the origin.
Coronaviruses in bats and jumping from bats to humans is incredibly common, with 3% of people they randomly tested in bat cave areas with bat coronavirus antibodies [1], which this source extrapolated to mean that 1-7 million people a year are infected by various bat viruses.
I agree with you that genetic evidence is the strongest evidence we have at this point.
> To me, that far outweighs the idea that some - NOT ALL - researchers have agreed that if there was editing done it was very smooth
Would be interesting if some lab tried to duplicate some of this theorized tricky editing, to prove it could be done.
[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...
[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus...
Some scientists think otherwise, quite strongly in the opposite direction, it seems..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeW5sI-R1Qg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbbJaaMG7Bs
That jives with another source [1] that explained, amongst other things, that there's genetic evidence covid-19 evolved in animals with intact immune systems, not in a lab.
[0] https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-latest...
Attack their argument, not the location where they said the argument.
As layman, I am powerless to do so.
So I have to go by how much stake the proponents are putting in their argument. A testimony before government puts a lot more of their reputation and what not, at stake, than a blog post on a domain that one control, that has also has no real legal weight.
A person goes like "Here is what my scientist say!" and the others are like "No, you are wrong! Here is what my scientist say".
It is quite funny thing.
But in the link you posted
>https://respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cggcgg-the-latest...
I often found that site to be less trustworthy because of a large part of the beginning of the article dedicated to Ad hominm attack. The most insulting is that they condemn admonim attackes, as and attemt to some kind of virtue signalling, and proceed to do it anyway. This can be consistently observed in articles of similar nature in that site.
Again, since I am not able to judge the article technically, I take this as an indication that the author is extremely biased and is trying to mislead readers.
The virologists describing things at the that level seem to have converged on similar set of possibilities, and the need for additional data to be certain of anything. It's my understanding that they've been saying "man-made impractical if not impossible, probably natural spillover which happens all the time, lab leak is not impossible, need more data" since last spring.
It could be that non-virologists argue about this more than virologists... lol
They had live animals in the lab.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346413716_A_review_...
We know that lab leaks happen. Scary stuff. Even how many lab leaks there are here in the U.S. The paper you link to describes several lab leaks during a period of time while SARS was being widely studied.
Its quite a leap from knowing there are lab leaks to implying that covid, or any other virus, leaked from a lab. There's relevant genetic evidence indicating that the earliest covid-19 cases were 600 miles south of Wuhan [0]. Also it is estimated, based on antibody testing, that there are millions of people every year who get infected with various bat coronaviruses [1].
More/better evidence is needed to prove a lab leak, given that nature does things like this all the time.
[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...
[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus...
Nothing conclusive of that sort in that article.
>All I can say is it doesn't look to me as if Wuhan is the prime candidate, because A exists in other regions of China at that time at possibly a higher frequency."
Highly tendentious claim...
>and it's not unusual for it to take many years to figure these things out.
Is that the case? Are you well-versed in this field? It is my understanding that previous epidemics of this sort in Asia in recent decades a host animal was identified in a matter of months. Are you privy to some valuable knowledge that is not widely dispersed in the literature? Because what you’re saying would seem to contradict it.
There's a lot of good sources saying otherwise, not just this article.
EDIT: My primary sources in this matter have been this reddit post from a virologist [0] (available as a 30+ page pdf), and the strongest (but not the only) genetic evidence he references points to covid originating 600 miles south of wuhan [1], which was also discussed in this writeup by another virologist [2] who also got into detail on the genetic evidence that we do have. Here's another article on how common it is for humans to be infected by bat viruses [3], here's the infectious disease expert from Biden's treansition team saying covid likely jumped from animals to humans [4]. The original article detailed how it took 15 years to find the origin of SARS, and China was secretive with that, too.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...
[2] https://leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3
[3] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus...
Infections from nature aren’t rare, unfortunately neither are infections from labs. In fact, if you compare the relative few places on earth where this type of viral and pathogen research occurs to all the places humans interact with the natural world, I.e. the whole world, you could say infections coming from labs are actually are far more common occurrence proportionally adjusted. There is even a paper trail of government officials expressing concern about lax safety measures at this particular lab. Well before the world heard of coronavirus.
If it is common for humans to be infected by bat viruses, I don’t see that as a point against the theory that one or more humans working at a lab that analyzes and manipulates bat viruses were infected with a bat virus that then led to a larger spread of the infection outside the lab.
> In this case, with the first known infections occurring in Wuhan
Do you have a source for that? I was seeing sources stating the opposite, based on genetic sequencing of collected samples, like this [0]:
> His research determined that A was the founding variant because it was the version most similar to the type of SARS-Cov-2 (the scientific name for the virus) discovered in bats. Many experts suspect that the virus migrated to humans from bats, probably via some other animal. But he also discovered that the A strain wasn't the predominant type in Wuhan.
> Of 23 samples that came from Wuhan, only three were type A, the rest were type B, a version two mutations from A. But in other parts of China, Forster says, initially A was the predominant strain. For instance, of nine genome samples in Guangdong, some 600 miles south of Wuhan, five were A types.
And this [1]:
> Upon further investigation, the first case detected from December 1st was found to have no connection to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Also, that patient was never linked to any future cases of COVID19. A third of the first 41 cases had no connection to the market, including 3 of the first 4 cases reported. Given this data, we have a new hypothesis: The first human cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection must have happened before December 2019 and likely did not originate at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
I'm not sure of your sources. I went back and re-read your original reply. You stated that "previous epidemics of this sort in Asia in recent decades a host animal was identified in a matter of months". Did you know that it took 15 years to identify the source of SARS, from 2002 until 2017? [2]
I don't know if any of that might change your thinking on this. I've paid the most attention to genetic evidence like the above. Ultimately I think that's what will lead to a definitive answer.
[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-...