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Comment by throw8932894 | Hacker News Reader

This "natural" origin theories kind of sound like conspiracy. Bats, mice, lemurs.. Somehow wildly different DNA parts combine, and virus perfectly adapted for human population emerges from cave with zero prior human contact...

If Omicron evolved in mice, we should be able to find it in wild mice population. Or maybe partially replicate its evolution in lab on mice population.

We know virus synthesis is possible, it is accessible even to small national governments, universities and research centers. But mainstream agrees there is ZERO chance of that happening. Nobody would invest couple of million dollars, to end pandemic once for all.

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Not all mice, some mice, somewhere.

This virus in the form we encountered, spreads among humans best, but it also can spread between a ton of other animals. Most probable explanation is that it originated from civets (second best) and infected a single person with immunity sufficient to suppress it but insufficient to eradicate it. In this person it multiplied and mutated learning how to infect human cells best and finally one mutation allowed it to skip to another person. And then it spread like wildfire because it was already adapted to humans because it mutated in one human for months or years already and just learned how to overcome immune suppression enough to break through.

It stayed in single person for months, and somehow it got more infectious in this person, without infecting anyone. It is perfectly adapted to stain airborne and pass lungs, but it gained that inside person! And it only gained mutations related to higher infection rate and severity, nothing else, no other random changes.

Omicron DNA was "forked" in July 2020. It was not detected until now, when it spread like wild fire. Unless we find missing links in nature, I find natural origin very unlikely.

Let's skip omicron for now.

While the original strain was evolving in patient zero it was acquirng various random mutations.

The ones that were not beneficial for infecting human cells and thriving in humans didn't survive.

Threre were few possibilities.

I don't think it could evolve some mutation that would trigger immune system of that person into overdrive causing it to kill all variants of the virus. Very unlikely.

Other option is that this virus might have evolve lethal mutation and kill patient zero without infecting anone else.

And the third option is that eventually virus did stumble upon mutation that increased viral load that this person was shedding to levels sufficient to infect another person.

And since it managed to break out of a person that was fighting with it for months or years it's no surprise that it did well in the next and next billion that followed.

The above is most likely scenario for me.

I think we'll eventually find closest relatives of that virus in some civet somewhere. But that will prove exactly nothing to anybody who believes in lab leak origin.

> Let's skip omicron for now.

Are you talking about omicron now or original Wuhan virus?

Omicron stays mainly in upper respiratory parts. It does not go deep into lungs and body as other variants. That makes it less lethal, not because it is somehow milder. Normal cold is also quite lethal, once it spreads through body, but it never gets a chance.

I am happy to accept theory it stayed in single host for several months, and gained a few mutations. But that does not explain its DNA code. You do not get this type of mutations without spread in massive population. And there are no random bit flips, that should accumulate over several months.

> But that will prove exactly nothing to anybody who believes in lab leak origin.

This is not a religion, there is no "believe". Lab leak (or artificial synthesis) is just a theory that explains origin of virus very well. Dismissing it without investigation would be unscientific.

I was talking about original strain as indicated by "let's skip omicron for now".

> This is not a religion, there is no "believe".

Religions are not the only things people believe in. Some people believe in lab leak exactly the same way some believe in flat earth. With fierce conviction despite complete lack of evidence with just surface level clues.

> Lab leak (or artificial synthesis) is just a theory that explains origin of virus very well.

It's a hypothesis. Most likely unfalsifiable because I have no idea what could prove it wrong. It doesn't explain a single thing about coronavirus and has no predictive power.

> Dismissing it without investigation would be unscientific.

What is posited without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

You are of course free to search for evidence even though it was dismissed. And come back if you find any.

Some people looked for evidence over last two year and so far they haven't found anything new or interesting.

It is really hard to tell if you are trolling. Anyway, it is all flat earth nut whack conspiracy, have a good day.

What exactly sounds trollish to you?

I believe that in my previous comment I haven't said a single controversial thing.

As for omicron I can share conspiracy theory I invented for fun.

Here it goes.

Omicron is the result of effort of biohackers group. When pandemics happened they set a goal of evolving milder version of sars-cov-2 to serve as a natural, self-administering covid vaccine. They experimented using mice and human tissue to periodically check for infectiousness. When they noticed they got a version that has trouble infecting human lung tissue and Delta started to threaten the world they decided to relese their version covertly.

They'll never admit they did it because Omicron will kill some people too, they are just hoping it will be less. At that scale they know they are saving millions regardless.

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