Also from TFA: "If it was sequenced in early 2020, it may have been contaminated from experiments carried out by researchers trying to learn more about the emerging virus."
Why are they destroying all of their virus samples of everything that can trace the lineage of the virus? Why are they going out of their way to delete all of this data out of public databases?
(RATG13 had to be retrieved from the trashbin of history as well.)
If you believe that this all harmless and that this is all a normal part of studying the virus, you might be in the market for a bridge. Possibly two.
> RATG13 had to be retrieved from the trashbin of history
The WIV is the institute that publicized the existence of RaTG13 and highlighted its relation to SARS-CoV-2. They published a very high-profile Nature article on it early on in the pandemic.[0]
What's the conspiracy theory here? That the WIV secretly turned RaTG13 into SARS-CoV-2, and then when the pandemic broke out, proceeded to publish a detailed description of RaTG13 and its relation to SARS-CoV-2 in one of the most prominent international scientific journals?