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Comment by zosima | Hacker News Reader

Yes, the zoonotic origins of e.g SARS and MERS were found shortly after the outbreaks.

In fact COVID seems somewhat unique amongst modern maladies to not have a clear zoonotic origin.

It doesn't appear that there is a clear zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-1 and MERS either. The case is circumstantial in a similar way to SARS-CoV-2. Yes there are several animal reservoirs that carry similar viruses, but there wasn't a specific one found from which any of the 3 strains came.

Covid has a novel mutation never seen in any natural coronavirus. Further there was a grant proposal from 2018 to insert the identical mutation as found in covid. There was a plan to engineer covid 2ish years before covid existed.

But I'm sure nature evolving this exact mutation coincidentally in a relatively short period after scientist documented their plans to engineer it is an equally likely outcome.

Which mutation are you talking about?

"""However, with analogy to influenza, it was shown many years ago that the simple insertion of a polybasic site into an H3 virus does not result in a high pathogenicity phenotype7 and is likely to only function in the context of a series of other genomic changes provided by a process of natural selection."""

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...

"But what was really notable about this grant proposal was that they proposed to insert cleavage sites, similar to the mystifying furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence, and to insert those into their coronavirus sequences to see if it would make them more infectious. And to many people, when that was exposed, that DARPA grant — and it only got exposed, I believe, last year — that really looked like a kind of smoking gun, which was that the research that was being proposed in the DARPA grant looked like a kind of directional arrow to a SARS-CoV-2-like virus. So that was quite significant." - https://theintercept.com/2022/05/06/deconstructed-lab-leak-c...

"Farzan was “bothered by the furin site and has a hard time explaining that as an event outside the lab (though, there are possible ways in nature, but highly unlikely).” On the question of whether the virus had a natural origin or came from some sort of accidental lab release, Farrar reported that Farzan was “70:30” or “60:40” in favor of an “accidental-release” explanation and that “Bob” — an apparent reference to Robert Garry — was also surprised by the presence of a furin cleavage site in this virus. Farrar quoted Bob saying: “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. … it’s stunning.” - https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/

Refutation: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211107119

I'm not qualified to evaluate these arguments on their merit.

I'm not qualified to evaluate the claims either, but I'm not convinced the authors are trustworthy. They say:

"Harrison and Sachs (1) allege that scientists at NIH and elsewhere, including myself and colleagues, conspired to suppress theories of a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2. This is false. A possible laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 was discussed in our earlier publications"

But there absolutely was a conspiracy to suppress the lab leak theory. This conspiracy is why the infamous letter published in the lancet that admonished the lab leak theory as a 'conspiracy theory's was retracted by the lancet. Peter daszak was one of the signers of the letter, but it came out he attempted to avoid signing the letter even though he arranged the entire thing. The reason he didn't want to sign it? In his words:

“so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn't work in a counterproductive way.” - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/wuhan-lab-collaborat...

Why might he feel that way? Well for one his name was on the DARPA grant proposal from 2018 to engineer a coronavirus with the same mutation covid has.

Refutation contains what I also noted: "For the ENaC hypothesis to be true, UNC or WIV researchers would have had to possess the direct SARS-CoV-2 progenitor isolated from another animal—not a bat."

COVID-19 is not "some previously known coronavirus strain with furin cleavage site".

Can you explain how "similar to" becomes "identical" in your retelling?

There are a number of details about it which are the same as the plans from 2018. I don't think it's reasonable to think the plans of scientists don't get revised as they work. And as soon as the virus starts spreading, even in test mice in the lab, it will start to mutate. So it is entirely possible that what leaks from a lab is a natural mutation off of an engineered virus.

Trying to use difference in details in this case to sow doubt isn't reasonable in my opinion because it's details that are realistically impossible to nail down.

I personally find it quite unsurprising that researchers in virology might be researching future scenarios that seem like a future possibility.

This is an interesting line of thinking. We can have all the evidence imaginable that scientists did a thing that caused a pandemic, but since they were trying to predict the next pandemic you just dismiss the evidence as meaningless.

It seems like the standards applied in this discussion by some are essentially that nothing short of irrefutable proof even qualifies as evidence.

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