Major scientific paper says Covid Lab leak more likely than natural origin

Original paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.14291

The Australian is Rupert Murdoch's house paper, very conservative. They have a spin.

Love the science hate the publisher, and the slant on the story. The leap-over-the-wall link is https://archive.md/FKIAD

I believe scientists are nothing like as confident as this press agency is. Sherry Markson (news ltd) has been running hot on this story, written a book, has major investment as a journalist in the story arc. I wonder how much she contributed to this one. (not on the byline)

The abstract in the origin paper: This risk assessment cannot prove the origin of SARS-CoV-2 but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.

the tool of choice, the mGFT is a modified risk assessment process. It was designed for this, but it comes down to what I think can be cast as subjective judgement calls.

Raina MacIntyre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raina_MacIntyre is a well respected epidemiologist and specialist in the field of infectious diseases. I hesitate to criticise her angle on this, but I don't see the unanimity in the virology community around this position. I stress that her work during COVID was vital for managing Australia-wide community risk, and I value her work immensely because I live in Oz, and it helped keep us safe for 2 years.

Rootclaim debated this with a $100,000 bet saying it was a lab leak. They lost[1].

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1au49wh/pet...

Lab leak does not mean man made.

Given the revelations from the organization named US Right to Know, this should no longer be surprising or controversial (hell, more than one US federal agency has concluded it was lab leak). That said, when I post such revelations on HN, they immediately get flagged into oblivion. Lab leak does not equal anti-vax, anti-mask, or even anti-China. People need to get over themselves.