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Comment by CMay | Hacker News Reader

The closest natural relative origin of SARS-CoV-2 was in Yunnan ~700 miles away from the market.

The Wuhan lab collected samples from that area and the lab is only ~10 miles away from the market.

Those wet markets are huge vectors for a viral spread, so a virus being spread there doesn't necessarily mean it started there.

Why that market in Hubei and not first at a market closer to Yunnan? It might be more profitable to transport and sell them there, but it's still a long way to travel and avoid spreading during that time just to end up at a market so close to that lab.

A lot of reasoning around whether a lab leak is more likely doesn't require it to be engineered or modified in any way.

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> The closest

The closest _known_. The second closest was found in Laos, also 700 miles from Wuhan (BANAL-52). Except it's in the other direction.

So we know that close cousins of CoV-2 are pretty wide-spread.

> Those wet markets are huge vectors for a viral spread, so a virus being spread there doesn't necessarily mean it started there

The thing is, does it really matter? We can say with a high degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was _not_ engineered. So even if the very first jump was in the lab, it was likely a result of insufficient biosecurity measures. But the virus (and its close cousins) are still out there in nature, and it's a matter of time until a new spillover happens.

>We can say with a high degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was _not_ engineered.

The lab leak hypothesis doesn't depend on GoF research. CoV-2 could have a natural origin, been collected by the WIV, and leaked into the city. This has happened before.

That said, there's no way to evaluate if it was engineered. Some methods of engineering are indistinguishable from natural selection, and fingerprints from detectable methods have a very short half-life in a fast mutating virus.

>So even if the very first jump was in the lab, it was likely a result of insufficient biosecurity measures.

Virtually no one is claiming otherwise. This is a weakman argument.

>and it's a matter of time until a new spillover happens.

At the start of CoV-2, everyone told me that it takes years to develop vaccines. I told them it takes days to develop and weeks to test. Turns out that I was right. If the mortality rate of CoV-2 had been 3%, like early reports suggested, then the mRNA vaccines would have been in production by March.

Laos is not in the "other direction" to Yunnan; Laos borders Yunnan.

Yup. This was like finding an alligator virus in Boston and arguing about whether it's nearest relative was in Alabama or Mississippi... they would be in basically the same direction from Boston.

> We can say with a high degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was _not_ engineered.

Do you have any links, articles, or further reading you could share to help me understand where the high degree of confidence comes from?

This guy seems to be convinced of the exact opposite conclusion that is is indeed engineered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-eqdRSx7Y

> Except it's in the other direction.

What? You're aware that Yunnan literally shares a border with Laos?

I was curious so I did a quick research on the previous SARS-CoV-1, the one that caused an outbreak back in 2003. Looks like they weren't able to find the natural reservoir for that one either. We did know it came directly from masked palm civets sold at local markets, but we don't know how those civets were infected. They were raised in farms, and no virus was found in those farms.

And the closest natural match? WIV16 at 96.0%, again found on bats in Yunnan, again very far from Guangdong - where that outbreak started.

So I think it must be because Yunnan has a lot of bats? that's why all the closest matches are found there?

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