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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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>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.

> 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

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.

> Except it's in the other direction.

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

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