The Lab Leak Hypothesis

> National birth rates where 13 in 2016 vs 9.3 in Beijing demonstrating it’s a poor fit for national trends.

Yes, it's harder to avoid the government's wrath if you live right under their eyes in the capital, so national policies are more likely to be enforced in Beijing than elsewhere.

> In terms of IUD rates. 324 million IUD’s over 34 years vs a current population of 1.4 billion don’t on their own get 60% drop in birth rates.

Did you do the math on that? 1.4 billion population total corresponds to roughly 700 million women; adding 324 million IUDs and 107 million tubal ligations amounts to 431 million sterilizations, about 62% of all Chinese women.

Of course it's not just the sterilizations that cause a drop in birth rates, but also having to pay a fine per "superfluous" child, not qualifying for government benefits, the rising cost of living making raising a child more expensive etc. It's no wonder that many women would choose to have no or fewer children under these circumstances, especially if they know other women who can tell them exactly what it's like.

> Further, it isn’t like Xinjinang was completely outside of the national trends and suddenly caught up,

I do think they were outside national trends in terms of percentage of women sterilized and "caught up" by sterilizing women en masse even when they gave birth years ago; while those sterilizations would have happened routinely after childbirth in Beijing.

I guess we'll see whether birth rates in Xinjiang will continue to drop below even the level of Beijing, stagnate at the current level or bounce back slightly once the figures for 2020 are published (but then there's the pandemic as a confounder...)

You have to quantify "relatively rare". Its closest relatives of high genetic match do not have this furin site, as they admit in the paper you linked to, only the sister clade does:

"Moreover, SARS-CoV-2 is the only virus in subgenus Sarbecovirus having this feature, while even its closest relatives, bat coronavirus RaTG13 (sequence identity 97.7%) and pangolin coronaviruses (92.9%–90.7%), do not have furin site. However, in Hibecovirus, the sister clade of Sarbecovirus, a Hipposideros bat coronavirus collected in 2013 at Zhejiang Province in China has furin site at S1/S2. Interestingly, the other member in Hibecovirus lacks such site, similar to the situation of SARS-CoV-2 and its close relatives. Interestingly, the other member in Hibecovirus lacks such site, similar to the situation of SARS-CoV-2 and its close relatives. "

Notice they don't publish the genetic match of the sister clade. Howe exactly does it jump clade when its closest relatives don't have the site?

This is what they point out in the podcast. Can it occur naturally, yes, but what are the chances if its closest relatives do not have it at all and none in the same clade? What exactly is the mechanism that this can occure? Its not just the furin site, they also discuss 4 other amino acid chains present that expanded its infectiousness. If this was a relatively chance combination of bat and pangolin incubated mutation that someone also gained the furin site and 4 other amino chains, why has it not flamed out like past jumps such as MERS which had the same? Pretty fortunate for a new mutation.

>>The lab theory requires not only a lab leak but the active suppression of the sequence(s) of the viral isolate(s) used in the hypothetical gain-of-function experiment.

Agreed, and although I don't necessarily think highly of the sources (Daily Mail), there does appear to be suppression of evidence even recently:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9129681/New-cover-f...

I believe Bret's podcast also talks about a database that was also taken down shortly after the outbreak from the Wuhan lab that may contain the sequence of the virus SARS Cov 2, which is standard practice for engineered viruses for study. I've also heard that there were samples destroyed in China during the early outbreak. If they were truly transparent they would release all records and backups of their databases going back a year or 2 before the outbreak to prove no such sequencing took place. So far I have not seen that. Keep in mind that all these level 4 labs globally are at risk of being shut down if any of this gets proved. They become political hot potatoes. If the public became fully aware (as in the laymen on the street knew) that multiple companies exist that can print any virus DNA sequence for $30,000 USD, and one of them escaped, they would likely be horrified.

I do agree that this can arise naturally, but the confluence of rare events arising a couple blocks from a level 4 lab studying exactly this gives me pause.