Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

You mean the proxy states, lackeys, and funded warlords and dictators setup by EU in Africa, to safeguard the ex-colonial pocessions and make sure they continue to get their resources and control on the cheap?

Or the several Middle Easter/Asian/African countries bombed, invaded, toppled, etc by the US (3-4 of them in the last 20 years alone).

You're in a thread that was kicked off with unsourced statements about virology and epidemiology, but suddenly we have an urgent need for sources — actually, not just sources, because the demand was for proof — when we encounter the idea "Labs don't occur by chance in random locations around the globe"?

I would say you're supposed to engage the same way everyone had been engaging with the entire thread up to that point. But if you do want to transition to a more evidence-based approach to the subject — which I could get behind — I don't think the right way to go about it is to suddenly demand proof from the first person whose opinion you don't like.

Most of the media coverage and consensus, from the Washington Post to Nature, seems to be that:

- the lab escape theory has been thoroughly debunked by science

- the WHO investigation put the final nails in the coffin of this theory

- therefore, lab escape continues to be a fringe conspiracy theory at best

- coverage of the lab escape theory is politically motivated rather than scientifically motivated

- continued coverage is largely a combination of irresponsible journalism, disinformation and anti-China political propaganda

Does the USA Today article indicate a shift in this perspective, or is it just an outlier? Has something changed, for example new information coming to light?

In roughest form, Andersen is saying "SARS-CoV-2 doesn't closely resemble any existing known virus, so it wasn't produced by genetic manipulation of existing known viruses".

I think that's true, but it ignores the possibility that the WIV was working with new viruses with unpublished genomes. The WIV routinely organized expeditions to remote bat caves to collect samples. There's naturally some delay between sampling, sequencing, and publishing, no conspiracy required. For example, RaTG13, the closest known animal virus to SARS-CoV-2, was collected by the WIV in 2013 but published only after the start of the pandemic.

The WIV had a private database of viral genomes; but they took it offline in September 2019, they say due to hacking attempts. They haven't brought it back up, and the WHO has declined to ask for a copy.

SARS-CoV-2 certainly could be a naturally-evolved virus first transmitted from an animal to a non-scientist human. It could also be a naturally-evolved virus collected and accidentally released by the WIV, or a recombinant of multiple such viruses, or the descendant of such a virus after serial passaging. Nothing in Andersen's argument distinguishes any of these possibilities.

But don't trust me; check out Marc Lipsitch's Twitter feed today, or David Relman's article:

> Some have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus (3). This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors (i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor-binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory.

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246

This isn't a conspiracy theory, and it's not even a fringe viewpoint anymore. It's just a reasonable step in investigating the yet-unknown origin of what could be the worst industrial accident in human history.

> We need to avoid demonizing China over this

Not a productive message and this sentiment just distracts from the discussion, which is playing into China's narrative.

> if we want to ever find out the truth and learn how to prevent another pandemic outbreak.

It's a bit late isn't it? China witheld early information about the virus and prevented WHO scientists from visiting ground zero. Silencing journalists and censoring information from coming out all the while pushing propaganda...what do you think we're going to learn from them that hasn't already been swept under the rug?

I find it absolutely flabbergasting the amount of trust people in the US and other countries place on the Chinese government.