I thought everyone knew this. A hexavalent carbon atom in the strategic base of the genome reacted with an argon atom, releasing a helium nucleus, that reacted with a neighboring heptavalent nitrogen, creating an atto-black hole. The gravitational pull attracted the binding target (Ace2) and also attracted and distorted an argonaute enzyme that used the energy derived from a reaction of the atto black hole with an anti-proton to shape the nucleic acid target site (using the guide RNA in the argonaute) and allow the argonaute to create exactly the base changes needed to accomplish the task. A side product of the annihilation was a flush of chronometric particles that allowed the system to return to a point in time immediately after the origination of the hexavalent carbon, which allowed the organism to survive all of this as if no time had passed.
You tell me, @colewd - does that sound random to you?
It was either that or some point mutations making amino acid changes. Not really that many, actually. And spike binding to other mammalian Ace2s predated those.
Other virologists have been warning for decades that a lab leak accident causing a devastating pandemic was bound to happen as a result of dangerous gain of function research. We should not be surprised when the expected materializes.
Now, under the zoonotic hypothesis, shouldnât we be very surprised that when SARS2 first appeared in the world in 2019:
it had all the unique properties that would be expected of a virus made according to the DEFUSE recipe written in 2018 (taken from Wadeâs piece below)
it appeared precisely in Wuhan, a city home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology where gain of function research on coronaviruses took place. Not only that, but also the very city where Peter Daszak, the project leader of the DEFUSE proposal, said that a lot of the assays would be done.
For more developments on these points, here is a nice piece by Nicolas Wade:
The adaptive immune system is effectively based on the idea that random mutations, occurring in total blindness to their phenotypic effects, with the different mutants all being subject to selection, can find and enhance novel binding mutants towards new foreign compounds.
If this couldnât be accomplished by evolution then the adaptive immune system, an intrinsically Darwinian process of random mutations subject to selection (and the selection directly determines the reproductive success of b-cells carrying higher-affinity mutants), would be impossible.
The adaptive immune system empirically demonstrates the ability of Darwinian evolution to produce novel receptor binding.
None of which are actually unique among natural viruses.
They proposed to study viruses with such properties exactly because it was only matter of time before, eventually, viruses with those properties would naturally emerge and start a pandemic.
At a wildlife animal trade market, exactly where Experts had been warning such zoonotic transmissions are likely to take place.
As someone who trained in and did virology decades ago, I donât know of any. Perhaps you should provide quotes with dates that can be checked.
And this virologist is reminding you to address @Artâs challenge to address the actual evidence in Figs. 1 & 2 of the review. Your avoidance speaks volumes.
No, so why are you intent on denying a zoonotic origin?
Wadeâs piece is all words, no evidence. Again, posting something so shallow is evasion on your part.
And I already pointed out two years ago that using restriction sites as evidence is laughable, given the common use of Gibson assembly. You never addressed that, despite your claims that you never avoid addressing points.
Words arenât the evidence.
Art gave you a good place to start: Figs. 1 & 2. Why donât you try to be a truly independent thinker and analyze actual evidence yourself?
Why fabricate an objectively false claim, @Giltil? Why not examine evidence? The review Art linked to did have precise locationsâin Fig. 2, which Art politely asked you to examine and address. Did you not even look?
Lab leaks of viral infection are always a possibility and any possible links should be thoroughly investigated.
Much is made of the coincidence that the epidemic originated from a city hosting the institute, but little is mentioned that the institute was located there because that area held a long vulnerability to zoonotic transmission, in part due to the thriving resident population of bats.
Yes. Particularly when there are precedents. The 2002 SARS outbreak originated in Foshan to the north of Wuhan.
At least for me, being convinced of a natural origin for covid should not be conflated with approval of the epidemic response. China indulged its characteristic oppression of truth. Tedros Ghebreyesus heading the WHO could not have done any worse if he were an alien infiltrator from Zorg set on exterminating the human race. Time after time, the management slammed the barn door well after the horse had fled. None of that diminishes the evidence pointing to wet market spill over.
@Giltil, you seem to have latched onto an unfunded proposal as some sort of smoking gun. Hopefully you know that the proposal was unfunded, which means the research was not conducted.
Oh wait, some are claiming that scientists in China picked up on the research anyways. And managed, in the space of 6-12 months, to conduct experiments that, with proper funding, would take 3-5 years. Remember, this was not an emergency, all-hands-on-deck sort of project that required rapid review and turnaround. It was in the normal proposal pipeline. There was no reason for anyone anywhere to suddenly drop everything, put a few hundred people on a project, and get something done in a matter of weeks. Bottom line, the suggestion that some institute in China picked this up and created an epidemic, again, IN A MATTER OF WEEKS, is beyond absurd.
And this scenario still ignores the data, the facts, spelled out in the Holmes review (Figs. 1 and 2, as @Mercer has kindly reminded). The lab leak scenario is completely at odds with the facts of the epidemic. @Giltil, why do you refuse to confront the only solid data? Why do you privilege confused and hysterical conspiracy theories over facts?
GIl, it was bound to happen WITHOUT gain of function research. Virologists and epidemiologists have been warning of the possibility of a major zoonotic outbreak for decades. This is the reason the CDC and similar organizations exists; to help us be better prepared when such outbreaks occur. We should not be surprised when the expected materializes.
There are other, less glaring, reasons why it doesnât match your claim, but it not being decades ago suffices to reject it.
Do you have anything else, or were you simply blatherskiting, and are only now looking for anything that might conceivably pass for something you meant (if not looked at too closely) but didnât actually have?
Okay. Let me modify my statement Other virologists have been warning for years that a lab leak accident causing a devastating pandemic was bound to happen as a result of dangerous gain of function research.
Are you okay now?
Okay, but since many scientists also warned us it was bound to happen with GoF research, whatever scientists have predicted with or without GoF research doesnât help at all in deciding whether the covid pandemic resulted from a lab leak or a zoonosis.
Have you looked at the papers that