Four federal agencies consider lab-leak hypothesis for COVID origin, one ranks it "low confidence" spurring WSJ headline

[Acer]

I don't know who this guy is, I pulled this from the wiki page. But, if we're arguing plausible hypotheticals, then who he is doesn't matter as much.

"Holmes, Edward C. (14 August 2022). "The COVID lab leak theory is dead. Here's how we know the virus came from a Wuhan market". The Conversation. Retrieved 4 September 2022. "For the lab leak theory to be true, SARS-CoV-2 must have been present in the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the pandemic started. This would convince me. But the inconvenient truth is there's not a single piece of data suggesting this. There's no evidence for a genome sequence or isolate of a precursor virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Not from gene sequence databases, scientific publications, annual reports, student theses, social media, or emails. Even the intelligence community has found nothing. Nothing. And there was no reason to keep any work on a SARS-CoV-2 ancestor secret before the pandemic*."

* important point for the "China destroyed the evidence" crowd.

[kj]

And there was no reason to keep any work on a SARS-CoV-2 ancestor secret before the pandemic*

I've seen a billion people who work in the field say that no conclusion will occur until China cooperates with scientists outside China. I don't think that means they are hiding anything necessarily, but even if they haven't destroyed stuff, they've not been cooperative, at least as I understand it.

[Tiangou]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
Is it still true that the closest version of the virus found in the wild was ~1500 km away and the only site in Wuhan known to have animals from that location was the virus lab?

They've found close relatives all over Asia.

Early on, the Korean strains were the only ones identified, but as time has passed they've found many more possible progenitors.

Here's the most recent scholarly article that I've found, noting reports of similar viruses in Cambodia, China, Thailand and Japan, and now favoring bats on the borderlands of China, Laos and Vietnam as a likely origin:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04532-4

...And, as always, don't forget that the bat virus supposedly entered humans by way of pangolins.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

China seems to have destroyed all the evidence that could have proved they were not responsible for the outbreak. Strains found in bats are closer than strains found in pangolins.
https: //www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117

Covid has not been found in animals before they got to the wet market. That implies the virus came from somewhere else in Wuhan and just happened to be spread in the market. The only other known source of Covid in the area was the lab, which had been researching bat viruses.
https: //www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-function-risky-bat-virus-engineering-links-america-to-wuhan/

[AllGold]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
China seems to have destroyed all the evidence that could have proved they were not responsible for the outbreak. Strains found in bats are closer than strains found in pangolins.
https: //www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117

Covid has not been found in animals before they got to the wet market. That implies the virus came from somewhere else in Wuhan and just happened to be spread in the market. The only other known source of Covid in the area was the lab, which had been researching bat viruses.
https: //www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-function-risky-bat-virus-engineering-links-america-to-wuhan/

But if the genetics of Covid that was spread and in the wild don't match what was in the lab(s) then none of that matters.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

AllGold wrote:
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
China seems to have destroyed all the evidence that could have proved they were not responsible for the outbreak. Strains found in bats are closer than strains found in pangolins.
https: //www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117

Covid has not been found in animals before they got to the wet market. That implies the virus came from somewhere else in Wuhan and just happened to be spread in the market. The only other known source of Covid in the area was the lab, which had been researching bat viruses.
https: //www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-function-risky-bat-virus-engineering-links-america-to-wuhan/

But if the genetics of Covid that was spread and in the wild don't match what was in the lab(s) then none of that matters.
We don't know everything that was in the lab.

[Tiangou]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
[quote=AllGold]
[quote=Filliam H. Muffman]
China seems to have destroyed all the evidence that could have proved they were not responsible for the outbreak. Strains found in bats are closer than strains found in pangolins.
https: //www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh0117

Covid has not been found in animals before they got to the wet market. That implies the virus came from somewhere else in Wuhan and just happened to be spread in the market. The only other known source of Covid in the area was the lab, which had been researching bat viruses.
https: //www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-function-risky-bat-virus-engineering-links-america-to-wuhan/

But if the genetics of Covid that was spread and in the wild don't match what was in the lab(s) then none of that matters.
We don't know everything that was in the lab.
COVID came from aliens.

We don't know everything that's in the sky.

[SteveG]

Tiangou wrote:

COVID came from aliens.

We don't know everything that's in the sky.

Except their octagonal inertia-less glowing objects outpacing our sharp-eyed pilots in their supersonic planes with lethal armaments.