What is the evidence that Covid 19 came from nature? Has it been found in nature?
Very close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 have been found in bat populations in China.
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Possibly, but I did a BLAST scan of the glycoprotein that binds to humans’ ACE2 against the entire NCBI database, and it seems to appear out of nowhere right around the beginning of this year. That at least seems a little weird, and I’m curious for the explanation. If we’ve been continuously collecting coronavirus samples from bat populations, and this has been circulating for awhile, I’d expect something like a gradual upward slope.
That’s a big “if”. I highly doubt there was a huge ongoing effort to thoroughly track coronavirus in bat populations.
Is it possible that a rare strain was being kept in a BSL-2 and got out by accident? Sure. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a virus made its way out of a lab in a human or non-human host. In fact, one of the last cases of smallpox in Europe was a scientist who got infected in the lab. However, I don’t see any compelling evidence that this virus was modified by humans or intentionally released. We can find very closely related species in wild populations that carry some of the lineage specific mutations found in SARS-CoV-2, so the evidence does tip the balances strongly towards a natural source.
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The counter to that is the virus may have been evolved in a lab vs directly coded by a genetic engineer. I found one paper where a scientist took this approach to mutate a feline virus to be able to infect a mouse by repeated exposure to mouse genetic material.
You could say that about every emergent virus. It’s like every defense attorney claiming the police planted all of the evidence. There needs to be something more than baseless suspicion.
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It is a popular conspiracy theory.
In today’s political atmosphere, it was a very predictable one. It ranks right up there with people claiming Kamala Harris wasn’t born in the US. With QAnon, I can at least be surprised by the sheer insanity of their claims from time to time.
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The stupid, it burns!
So this thread’s title could have been: What evidence supports the claim that Covid was not part of a grand scheme by a coven of evil doctors and researchers?
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Yes, it is not positive evidence for the lab theory. But it refutes one of the popular debunking articles that unless the virus is hand coded nucleotide by nucleotide by genetic engineers then it cannot have been lab engineered. The fact people lab engineer zoonotic jumps through directed evolution means such a possibility remains open for sars-cov2.
Just like cops planting evidence is an open possibility in every single prosecuted crime. It seems irresponsible to make accusations like this without something to back it up.
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the fact zoonotic jumps through directed evolution evolution has been done in the lab is enough for it to be a possibility
who knows what actually happened
but a good forensic doesn’t rule out live possibilities without good reason
Thank you for this. Science is science and this virus is very tricky with lots of bells and whistles it seems to not only bind the Ace2 receptor but also the T cell cd 147 receptor ( same as malaria) and neurophilin which is on olfactory cell epithelium.
- It seems to me that if the virus came from nature the best proof would be to find it in nature. Has Covid 19 been found in an animal host in nature?
- Is it feasible to have manufactured Covid
19 in a lab with current technology?
Covid 19 is an interesting design. It seems that the virus has a good deal of homology to the bat ratg13 coronavirus but the receptor Binding domain looks very similar to the pangolin rbd except there is the polybasic furin cleavage site which is in a highly conserved region not seen in any other covid sars viruses. The polybasic furin domain is important as it has been shown to greatly enhance viral binding affinity to the human ace2 receptor in fact much greater than to bat ace 2 receptor and also increases stabilty of the protein.
We know that this could have been made in a lab as the gain of function work of u north carolina based Baric and his wuhan based scientist (pla) colleagues created sars virus chimeras combining different viruses domains and then determining their threat to humans. Baric also developed what he called a no see’m technology allowing combining cdna strands to make a full functionsl virus which would not be detectable as manufactured. I am not suggesting that this virus was developed by Baric or even from the Wuhan lab for that matter just that the ability to make covid 19 exists and we couldnt distinguish it from native. As mentioned serial passaging can easily be used to select for greater infectivity or pathology ( point mutations)
It should also be noted that even these North carolina lab did have incidences where their lab sars chimera viruses could have escaped where a lab technician was bit by an infected animal and may have not been quarantined. The potential for a virus like covid 19 to escape even from a high security lab is possible and cannot be ruled out.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0
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“It’s entirely possible that you beat your children, but who knows what actually happens.”
Would you say that to someone?
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no but i wouldn’t say the situations are analogous
the wuhan lab is involved in gain of function research creating zoonosis from bat coronavirus to human in collaboration with western labs, i am forgetting her name, but one of the wuhan lab directors provided genetic material for a chimeric virus created in 2018 or 2019, i will need to look up the article for you
UPDATE looks like someone beat me to it
i am not saying that is a smoking gun
most likely they have been very perceptive and were researching exactly the right topic to anticipate the epidemic, not cause it
The lab isn’t involved in purposefully releasing deadly viruses into the human population. That’s the accusation being made, and it is irresponsible to do so without any evidence. You are accusing them of a crime against humanity.
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lab generated is different than intentional release
could be lab generated and accidental release
intention is a seperate topic from lab generation
i think this whole think can be explained entirely without ill intent
what better way to prevent a mass outbreak than to derive the next outbreak vector ahead of time and produce a vaccine?