Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ Jan 11 2022 05:33pm)

my god, there are still people thinking that a perfectly adapted virus jumped to humans, because some dude didnt cook his bat properly

Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ 12 Jan 2022 00:23)

You would use an enzyme that cleaves DNA at certain sequences. And you would be able to identify multiple and the exact site that was cleaved and recombined. These sequences are really well established. So they also would have had to make a whole set of entirely new restriction endonuclease that uses a novel sequence never published before instead of using a cheap well characterized ones off the shelf.

Quote (Sioux @ 12 Jan 2022 00:25)

Nah you can gibson and skip the enzymes. The furin site is objectively odd but doesn't mean it had to come from a lab.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 11 2022 03:36pm)

"Doesn't mean it had to come from a lab" is a much weaker statement than what you and Netflix are arguing for, namely that it is exceedingly unlikely that the virus was modified in a lab before being leaked.

Quote (Sioux @ 12 Jan 2022 00:38)

Furin cleavage has evolved independently multiple times in coronavirus lineages over the years. It's frustrating that science is imperfect and we might never find the viral ancestor between the WT strain this came from and the current covid showing this furin insertion but that doesn't point to a conspiracy.

Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ Jan 11 2022 06:11pm)

Yes, we've got basically the entire family tree constructed this point except for whatever the immediate step was before human infection. There are loads of candidates for predecessor viruses and it really doesn't matter which one it was.

We can be incredibly confident it was not any kind of game of function experiment gone wrong. There are no signs of that kind of modification in the virus genome. The absolute best you could get is that it was created through serial passage with some other animal but even that is pretty suspect and wouldn't be differentiable from a wild virus

If you've got a big project with dozens and dozens of animals undergoing cereal passage that's kind of hard to keep a secret

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 11 2022 03:45pm)

Well, I'm not trying to argue in favor of these conspiracies, like that the Chinese deliberately released the virus, or that they were actively looking to create a bioweapon.

But I haven't seen compelling evidence or arguments to rule out that it was research gone wrong. Some pure-hearted researchers playing around with a sample of bat coronaviruses in a lab which we know is about doing research on coronaviruses, and then it leaked by accident.

Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ Jan 12 2022 12:34am)

Oh look. Somebody who didn't read before saying something dumb

Quote (Sioux @ 12 Jan 2022 00:48)

Right its possible. It's just a strong statement for which no evidence exists to say its a lab leak because I can conceive that its possible. There's no markers in the viral genome of manipulation, there's no evidence that this strain came from the lab at wuhan, there's no evidence any viruses escaped containment at the wuhan institute. You can't say well its probable because its plausible without evidence.

I'm not saying it isn't possible, but without direct evidence I'm defaulting to how every pandemic in the history of the world has started. Animal to human transmission through close proximity.