What's the difference between a Conspiracy Theory and The Truth?

[Fheredin]

I knew COVID was the result of a lab leak when Martenson from Peak Prosperity reported it had a Furin Cleavage site insertion mutation WAY back in 2020. I think it was May.

RNA doesn't have genetic repair mechanisms, so insertion mutations are almost impossible on RNA. A broken bit of RNA remains broken. To get this, you would have to have genetic repair mechanisms, which basically means it was done to DNA, probably DNA inserted into the genome of a bacterium or yeast. You break the DNA, and then the DNA repair mechanism comes along and stitches the DNA back together again, this time with the blob you had floating around conveniently inserted. There are probably other ways, but basically, stitching genetic material together usually requires using the cell's own DNA repair mechanisms.

A lab messing around with the inverse of the COVID genome in DNA would also explain the Moderna patented genetic information being a mirror flip sequence. The code would get flipped when you transcribe it from DNA to RNA.

[jhkim]

I knew COVID was the result of a lab leak when Martenson from Peak Prosperity reported it had a Furin Cleavage site insertion mutation WAY back in 2020. I think it was May.

RNA doesn't have genetic repair mechanisms, so insertion mutations are almost impossible on RNA. A broken bit of RNA remains broken. To get this, you would have to have genetic repair mechanisms, which basically means it was done to DNA, probably DNA inserted into the genome of a bacterium or yeast. You break the DNA, and then the DNA repair mechanism comes along and stitches the DNA back together again, this time with the blob you had floating around conveniently inserted. There are probably other ways, but basically, stitching genetic material together usually requires using the cell's own DNA repair mechanisms.

A lab messing around with the inverse of the COVID genome in DNA would also explain the Moderna patented genetic information being a mirror flip sequence. The code would get flipped when you transcribe it from DNA to RNA.

Fheredin - I don't have the genetics background to evaluate this, but I know some people who do. Do you have any references that give the details on this proof? I see a lot of papers evaluating the initial mutation of the covid-19 virus, but many suggest natural evolution is still possible.

From another angle, if this was provably true back in May 2020, then do you have any idea why Trump (or any other world leader) would not have highlighted this to use against the Chinese government?

[Fheredin]

I knew COVID was the result of a lab leak when Martenson from Peak Prosperity reported it had a Furin Cleavage site insertion mutation WAY back in 2020. I think it was May.

RNA doesn't have genetic repair mechanisms, so insertion mutations are almost impossible on RNA. A broken bit of RNA remains broken. To get this, you would have to have genetic repair mechanisms, which basically means it was done to DNA, probably DNA inserted into the genome of a bacterium or yeast. You break the DNA, and then the DNA repair mechanism comes along and stitches the DNA back together again, this time with the blob you had floating around conveniently inserted. There are probably other ways, but basically, stitching genetic material together usually requires using the cell's own DNA repair mechanisms.

A lab messing around with the inverse of the COVID genome in DNA would also explain the Moderna patented genetic information being a mirror flip sequence. The code would get flipped when you transcribe it from DNA to RNA.

Fheredin - I don't have the genetics background to evaluate this, but I know some people who do. Do you have any references that give the details on this proof? I see a lot of papers evaluating the initial mutation of the covid-19 virus, but many suggest natural evolution is still possible.

From another angle, if this was provably true back in May 2020, then do you have any idea why Trump (or any other world leader) would not have highlighted this to use against the Chinese government?

I can find the specific video I mentioned. This was uploaded May 12, 2020.

Martenson doesn't go into reverse transcription and DNA mutations--that's me using material I learned in AP Bio about 15 years ago, however he did later find a leaked DARPA funding request where the applicant stated that they wanted to insert a Furin cleavage site into a non-human virus to increase it's pathology in humans. I think there were a total of three videos he has done on the subject and I found two (out of over 1,000 uploads; Martenson did an upload a day for a significant amount of COVID.)

This one was uploaded Septermber 21, 2021. Martenson include a discussion of FOIA requested documents of Dr. Fauci's emails. It appears that professional virologists (including Fauci) intentionally suppressed gain of function suspicions because it could negatively affect their ability to get funding. Trump, of course, is a businessman who has a highschool understanding of microbiology at best. He almost certainly took their word for it.

A word of warning: I suspect Martenson of being fed Russian open source intelligence, which the FSB is recycling to power as a pseudo Agit-Prop campaign. I don't know how aware of this Martenson is, but on occasion his "free thinking" leaves something to be desired. Deep state information wells are increasingly common on Youtube; I suspect that Binkov's Battlegrounds and Peter Zeihan are both being fed material from the Pentagon.

All of these are fantastic information sources, but you have to keep the hidden agenda in mind.

[jhkim]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD3ztjqYGbg

Martenson doesn't go into reverse transcription and DNA mutations--that's me using material I learned in AP Bio about 15 years ago, however he did later find a leaked DARPA funding request where the applicant stated that they wanted to insert a Furin cleavage site into a non-human virus to increase it's pathology in humans.

The above video says "We don't have anything super definitive to say yes or no, this way or that way, but I can tell you that anybody who is saying that this is definitively from nature is absolutely not being completely open or honest." (at 0:34 and similar in the summary)

However, based on your knowledge from AP Bio 15 years ago, you've been sure for three years that it is man-made just from the genetics.

Do I have that right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfoZHX-BJzQ

This one was uploaded Septermber 21, 2021. Martenson include a discussion of FOIA requested documents of Dr. Fauci's emails. It appears that professional virologists (including Fauci) intentionally suppressed gain of function suspicions because it could negatively affect their ability to get funding.

This one focuses on coronavirus research funding and collaboration. However, no one disagrees that there was research being done into coronaviruses at many sites including Wuhan. The declared reason why that research was funded was because there had already been multiple dangerous coronavirus variants like SARS and MERS, and it was considered likely that another coronavirus variant would evolve.

Scientists knew coronavirus evolution was a danger, and cited that as a reason to do more research into how they evolve. That research was done. One explanation is that the research itself caused the outbreak. But another explanation is that the scientists were right - coronavirus evolution was a danger that was proven correct.

Again, I'm not a virologist and I don't claim to know for sure either way. I'm just saying that there being a bunch of research and interest in this strengthens both explanations.

[Fheredin]

The above video says "We don't have anything super definitive to say yes or no, this way or that way, but I can tell you that anybody who is saying that this is definitively from nature is absolutely not being completely open or honest." (at 0:34 and similar in the summary)

However, based on your knowledge from AP Bio 15 years ago, you've been sure for three years that it is man-made just from the genetics.

Do I have that right?

If you also add, "jhkim doesn't understand how legal disclaimer language works and clicked off an hour long video after 45 seconds..." sure. I might not be a professional microbiologist, but I was an editor at a university press. I do understand how academics massage information to make it look the way they want, and write and speak out of both sides of their mouths. Professional academics (including Martenson; he's a pathologist) often include red herring disclaimer statements when handling controversial material to protect their professional careers. People who do not understand the data will glance over it, read the red herring statement, and hear something like, "the vaccine's safe and effective," when that summary statement may have literally no connection to the data presented. That part is only for people willing to put the effort in to understand the academic material and the data presented. Quite often it requires doing a little research of your own.

Take for instance vaccine-induced myocarditis. If you do a little poking around it looks like the COVID shots have at worst a 1 in 3000 chance of causing myocarditis or pericarditis in people who are at high risk for that adverse event. That number requires context to interpret. The Smallpox vaccine has a 1 in 1000 chance of causing myocarditis (unless I am terribly mistaken, this is why the Smallpox vaccine is not a routine vaccination.) How often do you see the safety concern of the COVID shot compared to the Smallpox vaccine? It happens, but it's rare. I think Dr. John Campbell is the only one I've seen mention this.

Am I happy with this? No. This is the proverbial ostrich burying its head in the sand and is in no uncertain terms...cowardice. But I do understand how and why academics couch controversial findings in velvet-gloved summary statements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfoZHX-BJzQ

This one was uploaded Septermber 21, 2021. Martenson include a discussion of FOIA requested documents of Dr. Fauci's emails. It appears that professional virologists (including Fauci) intentionally suppressed gain of function suspicions because it could negatively affect their ability to get funding.

This one focuses on coronavirus research funding and collaboration. However, no one disagrees that there was research being done into coronaviruses at many sites including Wuhan. The declared reason why that research was funded was because there had already been multiple dangerous coronavirus variants like SARS and MERS, and it was considered likely that another coronavirus variant would evolve.

Scientists knew coronavirus evolution was a danger, and cited that as a reason to do more research into how they evolve. That research was done. One explanation is that the research itself caused the outbreak. But another explanation is that the scientists were right - coronavirus evolution was a danger that was proven correct.

Again, I'm not a virologist and I don't claim to know for sure either way. I'm just saying that there being a bunch of research and interest in this strengthens both explanations.

...Or the people who work with viruses have an undisclosed conflict of interest called, "funding."

The problem with saying that COVID is a product of natural evolution is that it's a three component viral chimera. It has the backbone of roughly 97% RaTG13 bat coronavirus, but that last 3% has pangolin virus information, and a Furin cleavage site which just happens to be the reverse of a Moderna patent conveniently inserted exactly between two peptides in the spike protein. The Moderna patented sequence is also found in a deep ocean bacterium.

Viral chimeras are not the product of natural evolution. Evolution causes point mutations, so the natural evolution of this virus would be that the bases at that peptide-peptide intersection mutated to form a human Furin cleavage site codon sequence. There's no plausible mechanism for a genetic sequence from a pangolin virus and a deep ocean bacterium to make their way into either a human or bat cell for this mutation to happen, let alone both being present in close enough temporal proximity to make the final virus. Saying "viral evolution did it" does such a disservice to the science it turns evolutionary biology into Pokemon training.

There's plenty plausible mechanism for intentional engineering. The Furin cleavage site was Moderna patented and the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a world-wide connected viral lab actively collecting virus samples. All these components were in pipettes in the freezer.

[Trond]

Speaking of conspiracies; does anyone remember the name of the US agent (CIA I think) who the Democrats went after hard to "prove" the Russian Collusion? They nearly ruined his life and possibly outed someone who was supposed to be a spy for USA, but it seems like this old story has been buried.

[jhkim]

Viral chimeras are not the product of natural evolution. Evolution causes point mutations, so the natural evolution of this virus would be that the bases at that peptide-peptide intersection mutated to form a human Furin cleavage site codon sequence. There's no plausible mechanism for a genetic sequence from a pangolin virus and a deep ocean bacterium to make their way into either a human or bat cell for this mutation to happen, let alone both being present in close enough temporal proximity to make the final virus. Saying "viral evolution did it" does such a disservice to the science it turns evolutionary biology into Pokemon training.

I'm not a virologist, but I've taken undergrad-level biology. To say that evolution causes point mutations is wrong. Mutations (combined with natural selection) cause evolution. And point mutations are not the only sort of natural mutation. Recombination is a common form of natural genetic mutation where an offspring has unique genes not found in either parent. cf.

The particular combination of genes present in any individual genome, as well as the timing and the level of expression of these genes, is often altered by such DNA rearrangements. In a population, this type of genetic variation is crucial to allow organisms to evolve in response to a changing environment. The DNA rearrangements are caused by a set of mechanisms that are collectively called genetic recombination. Two broad classes are commonly recognized—general recombination and site-specific recombination. In this part of the chapter we discuss the first of these two mechanisms; in the next part, we consider the second mechanism.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26898/

That chapter is more focused on sexual reproduction ("crossing over"), but any genetic copying is subject to recombination mutations. I recently read a fascinating article on what's been happening in evolution of the Y chromosome in mammals. Because it only has one copy, it can't do crossing-over the way that X chromosomes can, but it can still have other recombination mutations - that it refers to as "gene conversion events" and "gene amplification".

https://www.iflscience.com/the-y-chromosome-is-disappearing-so-what-will-happen-to-men-45674

Recombination also happens in viruses:

Viral recombination occurs when viruses of two different parent strains coinfect the same host cell and interact during replication to generate virus progeny that have some genes from both parents. Recombination generally occurs between members of the same virus type (e.g., between two influenza viruses or between two herpes simplex viruses). Two mechanisms of recombination have been observed for viruses: independent assortment and incomplete linkage. Either mechanism can produce new viral serotypes or viruses with altered virulence.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8439/#_A2330_

Viral chimeras are also possible in nature. This wouldn't have been covered in AP Bio 15 years ago - since the mechanism behind this was only discovered in recent genomic studies, with the first one in 2012. But that's because genomic studies of viruses are new.

In 2012, the first example of a naturally-occurring RNA-DNA hybrid virus was unexpectedly discovered during a metagenomic study of the acidic extreme environment of Boiling Springs Lake that is in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California. The virus was named BSL-RDHV (Boiling Spring Lake RNA DNA Hybrid Virus). Its genome is related to a DNA circovirus, which usually infect birds and pigs, and a RNA tombusvirus, which infect plants. The study surprised scientists, because DNA and RNA viruses vary and the way the chimera came together was not understood.

Other viral chimeras have also been found, and the group is known as the CHIV viruses ("chimeric viruses").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)#Viruses

---

Again, I'm not saying that covid-19 is necessarily natural - but I'm skeptical about the idea that it's so obviously unnatural that anyone who's taken AP Bio knows it is engineered.

Viral recombination and viral chimeras both happen. A remaining question is whether the recombined sequences are proven to be from a pangolin virus and a deep ocean bacterium. Sequences are often the same across many species - like how humans and bananas have 60% the same DNA.

[GeekyBugle]

Viral chimeras are not the product of natural evolution. Evolution causes point mutations, so the natural evolution of this virus would be that the bases at that peptide-peptide intersection mutated to form a human Furin cleavage site codon sequence. There's no plausible mechanism for a genetic sequence from a pangolin virus and a deep ocean bacterium to make their way into either a human or bat cell for this mutation to happen, let alone both being present in close enough temporal proximity to make the final virus. Saying "viral evolution did it" does such a disservice to the science it turns evolutionary biology into Pokemon training.

I'm not a virologist, but I've taken undergrad-level biology. To say that evolution causes point mutations is wrong. Mutations (combined with natural selection) cause evolution. And point mutations are not the only sort of natural mutation. Recombination is a common form of natural genetic mutation where an offspring has unique genes not found in either parent. cf.

The particular combination of genes present in any individual genome, as well as the timing and the level of expression of these genes, is often altered by such DNA rearrangements. In a population, this type of genetic variation is crucial to allow organisms to evolve in response to a changing environment. The DNA rearrangements are caused by a set of mechanisms that are collectively called genetic recombination. Two broad classes are commonly recognized—general recombination and site-specific recombination. In this part of the chapter we discuss the first of these two mechanisms; in the next part, we consider the second mechanism.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26898/

That chapter is more focused on sexual reproduction ("crossing over"), but any genetic copying is subject to recombination mutations. I recently read a fascinating article on what's been happening in evolution of the Y chromosome in mammals. Because it only has one copy, it can't do crossing-over the way that X chromosomes can, but it can still have other recombination mutations - that it refers to as "gene conversion events" and "gene amplification".

https://www.iflscience.com/the-y-chromosome-is-disappearing-so-what-will-happen-to-men-45674

Recombination also happens in viruses:

Viral recombination occurs when viruses of two different parent strains coinfect the same host cell and interact during replication to generate virus progeny that have some genes from both parents. Recombination generally occurs between members of the same virus type (e.g., between two influenza viruses or between two herpes simplex viruses). Two mechanisms of recombination have been observed for viruses: independent assortment and incomplete linkage. Either mechanism can produce new viral serotypes or viruses with altered virulence.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8439/#_A2330_

Viral chimeras are also possible in nature. This wouldn't have been covered in AP Bio 15 years ago - since the mechanism behind this was only discovered in recent genomic studies, with the first one in 2012. But that's because genomic studies of viruses are new.

In 2012, the first example of a naturally-occurring RNA-DNA hybrid virus was unexpectedly discovered during a metagenomic study of the acidic extreme environment of Boiling Springs Lake that is in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California. The virus was named BSL-RDHV (Boiling Spring Lake RNA DNA Hybrid Virus). Its genome is related to a DNA circovirus, which usually infect birds and pigs, and a RNA tombusvirus, which infect plants. The study surprised scientists, because DNA and RNA viruses vary and the way the chimera came together was not understood.

Other viral chimeras have also been found, and the group is known as the CHIV viruses ("chimeric viruses").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics)#Viruses

---

Again, I'm not saying that covid-19 is necessarily natural - but I'm skeptical about the idea that it's so obviously unnatural that anyone who's taken AP Bio knows it is engineered.

Viral recombination and viral chimeras both happen. A remaining question is whether the recombined sequences are proven to be from a pangolin virus and a deep ocean bacterium. Sequences are often the same across many species - like how humans and bananas have 60% the same DNA.

I'm sure the environment inside a bat or pangolin is the same as "the acidic extreme environment of Boiling Springs Lake that is in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California.".... Really dude?

[GeekyBugle]

Did Fauci orchestrate the cover-up of the lab leak?

[GeekyBugle]

Let's examine what we KNOW:

There's a lab in Wuhan that was making investigation on gain of function on corona viruses and Bats.

A new corona virus is found in the city of Wuhan.

The CCCP covered it up

3 scientists from said lab fell ill with symptoms like those of the Kung-Flu

Scientists published a signed letter saying it was a natural virus, and had to retract it latter.

Exactly ZERO evidence of the Kung-Flu have been found on the wild on bats, pangolins, racoon dogs, etc.

The Kung-Flu virus appears to have been manufactured according to people that know and have examined it.

Now lets try and use Occam's Razor (The explanation that requieres the least ammount of logic jumps is probably the correct one)

Occam's razor is a principle of theory construction or evaluation according to which, other things equal, explanations that posit fewer entities, or fewer kinds of entities, are to be preferred to explanations that posit more. It is sometimes misleadingly characterized as a general recommendation of simpler explanations over more complex ones.

What is more likely?

It's a lab leak or a chimera virus that we can't prove exists in the wild?

[jhkim]

I'm sure the environment inside a bat or pangolin is the same as "the acidic extreme environment of Boiling Springs Lake that is in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California.".... Really dude?

That's not what I said. Fheredin claimed that it was clearly proven since mid-2020 purely from the genetics of covid-19 that it was engineered. I am skeptical that this is the case, and gave a number of counter-examples to what he described as the science of its genetics. I'm not a geneticist or a virologist, so I'll see if I can check in with some people who know more than me about this.

As far as I can tell, you're not claiming this, GeekyBugle - and thus you disagree with Fheredin.

The point isn't about conclusions, it's about evidence.

---

From what I read, I don't think that covid-19 is a chimera in a technical sense. The chapter I just read on viral recombination doesn't make any mention of the term "chimera". Here's that link again.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8439/#_A2330_

However, there has been popular reporting using the term "chimera" in reference to covid-19. Here's one example:

https://www.sciencealert.com/genome-analysis-of-the-coronavirus-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined

That headline uses 'chimera' in quotes, though, and it looks like none of the actual scientific abstracts that it cites mention the term 'chimera'. So I think this is misreporting over the correct use of 'chimera'. A chimera in higher organisms has multiple sets of DNA. But as far as I can tell, covid-19 only has one set of positive-stranded RNA.

---

At this point, I don't have an argument either way overall, but there are individual pieces of evidence that I think were expressed wrong.

1) The video from the OP took it as proven that scientists at the virology institute had covid-19, but that isn't what their own cited information source said. Further, 3 people out of a 295-employee facility being sick with cold-like symptoms is barely suggestive of anything. It's the expected result in any given November. I think it would be much more suspicious if no one had a cold in the fall at that institute.

2) I am skeptical about Fheredin's claim that the genetics of covid-19 conclusively proves that it was engineered. I don't have the expertise to make solid claims about it, but neither does he. His expertise is 15-year-old AP Bio, mine is 30-year-old undergrad biology. I'm interested to read up more about the science because I like science reading, but I think we're both on shaky ground here.


The broader question is about likelihood of some coincidences. Something that I keep in mind that Wuhan is a city of 11 million people -- bigger than New York City. It has dozens of universities and hospitals. What I would like to know as far as likelihood is how many other places around the world are doing similar virology research. I don't have the answer to that, and I also haven't seen that in the assessments so far.

[GeekyBugle]

A new contestant has entered the ring: JFK's and latter his brother's RFK murders.

[jhkim]

A new contestant has entered the ring: JFK's and latter his brother's RFK murders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DcXnm2MEiY

I question the "newness" of this contestant. :-)

But seriously, I think a lot of people are open to the idea that there was a second shooter for JFK. I think it's a reasonable theory.

However, it's a very different claim to say that Lyndon Johnson was behind the assassination so that he could seize power in a coup, and that the CIA as an organization was instrumental in effecting it, acting for the military-industrial complex.

---

Based on other proven government conspiracies like Watergate and the Iran/Contra scandal, I just don't think the people in government are all that competent. I think people at the government are involved in many crimes, and these could even include the JFK assassination. However, I don't think there has been a continuous cabal of people in charge for 60 years who are in-the-know and responsible. Any conspiracy with over twenty people and/or multiple handoffs over decades is going to leak.

[Fheredin]

Again, I'm not saying that covid-19 is necessarily natural - but I'm skeptical about the idea that it's so obviously unnatural that anyone who's taken AP Bio knows it is engineered.

Viral recombination and viral chimeras both happen. A remaining question is whether the recombined sequences are proven to be from a pangolin virus and a deep ocean bacterium. Sequences are often the same across many species - like how humans and bananas have 60% the same DNA.

I think you misunderstand my competence. AP Bio is the only paper trail I have saying I know biology, but I have kept my knowledge reasonably up to date since then. CRISPR-CAS9 is entirely new, for instance. I worked in academic book publishing and while from an academic perspective, the editor is laity, from the publishing house perspective, if you don't understand the high level summary of the material and the field and the genre expectations of the manuscript, you can't edit it. You don't need to be able to write the book yourself, obviously, but you do need to be able to have an intelligent conversation with the author.

Also, I am not saying I can prove the virus is man-made to your satisfaction. I am perfectly aware that there are experts in this field with every incentive to gaslight as much as possible (not doing so could literally end their professional careers by making funding impossible to acquire). 

You can actually put the genetic sequence to the SARS-CoV2 spike protein into genetic databases, and the insertion sequence is about 12 base-pairs long only shows up in the two places I listed. A 12 base-pair sequence has approximately 16.7 million possible permutations. This is not to say that we know for a fact this isn't used elsewhere; it could be somewhere we haven't found or it could have been discovered, but unpublished in public databases. But we can say with reasonable certainty that this is a pretty rare sequence.

The byproduct of having a highly redundant genetic sequence where there are 64 codons and they only code for 20 amino acids and a stop signal is that you can have a really good idea where a piece of genetic information came from, even if the amino acid sequence itself isn't remarkable or doesn't change. All of this IS stuff I learned in AP Bio. Obviously, however, I didn't learn about CRISPR-CAS9 or induced pluripotent stem cells or epigenetics.

The problem with the lab leak/ natural origin discussion is that it is the Evolution/ Intelligent Design argument couched in different language. It's obviously bad to assume that SARS-CoV2 had to have been a natural virus when there's a biohazard level 3 lab a few hundred yards from the wet market, but the evolution argument that everything we see today had to have a natural origin is the same assumption presented in a less obviously bad way. It sounds reasonable, but it is an assumption which is seldom questioned. In that sense, this incident threatens to create a fissure down to the heart of modern biology by killing the sacred cow of Evolution; humanity has an absolutely bizarre three-part Robertsonian Translocation mutation where our 2nd and 3rd chromosomes are fused which is at least as weird as COVID's viral chimerism.

[jhkim]

Viral recombination and viral chimeras both happen. A remaining question is whether the recombined sequences are proven to be from a pangolin virus and a deep ocean bacterium. Sequences are often the same across many species - like how humans and bananas have 60% the same DNA.

I think you misunderstand my competence. AP Bio is the only paper trail I have saying I know biology, but I have kept my knowledge reasonably up to date since then. CRISPR-CAS9 is entirely new, for instance. I worked in academic book publishing and while from an academic perspective, the editor is laity, from the publishing house perspective, if you don't understand the high level summary of the material and the field and the genre expectations of the manuscript, you can't edit it.

OK, thanks for the new info. For reference, I am trained as a physicist, but I later went into general science education. I studied for my CSET to qualify for teaching biology at the high school level, which is my only paper trail other than undergrad biology.

You can actually put the genetic sequence to the SARS-CoV2 spike protein into genetic databases, and the insertion sequence is about 12 base-pairs long only shows up in the two places I listed. A 12 base-pair sequence has approximately 16.7 million possible permutations. This is not to say that we know for a fact this isn't used elsewhere; it could be somewhere we haven't found or it could have been discovered, but unpublished in public databases. But we can say with reasonable certainty that this is a pretty rare sequence.

How would you quantify that rarity? We've mapped the human genome fully, but my understanding is that only a tiny fraction of animal viruses have been sequenced. This is a paper on new virus sequencing from 2020, for example:

Although millions of distinct virus species likely exist, only approximately 9000 are catalogued in GenBank's RefSeq database.

https://elifesciences.org/articles/51971

So I think that the animal markets are teeming with unmapped animal viruses that the sequence could potentially be pulled from via viral recombination. Reviewing what I understand of viral recombination,

Viral recombination occurs when viruses of two different parent strains coinfect the same host cell and interact during replication to generate virus progeny that have some genes from both parents. Recombination generally occurs between members of the same virus type (e.g., between two influenza viruses or between two herpes simplex viruses). Two mechanisms of recombination have been observed for viruses: independent assortment and incomplete linkage. Either mechanism can produce new viral serotypes or viruses with altered virulence.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK8439/#_A2330_

It seems like it is at least a possible mechanism.

The problem with the lab leak/ natural origin discussion is that it is the Evolution/ Intelligent Design argument couched in different language. It's obviously bad to assume that SARS-CoV2 had to have been a natural virus when there's a biohazard level 3 lab a few hundred yards from the wet market, but the evolution argument that everything we see today had to have a natural origin is the same assumption presented in a less obviously bad way. It sounds reasonable, but it is an assumption which is seldom questioned. In that sense, this incident threatens to create a fissure down to the heart of modern biology by killing the sacred cow of Evolution; humanity has an absolutely bizarre three-part Robertsonian Translocation mutation where our 2nd and 3rd chromosomes are fused which is at least as weird as COVID's viral chimerism.

So you're saying that assuming Evolution too much is harmful, specifically because we should put more effort into understanding why the human genome was apparently engineered.

Evolution is very widely assumed, but I think that we could put more effort into distinguishing between engineered and natural organisms in general - particularly because as the technology spreads, there is more potential for illicit GMO creation. This could then be applied to the case of the human genome.