Not lab engineered, it says.
It just doesn't show the signs of being deliberate or a function of Lab activity. Its more plausible (occams razor) that its natural selection.
The reason to think it is possible is that China's top lab that does research into coronaviruses is in Wuhan and members there have collaborated with American researchers on genetic engineering and testing of augmented coronaviruses that are essentially potential biological weapons. Also at a separate lab in China they had four incidences where SARS samples escaped the lab and caused problems. That is why they build the level 4 biocontainment lab in Wuhan, to have that sort of research take place in a safer facility.
It's quite possible this was a research sample, being used for completely legitimate purposes, that escaped the lab.
> it isn't all that deadly
For certain definitions of deadly no doubt.
These are the kind of people making and spreading these claims.
You don't get to the truth of a matter by rejecting anything that has a small possibility of being true and labeling it fake news and misinformation. If the claim is extremely unreasonable then it shouldn't be a problem, most people can tell it's unreasonable. If it's not that unreasonable then maybe people should be allowed to speak about it, given that it's not clear how or why it isn't unreasonable.
> If the claim is extremely unreasonable ... most people can tell it’s unreasonable.
Surely you must have far more faith in humanity than I do, or you would not make this statement. One only needs to look at the prevalence of vaccine skeptics, climate skeptics, creationists, ... to know that unreasonable claims can garner significant support despite considerable scientific evidence to the contrary.
> rejecting anything that has a small possibility of being true
Actually, this is called not placing undue weight on fringe ideas. There’s arguably a small possibility of practically anything being true. That doesn’t mean we need to sink time and energy into them. Should our current, most probable line of reasoning display flaws that can’t be remedied, then the scientific method dictates that we explore alternatives. Until then, the most probable explanation reigns.
> given that it’s not clear how or why it isn’t unreasonable
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people are unlikely to understand the subtler parts of a scientific concept (or really anything they aren’t experts in, in general), and consequently can fail to grasp why something is clearly unreasonable to someone more well-trained.
A conspiracy theorist is someone who brings up possibilities that are extremely unlikely to be true. That would fit your senator to a tee. He’s not backing any of this up with actual evidence, he’s just bringing up scary possibilities. We don’t need that kind of fearful reaction in a public health crisis.
What do you mean by “we don’t need...”? Why do we not need it? The truth matters, and if it did have origins in a lab (accidental or not, engineered or not), then bringing those responsible to justice matters. Thousands will have died by the time this is over.
Furthermore, such speculation doesn’t meaningfully change the management of the public health crisis. I feel like the fear of misinformation is more overblown than speculation about the origins of the virus.
I think that if you don't accept that it's a reasonable possibility that this escaped from one of the labs in Wuhan, you're being unscientific. The evidence for it having come from the lab is:
1. The Wuhan Institute of Virology published papers in the past two years about their experimentation with chimeric coronaviruses. Viruses similar to this one were without question present in that lab.
2. The lab is about 25 miles from the seafood market.
3. The true source of the virus couldn't have been the seafood market. We know this because four of the original cases have no apparent connection to the seafood market. The Chinese government has not identified a source of the virus given this information.
4. SARS has leaked from other Chinese research labs in the past.
5. H1N1 probably leaked from a Chinese lab in 1976 and caused a pandemic.
6. China covered up the virus in its initial stages as it tried to contain it, which would be expected if the virus originated from the lab.
Wuhan is a huge city, larger than London. It's unsurprising that it has a lab that researches coronavirusee. It's especially unsurprising that the Chinese would be researching coronaviruses as they were previously affected by SARS-1.
Everybody should keep an open mind to all possibilities when the Chinese government is present. It's not wrong to consider the possibility that this might have been an accidental release. I just don't see the evidence for it.
My summary to the above is
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.
If the first three point as known fact ( along with the fist part of point 6 ) were not worthy of consideration and be called a conspiracist then we can call it we agree to disagree.
One scenario usually not even considered by the xeno-phobic, could cgove use this against its own aging "lost" generation?
They are prone to riots - and there is no social net except for family (which fails due to western cultural influence).
So a virus to carry them out in large numbers, would make sense if your where a sociopathic government, focused maniacally on stability and at the end of the rope when it comes to winging it with nationalism.
"Although genomic evidence does not support the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is a laboratory construct, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here, and it is unclear whether future data will help resolve this issue. Identifying the immediate non-human animal source and obtaining virus sequences from it would be the most definitive way of revealing virus origins.
“Although genomic evidence does not support the idea that SARS-CoV-2 is a laboratory construct, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here, and it is unclear whether future data will help resolve this issue.”