All this leads me to believe it was created in a lab. Likely for altruistic purposes but still. When this escaped whoever knew that it was from a lab should have disclosed it ASAP to help the world prepare.
I have no experience in virology so don't trust me.
Another way of discovering what increases property X is testing that some change indeed increases property X, while also discovering it decreases property Y.
While attempting to increase both X and Y, they made an intermediate with increased X and decreased Y. Perhaps it seemed a promising starting point to also increase Y.
I don't get the surprise. This is all par for the course in research.
The person you're responding to didn't say anything different to what you've said.
> Honest hard work can sometimes look like evil plans, and not every coincidence is the result of conspiracy.
Why did you say that? It certainly isn't stated or even implied by the person you're replying to.
“The authors feel that, in light of this preponderance of circumstantial evidence, the hypothesis that the biogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 involved human intervention should be seen as the leading (i.e. most likely) explanation.”
What's racist about suggesting someone eats bats? Mammalian flesh is a common food source across human cultures.
The videos of people eating bats that surfaced following the beginning of Covid-19 were from Indonesia.
The way this misinformation has spread is indeed based on racism (Chinese are 'barbarians' who have 'barbarian' eating habits and they should change them and eat like 'normal' people).
Now, (fruit) bats eaten as food in West Africa is a major vector of the spread of Ebola.
And maybe one day we can conclusively say bats play no roles whatsoever in the spread of Covid-19, like we are able to say confidently about bats and Ebola. We aren't at that point yet, dismissing bats as a factor is a disservice to science.
Bringing racism up where it doesn't exist discourages, or at worst suppresses, a healthy discussion.
Now, this thread goes further by continuing to relay the conspiracy theory that the virus is man-made, not least when the paper concludes by claiming that the burden of proof is reversed and that it is the natural origin of the virus that must be proven.