randomperson01

Sure its evolutionarily possible to insert 12nt. Inserts are not common though. Whats key is that the insert -in a 30kbp sequence was at exactly a position that would give it functional properties to allow the virus much higher tropism for human tissues. Furin cleavage site appear to selected against in bats.

There is no known source from where it came from, coronaviruses often recombine, but there is no other known sarbecovirus from where the fcs could have come from.

Bob Garry tries to explain away his documented "I cant think of a plausible natural scenario for how this 12nt insert occurred" in an interview here.

https://youtu.be/4-FhwghrSLs

What is often totally ignored by virologists and evolutionary biologists with potential funding to loose if a kab origin is proven is that the WIV was partner in a proposal to insert exactly the sort of furin cleavage site we see in SARS-CoV-2

https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...

Then like magic (a unicorn as Bob Garry says) a SARS-related CoV appears, appears down the road from the lab, that is highly infectious to humans, with the first ever furin cleavage site in a sarbecovirus, which even Zhengli Shi says was a recent inroduction to humans: "almost identical sequences of this virus in different patients imply a probably recent introduction in humans"

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952v1

Lab escape through a lab acquired infection with a SARS related virus is by far the most likely scenario and should be the default hypothesis to disprove.

Natural origin scenario requires a series of events to occur, each very unlikely.

For some excellent COVID-19 origins discussions I' d recommend the Straight Talk MD podcast by Frank Sweeny. Great coverage -from initial coverup of cases, silencing of doctors and deliberately misleading the world on human to human transmission (when Wuhuan authorities knew full well), to the Proximal Origin fraud and Raccoon Dog gate

https://straighttalkmd.com/episodes/valentin-bruttel

Emily Kopp has a well researched article on the coverup of lab leak discussion by Fauci and instigation by him to publish the Proximal Origin paper.

https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/timeline-the-proximal-ori...

Paul Thacker

https://unherd.com/2022/03/is-the-media-still-stifling-the-l...

Ian Birrell

https://unherd.com/2021/06/beijings-useful-idiots/

and Ashley Rindsberg have all done a good job on reporting on this

https://unherd.com/2021/08/did-the-new-york-times-stifle-lab...

No the reason is that there was a concerted campaign by those with research links to the WIV to cast it as a conspiracy theory

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

https://medium.com/@leftback45/peter-daszak-the-elizabeth-ho...

Another good book is Dark Winter by epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre. Touches on COVID origin and similarity of the inital market excuse to the Sverdlovsk lab leak coverup by Soviets

https://unsw.press/books/dark-winter/

Looking forward to reading Pandoras Gamble by Alison Young next

https://www.amazon.com.au/Pandoras-Gamble-Leaks-Pandemics-Wo...

Good timeline here

https://archive.is/zaBp6

from the WHO in 2006, page 236 on SARS: "the risk of a laboratory source is potentially greater"

  https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/207501

Imperiale, the last author is a known gain of function proponent with a history of downplaying the possibility of a lab leak

https://twitter.com/emilyakopp/status/1620884457032155136?t=...

Its a good compilation that I saw in mid 2020 that was one of the sources of data leading me to question the zoonotic spillover hypothesis that I had read in Zhou et al (RaTG13 paper) and Anderson et al. That the WIV was conducting exactly the type of research that could have led to a highly human infectious novel SARS-CoV was poo-pood and cast as a conspiracy theory. As Ian Lipkin stated following the Fauci teleconference "we have a nightmare of circumstantial evidence to deal with"

Just like someone leaked out about the Sverdlovsk lab accident - how many years did that take?

http://web.archive.org/web/20210621032149/https://www.nytime...

There is no reason to suspect Ill intent. Accidents happen. It is well known the WIV were doing gain of function research on SARS-related CoVs. It is also known that the WIV were partners in a proposal to insert human specific cleavage sites into SARS+related CoVs https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...

The probability that a novel SARS-related CoV would emerge naturally in the city in China that was used as a seropositivity control -and the location of the worlds largest SARS-related related research lab, and which had very low wildlife consumption compared to Southern coastal cities is < 1/1000

There is no evidence for any infected animals at the Huanan market https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.25.538336v2

There was a known ascertainment bias towards reporting associated with the market https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00313-23

The modelling by Pekar et al inferring multiple spillovers at the market was flawed https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.10.511625v1

Prior to the pandemic, the State department literally warned the US govt. a SARS-related accident was a real risk at the WIV https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...