[ExI] covid origin

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 2:57 PM Dave S via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 7:14 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> In about February 2020 the theory was being floated that covid-19 was an
>> engineered virus created in a research lab in China.  I commented at the
>> time in this forum that it sounded like a plausible theory to me.  It was
>> at that time considered a disreputable theory.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yesterday the British parliament was told that a lab leak is the most
>> likely origin of covid.  This is an example of a theory which has grown
>> from ridicule to plausibility to general (even if not universal) acceptance
>> in a span of less than two years.  Theories usually take a human generation
>> to grow to acceptance.
>>
>
> "Engineered virus" and "leaked from a lab" are two entirely different
> things. It's still very unlikely that covid was man made. It's quite
> plausible that it was caught in the wild and was being studied at Wuhan and
> was accidentally released. See
> https://www.virology.ws/2021/09/09/gain-of-function-explained/ for more
> info.
>
>
### Without doubt it was engineered. The furin cleavage site didn't splice
itself into the Wuhan virus genome, and the unusual arginine doublet codons
didn't show up by magic, they were put in as a part of a research project.

Rafal
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