Origins of SARS-CoV-2

[John Palmer.]

Food for thought. We’ll probably never know...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html

[Tom_Mazanec]

John Palmer:
Media Fact Check says they are liberal, but

We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and correcting a known failed fact check.

This is no alt-Right rag.

[harpy]

The Institute of Virology in Wuhan was world renowned for its research on coronaviruses.

Out of this laboratory, there were "gain of function" studies that were published in peer-review western publications.

According to this August 2020 peer-review study, the origin of the virus is still an open question.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000091

To date, the origins of SARS‐CoV‐2 remain in doubt, and its behavior enigmatic: It has been reported that “the virus acts like no microbe humanity has ever seen.”

Although they only emerge under artificial conditions in influenza viruses, these furin cleavage sites are found within several branches of the coronavirus family tree. However SARS‐CoV‐2 is the only lineage B coronavirus found with one, and the only other coronaviruses known to have them are only at most 60% identical to this novel coronavirus.[5] An intriguing clinical correlate is that furin cleavage sites within influenza viruses are associated with lymphopenia in infected mice, and with neurological conditions following replication in the brains of ferrets,[6] both of which are clinical manifestations observed in hospitalized patients infected by SARS‐CoV‐2 and suffering from COVID‐19.[1] ......   It is possible that this novel coronavirus gained its furin cleavage site through recombination in an intermediate host species, however there are also two laboratory processes that may have imbued SARS‐CoV‐2 with its furin cleavage site which will be discussed below.

[etienne]

For John Palmer and Harpy, please stop publishing BS about the virus origin. I know it would be reassuring if it was produced by humans, because it would means that with a better control of humans, we would be on the safe side, that we don't need to change our way of life.

Pandemic viruses are a normal evolution, because mutations happens all the times, but most of the mutations can be controlled directly by our body, some can be controlled by our health care system, and once in a while, like every 100 years, probably even less, there is one mutation that just can't be stopped.

Our globalization makes it worse because we mix our populations constantly, if the plague took years to go to most part of the world, few weeks were enough for the Covid19. Furthermore, using each piece of land available on earth is like searching for forgotten viruses.

Until Covid19, we have been very lucky that other viruses like Ebola didn't go all over the world.

[Archimid]

Triage at the ambulance level. This was completely avoidable. What happens next is under our control. The epidemic ends whenever local officials say it ends.

A virus is not alive. A virus is simply a piece of written instructions. The instructions are not written on paper or on a computer, the instructions are written in DNA.

By themselves, the instructions are meaningless. They are nothing. They are just instructions that will quickly disappear when enough sunlight and temperature decays its extremely fragile structure. 

But if by some miracle this particle lands on top of a very specific chemical geometry inside a human, mink, cat, dog or bat cell, the instructions are read and executed.

And once read, what do the instructions say? Replicate.

A viral infection is a very low probability event. But if you replicate a very low probability event often enough, it becomes a common event.

An even lower probability event (much lower) is that the virus mutates in a way that makes Covid 19 worse. The probability of that also increases with the number of replications.

[Shared Humanity]

For John Palmer and Harpy, please stop publishing BS about the virus origin.

Thank you.

[harpy]

Well @Shared humanity and @etienne, I would request that you don't call science BS.

There's nothing BS about the peer-review process, and this article is published in such a journal. 
If you disagree, you are welcome to point out a response in an articulate manner that is consistent with forum decorum.

BioEssays is a peer review scientific publication.  If you'd like to learn more please check out the journal's website:        https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15211878

Did either of you actually read the previously quoted article?


Might SARS-CoV-2 Have Arisen via Serial Passage through an Animal Host or Cell Culture? A potential explanation for much of the novel coronavirus’ distinctive genome

Link To Study:   https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000091

For example, quoted from the article published on August, 2020:

2.2 Natural Origin, or Gain‐of‐Function Lab Escape?
Gain‐of‐function research on bat‐borne coronaviruses has been ongoing for nearly a decade everywhere from the University of North Carolina to the Wuhan's Institute of Virology, which is supported by related facilities such as Wuhan's Center for Disease Control and Prevention as well as Wuhan University.


Although it does not prove a laboratory origin, another gain‐of‐function experiment demonstrates one possible step along the way to engineering SARS‐CoV‐2: the synthetic reconstruction of the SARS coronavirus to impart this virus with a high affinity for ACE2. This involved isolating a progenitor coronavirus from civets and then serially passing it through mammalian ACE2 receptor‐expressing cells—serial passage through host cell lines instead of entire hosts, which imparted a strong affinity for ACE2,[35] and another novel strain of coronavirus that was also presumably airborne. A few years after this study, more gain‐of‐function research was performed that involved the creation of a chimeric bat‐borne coronavirus by directly manipulating the bat coronavirus spike‐protein gene,[36] which created a coronavirus so virulent that it evoked the following dire warning from Simon Wain‐Hobson, a virologist with the Pasteur Institute in Paris: “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory.”[37]

[Tom_Mazanec]

WHY in the name of Dr. Strangelove would scientists perform gain-of-function experiments on a virus!

[kassy]

Because it is interesting and if you know how it works you know how to stop it etc.

Whatever happened at the start is not that relevant now. 

[wili]

All sorts of bullshit gets published all the time, yes, even in 'scientific' journals.

One thing I've learned over the years--don't put too much stock in any one article, even in a 'scientific' journal.

Note, though that the article in question is by two authors, neither apparently attached to a university or research facility, and apparently related (same, rather unusual, last name). For one, it's his only article published. The other has only had two articles published--one in '05, the other in the last century--these are not dudes at the pulsing center of their fields (if they are even in this or a related field).

[harpy]

All sorts of bullshit gets published all the time, yes, even in 'scientific' journals.

One thing I've learned over the years--don't put too much stock in any one article, even in a 'scientific' journal.

Note, though that the article in question is by two authors, neither apparently attached to a university or research facility, and apparently related (same, rather unusual, last name). For one, it's his only article published. The other has only had two articles published--one in '05, the other in the last century--these are not dudes at the pulsing center of their fields (if they are even in this or a related field).

Ah, the classic "attack the messenger" not the message strategy.

Looks like @willi got as far as checking the author's credentials and didn't quite make it to the actual article.

Well @willi, if you check the submission date, it's 4 months prior to publication.

If you want to know how the peer-review process works, actual scientists and editors read the article, and then have the author edit the paper to make it as accurate as possible over many months.

Generally speaking, the editor in chief, and 3 scientists review an article.  If they do not feel that the material is accurate, it will simply not be published.  If they see an error, it is corrected, if the correction is not accurate, they will deny the publication.  There's multiple scientists and editors who approve an article before it's published.


Edit:

Here's the editorial board of the Journal.  If you'd like to check their credentials, please feel free:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/15211878/homepage/2487_edbd.html

[wili]

Just going by the principle "Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence"

One article by two dudes who are at best at the outer margins of their fields and not active researchers does not raise to that standard.

But you've clearly already decided you know the absolute truth about this, so don't let me get in your way!

[pietkuip]

WHY in the name of Dr. Strangelove would scientists perform gain-of-function experiments on a virus!

It happens by chance, as in those mink farms in Denmark.

Or one does it in the lab, for the purpose of studying this virus. So they selected for a virus change that would reproduce in mice:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2787-6

The purpose is to get an animal model to test drugs and vaccines on.

There is no reason to suspect that the human virus came from a Wuhan lab. Then it would have been easy to get this to reproduce in mice.

[harpy]

In November, 2020, the below peer-review article was published. 


The genetic structure of SARS‐CoV‐2 does not rule out a laboratory origin

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000240

Severe acute respiratory syndrome‐coronavirus (SARS‐CoV)‐2′s origin is still controversial. Genomic analyses show SARS‐CoV‐2 likely to be chimeric, most of its sequence closest to bat CoV RaTG13, whereas its receptor binding domain (RBD) is almost identical to that of a pangolin CoV. .........      .....    Both cleavage site and specific RBD could result from site‐directed mutagenesis, a procedure that does not leave a trace. Considering the devastating impact of SARS‐CoV‐2 and importance of preventing future pandemics, researchers have a responsibility to carry out a thorough analysis of all possible SARS‐CoV‐2 origins.

HOW COULD THE VIRUS HAVE ESCAPED FROM A LAB?
The leak of highly dangerous pathogens from laboratories is not a rare event and occurrences have been documented in several countries. The most notable lab leak known is the 1977 H1N1 lab escape from China that caused a worldwide pandemic.[61] The most recent one is the November 2019 outbreak of brucellosis that occurred in two research centers in Lanzhou, China, infecting over 100 students and staff members.[62] Several lab escapes of the first SARS virus have been reported as well: in the summer of 2003 in Singapore,[63] then in December 2003 in Taiwan,xviii and in the spring of 2004 twice in China.xix

A number of scenarios causing SARS‐CoV‐2 to leak from a lab can be hypothesized. For example, an infected animal could have escaped from a lab or it could have scratched or bitten a worker (a concern raised in 2017 about the establishment of a BSL‐4 primate vaccine testing facility in Kunming, Yunnan[64]), or a researcher could have accidentally stuck themselves with inoculate (as happened in two cases in Russiaxxiii ). Until 2020, CoVs were not considered particularly deadly or virulent. SARS‐like CoVs did not require BSL‐4 and could be manipulated under BSL‐2 and BSL‐3[42] conditions, making an accidental leak more likely. Aerosol experiments with CoVs[65] could result in lab leak as well, because a failure in the equipment used could go unnoticed for a long time before infection of lab workers is detected. Finally, the virus could potentially have leaked through the sewage system if proper waste disposal and/or decontamination procedures were not followed.

[oren]

Kassy I suggest relegating the virus origin discussion to a separate thread, as it is marginal science (at best) and detracts from the fruitful updates and discussions going on in this thread. All such posts especially by harpy who posts about this constantly, and relevant responses,  should be moved there.

[harpy]

Ah, now censorship.

First was attack the messenger, now just censorship of peer-review papers.  "move the discussion".

Nice, one @Oren.  Not wholly unexpected, however.

Certainly, University of Austria would disagree, because that is the institutional affiliation of main author of the previous study.   With 14 peer-review studies, and a full professor of Microbiology.

 

[oren]

Censorship - of what I consider in this case to be a conspiracy theory - would be my preferred mode of operation. However you might note that I did not propose censorship, merely a separate thread where this can be discussed to your heart's content, without disrupting other more fruitful discussions.

[ritter]

Ah, now censorship.

First was attack the messenger, now just censorship of peer-review papers.  "move the discussion".

Nice, one @Oren.  Not wholly unexpected, however.

Certainly, University of Austria would disagree, because that is the institutional affiliation of main author of the previous study.   With 14 peer-review studies, and a full professor of Microbiology.

 

No, not censorship. There are topics for a reason. Origin is not relevant to discussion of status, impacts and treatment.

I appreciate the minds here that share the information available. I also appreciate evidence of origin, but this is not the place for it.

[ritter]

If the USA or any country gets wacked by this variant of the virus as the UK seems to be .....

It's already here and indications are its undergoing community spread (known cases have no travel history or interrelatedness), so only a matter of time.

[harpy]

One of the most important questions about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is the specific origin of this virus.  Multiple hypotheses have been proposed, and the purpose of this thread is to discuss this topic, with citations with peer-review articles on the subject. 

With respect, I would prefer that posts focus on the scientific literature and that references be cited.

Currently, there is no scientific consensus on the origins of COVID-19, and it remains an open question.   

[harpy]

Plagues, Pandemics, Health Security, and the War on Nature


https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Colin_Butler/publication/347506373_Plagues_Pandemics_Health_Security_and_the_War_on_Nature_Journal_of_Human_Security_Editorial/links/5fdeae8a92851c13fea37e21/Plagues-Pandemics-Health-Security-and-the-War-on-Nature-Journal-of-Human-Security-Editorial.pdf

Abstract: This editorial presents a brief review of pandemics from antiquity to COVID-19. Although all large-scale epidemic diseases (“pandemics”) can be considered ecological “checks” on human population size, and although COVID-19 is the biggest such pandemic since HIV/AIDS emerged it is not likely to approach the deathtoll of earlier pandemics, such as the plague. There are two major hypotheses to explain the origin of COVID-19. One is the “natural origin” hypothesis, the other is that it might have escaped from a laboratory, with its origin subsequently hidden. Although most scientists support the natural origin idea the other cannot yet be dismissed. Evidence for each hypothesis is presented. If the first theory is correct then it is a powerful warning, from nature, that our species is running a great risk. If the second theory is proven then it should be considered an equally powerful, indeed frightening, signal that we are in danger, from hubris as much as from ignorance. More pandemics are inevitable, but their severity can be reduced by greater transparency, international co-operation, and retreat from planetary boundaries.

[harpy]

A Proposed Origin for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Allison_Wilson2/publication/343107535_A_Proposed_Origin_for_SARS-CoV-2_and_the_COVID-19_Pandemic_httpswwwindependentsciencenewsorgcommentariesa-proposed-origin-for-sars-cov-_2-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/links/5f171924299bf1720d56c1f2/A-Proposed-Origin-for-SARS-CoV-2-and-the-COVID-19-Pandemic-https-wwwindependentsciencenewsorg-commentaries-a-proposed-origin-for-sars-cov-2-and-the-covid-19-pandemic.pdf

We suggest, first, that inside the miners RaTG13 (or a very similar virus) evolved into SARS-CoV-2, an unusually
pathogenic coronavirus highly adapted to humans. Second, that the Shi lab used medical samples taken from the
miners and sent to them by Kunming University Hospital for their research. It was this human-adapted virus, now
known as SARS-CoV-2, that escaped from the WIV in 2019.

[oren]

I will begin with two recent peer-review studies on this subject.

For the record, I note these two sources do not claim a lab origin, just that the data is insufficient to rule out such an origin. Not a very strong claim. As I am a strong believer that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, I will await further information before I spend much time on this subject

[Neven]

Oren, IMHO, the claim that SARS-CoV-2 came from a bat on a wet market in Wuhan, is quite extraordinary as well.

[Tom_Mazanec]

At the start I was 95% sure it was natural.
Now I am at least 99%.
But there is still one percent.

[etienne]

I appreciate the minds here that share the information available. I also appreciate evidence of origin, but this is not the place for it.

I agree, and am sorry I used inappropriate vocabulary. I would move it near the mask thread, it has nothing to do with AGW.

[oren]

I suggest to discuss findings of the virus in blood samples from Italy and elsewhere taken a month or two before the Wuhan outbreak. Perhaps Covid-19 was identified in Wuhan because the Chinese were better at identifying the problem?

[oren]

Oren, IMHO, the claim that SARS-CoV-2 came from a bat on a wet market in Wuhan, is quite extraordinary as well.

To each his own.

[Neven]

To each his own.

I agree, and what's good for the goose...

A couple of months ago, I read an interesting article about the global biological arms race we almost never hear about:

Did this virus come from a lab? Maybe not — but it exposes the threat of a biowarfare arms race

Dangerous pathogens are captured in the wild and made deadlier in government biowarfare labs. Did that happen here?

There has been no scientific finding that the novel coronavirus was bioengineered, but its origins are not entirely clear. Deadly pathogens discovered in the wild are sometimes studied in labs — and sometimes made more dangerous. That possibility, and other plausible scenarios, have been incorrectly dismissed in remarks by some scientists and  government officials, and in the coverage of most major media outlets.

Regardless of the source of this pandemic, there is considerable documentation that a global biological arms race going on outside of public view could produce even more deadly pandemics in the future.

While much of the media and political establishment have minimized the threat from such lab work, some hawks on the American right like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have singled out Chinese biodefense researchers as uniquely dangerous.

But there is every indication that U.S. lab work is every bit as threatening as that in Chinese labs. American labs also operate in secret, and are also known to be accident-prone.

The current dynamics of the biological arms race have been driven by U.S. government decisions that extend back decades. In December 2009, Reuters reported that the Obama administration was refusing even to negotiate the possible monitoring of biological weapons.

Much of the left in the U.S. now appears unwilling to scrutinize the origin of the pandemic — or the wider issue of biowarfare — perhaps because portions of the anti-Chinese right have been so vocal in making unfounded allegations.

Interview with the author, Sam Husseini, quite an eye-opener:



This kind of research should be outlawed.

[Gerntocratis#1]

I suggest to discuss findings of the virus in blood samples from Italy and elsewhere taken a month or two before the Wuhan outbreak. Perhaps Covid-19 was identified in Wuhan because the Chinese were better at identifying the problem?

A more likely explanation is that the virus was circulating in China long before the outbreak was reported. Especially considering the China region has a history of being the origin for viruses, while Italy doesn't.

[pietkuip]

I doubt that harpy is qualified to read these papers.

None of these papers argue something that would need a lab. To a layman, "recombination" and "chimeric" may sound like that, but it is a natural process that may occur when there is an infection with two different viruses.

The Wuhan lab kept an eye on bat viruses. That was an excellent idea of course. But bats are not the easy laboratory animals, so it is conceivable that they tried to infect mice with them, to create an animal model. That is what happened spontaneously in minks in Denmark. But this virus spreads more easily among humans than in mice.

[Shared Humanity]

I would like to thank everyone for creating this thread. I won't be back.

[Gerntocratis#1]

I would like to thank everyone for creating this thread. I won't be back.

Thank you for your contribution

[ritter]

Thank you, Harpy, for playing nice.

I don't think it is likely that C19 was lab created but I've seen nothing that would absolutely rule it out, either.

Regarding the wet market origin, shit happens in nature and evolution is a win/lose business. But it does seem a stretch for a virus that is not particularly well spread by ingestion to have begun at a meat market.

Currently, I don't think it really matters where it started, but is interesting.

[etienne]

I suggest to discuss findings of the virus in blood samples from Italy and elsewhere taken a month or two before the Wuhan outbreak. Perhaps Covid-19 was identified in Wuhan because the Chinese were better at identifying the problem?

I agree, just that I don't think we could find much information.
Looks like the virus already was in a few places and mutated in Wuhan, just like this just happen in London and South Africa.

[Rodius]

This reminds me of the old lawyer trick when they have a guilty person and they want to get them off the crime.

First you are presented with overwhelming evidence, then the lawyer starts to throw 1001 different unlikely scenarios that could have, maybe, possibly happened to explain alternative reasons for the crime to have happened.

Sure, it is unlikely that an asteroid landed on the house and burnt it down, sure it is more likely to be matches, but you cant 100% rule the asteroid theory out.

Do that often enough from multiple sources, and eventually people will latch onto one of those theories and then they start saying "where there is smoke, there is fire" and then you have a total bullshit line of theories that amount to nothing on their own, becoming something that creates enough doubt in people's minds to think, yeah, it is possible it was a lab escape or experiment or deliberately done..... in spite of the part where the most likely one or two stories are actually correct.

And that is when we get 1001 weird stories having more value than 1 or 2 truths.

It would be nice for someone to produce something that shows us that the lab was responsible for this, rather than a series of unlikely events or blaming gaps in knowledge as the reason they think it was man made.

[John Palmer.]

I’d like to add the couple of takes that I had on this issue over the other thread. wanted to add for the posters who believe this is a far-fetched conspiracy theory that the burden of proof seems to me as heavy for the proponents of a purely animal origin from Wuhan market or the proponents of virus enhancement by humans in a Wuhan lab.

Impossible to know or perhaps Chinese Authorities know something and won’t ever share it. Or even certain US authorities given that US money went to Wuhan lab for the infamous euphemism “gain of function” which actually means make a virus more virulent to humans...

Food for thought. We’ll probably never know...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html

[John Palmer.]

The NIH NIAID with Fauci as head provided various grants to Ecohealth Alliance that funded Wuhan lab research on coronavirus “gain of function”, 2015-20. The grant records are public and still out there:

https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-AI110964-06

Why Wuhan? Why gain of function? Good questions for that pathological liar named Fauci.
Fauci is a State guy, implying the worst in that sentence.

Jimmy Dore “unmasking” Anthony Fauxi bullcrap just Today, this time about herd immunity, like only Dore does.



(By the way Happy 2021!)

[John Palmer.]

Gain of function:

Aim 3. In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential. We will combine these data with bat host distribution, viral diversity and phylogeny, human survey of risk behaviors and illness, and serology to identify SARSr-CoV spillover risk hotspots across southern China. Together these data and analyses will be critical for the future development of public health interventions and enhanced surveillance to prevent the re-emergence of SARS or the emergence of a novel SARSr-CoV.

From the 2019 NIH grant extension to Wuhan lab.

It looks like it, it smells like it...
CAUTION: giant backfire risk (2019 US official: oh well it’s somewhere lost in China, what could go wrong?)

And a coronavirus so powerful in transmission in air for humans, like the 50’s biological stuff that went wrong, went wrong again! Just a theory.

[pietkuip]

Gain of function:

Aim 3. In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential. We will combine these data with bat host distribution, viral diversity and phylogeny, human survey of risk behaviors and illness, and serology to identify SARSr-CoV spillover risk hotspots across southern China. Together these data and analyses will be critical for the future development of public health interventions and enhanced surveillance to prevent the re-emergence of SARS or the emergence of a novel SARSr-CoV.

From the 2019 NIH grant extension to Wuhan lab.

It looks like it, it smells like it...
CAUTION: giant backfire risk (2019 US official: oh well it’s somewhere lost in China, what could go wrong?)

And a coronavirus so powerful in transmission in air for humans, like the 50’s biological stuff that went wrong, went wrong again! Just a theory.

Very important to do research on such viruses.

I am sure "Palmer" does not have a clue how to read these things. Can only link to videos about "Fauxi". This site should really distance itself from the antiscience.

[Rodius]

Is Jimmy Dore going to the accepted level of evidence here?

[John Palmer.]

Gain of function:

Aim 3. In vitro and in vivo characterization of SARSr-CoV spillover risk, coupled with spatial and phylogenetic analyses to identify the regions and viruses of public health concern. We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential. We will combine these data with bat host distribution, viral diversity and phylogeny, human survey of risk behaviors and illness, and serology to identify SARSr-CoV spillover risk hotspots across southern China. Together these data and analyses will be critical for the future development of public health interventions and enhanced surveillance to prevent the re-emergence of SARS or the emergence of a novel SARSr-CoV.

From the 2019 NIH grant extension to Wuhan lab.

It looks like it, it smells like it...
CAUTION: giant backfire risk (2019 US official: oh well it’s somewhere lost in China, what could go wrong?)

And a coronavirus so powerful in transmission in air for humans, like the 50’s biological stuff that went wrong, went wrong again! Just a theory.

Very important to do research on such viruses.

I am sure pietkuip does not have a clue how to read these things. This site should really distance itself from the antiscience.

No need to be so virulent to me.

Please provide the science that proves ... whatever it will prove. I am just posting stuff available to the public, but as I said, I don’t think anybody has proven or can prove this or that scientifically. But if you know better (suspicion: you don’t), yes go ahead

[John Palmer.]

Is Jimmy Dore going to the accepted level of evidence here?

Watch the video and see Dr Fauci lies, by yourself, forget Jimmy Dore.

[SteveMDFP]

Gain of function:

None of this describes gain of function research.  Try again.

[John Palmer.]

For John Palmer and Harpy, please stop publishing BS about the virus origin. I know it would be reassuring if it was produced by humans, because it would means that with a better control of humans, we would be on the safe side, that we don't need to change our way of life.

Pandemic viruses are a normal evolution, because mutations happens all the times, but most of the mutations can be controlled directly by our body, some can be controlled by our health care system, and once in a while, like every 100 years, probably even less, there is one mutation that just can't be stopped.

I did not publish anything, I copied a nymag.com  article link and the text of a NIH grant.
You can see it here or at the new thread, no BS.

However, you talk about pandemics and evolution with such bombastic tone, that you must know everything about the origins of COVID-19. please continue enlightening us at the new thread.

[John Palmer.]

Gain of function:

None of this describes gain of function research.  Try again.

GoF= Scary Shit
Your turn

[pietkuip]

Gain of function:

None of this describes gain of function research.  Try again.

GoF= Scary Shit
Your turn

"Palmer" is obviously clueless, cannot understand the content that he quotes.

[John Palmer.]

Gain of function:

None of this describes gain of function research.  Try again.

GoF= Scary Shit
Your turn

pietkuip is obviously clueless, cannot understand the content

That reflects more on you than on me. I just posted a fragment of a scientific symposium dealing with Gain of Function because it’s very understandable and transparent, but if I find kindergarten-level stuff  I’ll post it for you.

And what’s with the “Palmer” within quotes? I keep substituting it by your username because it clearly makes more sense.  .   

Just kidding.
Not sure why you so belligerent towards me. But whatever. Peace

[oren]

This reminds me of the old lawyer trick when they have a guilty person and they want to get them off the crime.

First you are presented with overwhelming evidence, then the lawyer starts to throw 1001 different unlikely scenarios that could have, maybe, possibly happened to explain alternative reasons for the crime to have happened.

Sure, it is unlikely that an asteroid landed on the house and burnt it down, sure it is more likely to be matches, but you cant 100% rule the asteroid theory out.

Do that often enough from multiple sources, and eventually people will latch onto one of those theories and then they start saying "where there is smoke, there is fire" and then you have a total bullshit line of theories that amount to nothing on their own, becoming something that creates enough doubt in people's minds to think, yeah, it is possible it was a lab escape or experiment or deliberately done..... in spite of the part where the most likely one or two stories are actually correct.

And that is when we get 1001 weird stories having more value than 1 or 2 truths.

It would be nice for someone to produce something that shows us that the lab was responsible for this, rather than a series of unlikely events or blaming gaps in knowledge as the reason they think it was man made.

This.
All the proofs I've seen so far are innuendo and conjecture.

[Aluminium]

Sure, it is unlikely that an asteroid landed on the house and burnt it down, sure it is more likely to be matches, but you cant 100% rule the asteroid theory out.

Yes, extremely unlikely. Actually meteorites are cold when land. A big one can burn it down but consequences are really different from match.

Asteroid hazard is known risk. It's not a big task to calculate probability for certain building or check if impact event happened. But how to estimate plausibility of lab-origin scenario? Should we also consider alien's experiment as possible scenario?