Corona Proof of alien life?!

[kerbiloid]

o is a covid hotfix release.

[Vanamonde]

The subject of this thread is whether corona has an extraterrestrial origin. Please keep to that topic. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 1/6/2022 at 8:27 PM, sevenperforce said:

what the data shows right now

So still not talking about aliens: but this does reflect on your concerns... Omicron variant in the U.S.: Omicron cases could fall just as quickly as they rose, CDC says (nbcnews.com)

Not like a wave, more like an "icepick"

[MKI]

What about the concept that aliens took pre-existing a Coronavirus and "manipulated" it to become what it is now? 

 

Obviously simpler solutions, even one such as it was humans who manipulated it rather than nature, still suffice and what I'd pick, but if an evil person or aliens wanted to manipulate the virus to make it how it is now, what would they do? Do humans have that capability of manipulating viruses in such a way? Again, I disagree with the premise that humanity actually did this, but for the sake of the thread, what would it take for some super-smart-alien to manipulate it themselves. (Why they'd want to do that is a whole other conversation in itself)

In this scenario the virus is somewhat of alien origin, it just doesn't look like it at a high level.

[Spacescifi]

 

Alright lets say Covid-19 actually does have alien origin.

Then what is the implication? That 'they' shipped it two years ago?

If so that would imply:

 

1. Somehow their spaceships are totally invisible to our sensors so we did not pick them up on approach.

2. They came from lightyears away just to give us a virus? That's.... intense.

Given the odds of doing either and what we know about space travel and the energies involved as well as the fact that you have to ALREADY know a LOT about humans to engineer covid-19 when you are not from here.... I doubt this scenario.

 

The odds are much higher it's human shenanigans at work like the last millenia and the one before that.

Don't underestimate us. We can destroy almost ANYTHING we set our minds to. Just give us time

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Let's put this to rest: its not extraterrestrial.  It originally infected humans in Wuhan China.  Somehow jumped from animals to people (regardless of whether it leaked from a lab or not).  Spread from there to everywhere.  Anything else is subterfuge and obfuscation.

[Nuke]

the typical gray alien its just a gray cat with its ears taped down.

[DDE]

10 hours ago, MKI said:

Obviously simpler solutions, even one such as it was humans who manipulated it rather than nature, still suffice and what I'd pick, but if an evil person or aliens wanted to manipulate the virus to make it how it is now, what would they do? Do humans have that capability of manipulating viruses in such a way? Again, I disagree with the premise that humanity actually did this, but for the sake of the thread, what would it take for some super-smart-alien to manipulate it themselves. (Why they'd want to do that is a whole other conversation in itself)

The construction methods are there: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470015902.a0027771

It thus becomes a problem of design, which is comparatively easy to solve with a sufficiently large collection of germs as inspiration.

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

15 hours ago, MKI said:

Obviously simpler solutions, even one such as it was humans who manipulated it rather than nature, still suffice and what I'd pick, but if an evil person wanted to manipulate the virus to make it how it is now, what would they do? Do humans have that capability of manipulating viruses in such a way?

I actually think that some sort of S.C.P.F level genetic modification could've been done in a secret laboratory in some place no one comes (deep inside Mount Everest, for example, or underneath the Sahara Desert) to make COVID-19. Some scientists could've been like "hey, we can genetically modify things! what can we modify..." and started with a genetic modification adapted bacteria species. They accidentally made this bacteria into a virus with fast transmitting capability and flu-like symptoms. Some sort of accident happened (terrorist attack, generator explosion, et cetera) and the virus escaped into wherever this secret facility was. It transmitted to migrating birds, which migrated to China... you can see where this is going.  To cover this up, the virus was given the name of COVID-19 and the general public were told that this was a new deadlier version of Coronavirus. 

Phew! That was a lot of typing. 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Second Hand Rocket Science
Changed "bacterium" to "bacteria"

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

The simplest explanation is usually correct. 

Wuhan had a research facility doing research on human coronavirus before the covid outbreak. 

The outbreak started in Wuhan and spread to the world. 

. 

[Second Hand Rocket Science]

3 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Wuhan had a research facility doing research on human coronavirus before the covid outbreak. 

 

. 

Wasn't it on coronavirus transmitting through a certain species of bat? Sorry if I misunderstood.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Sorry - coronavirus was one of the things studied in Wuhan, including those that had been previously found in humans and those that had not. 

There was an article that came out a year or two before the pandemic about the development of the facility and concerns of it being rushed to certification before the building and staff were ready. 

[DDE]

6 hours ago, Second Hand Rocket Science said:

Wasn't it on coronavirus transmitting through a certain species of bat? Sorry if I misunderstood.

It likely evolved in bats and then jumped through humans having contact with copious amounts of bat... guano.

[sevenperforce]

16 hours ago, DDE said:

The construction methods are there: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470015902.a0027771

It thus becomes a problem of design, which is comparatively easy to solve with a sufficiently large collection of germs as inspiration.

If humans were going to construct a pathogenic virus using this construction method, they would do exactly what you said: use their existing collection of germs as inspiration. It would be fairly straightforward to splice together nasty stuff from different species and make a very nasty pathogen. But that's not what we see with SARS-CoV-2. The spike protein is evolved to infect the hACES2 receptor with remarkable specificity. That's not something you get from splicing; that's the result of evolution.

On 1/8/2022 at 6:15 PM, MKI said:

Obviously simpler solutions, even one such as it was humans who manipulated it rather than nature, still suffice and what I'd pick, but if an evil person or aliens wanted to manipulate the virus to make it how it is now, what would they do? Do humans have that capability of manipulating viruses in such a way? Again, I disagree with the premise that humanity actually did this, but for the sake of the thread, what would it take for some super-smart-alien to manipulate it themselves.

Even setting aside the many absurdities at play here, any extra-terrestrials with advanced knowledge sufficient to create SARS-CoV-2 from scratch would have had a specific purpose in mind. Whatever that purpose was, it's hard to see how the events of the past two years could have accomplished that purpose. Seems absurd.

11 hours ago, Second Hand Rocket Science said:

I actually think that some sort of S.C.P.F level genetic modification could've been done in a secret laboratory in some place no one comes (deep inside Mount Everest, for example, or underneath the Sahara Desert) to make COVID-19. Some scientists could've been like "hey, we can genetically modify things! what can we modify..." and started with a genetic modification adapted bacteria species. They accidentally made this bacteria into a virus with fast transmitting capability and flu-like symptoms. Some sort of accident happened (terrorist attack, generator explosion, et cetera) and the virus escaped into wherever this secret facility was. It transmitted to migrating birds, which migrated to China... you can see where this is going.  To cover this up, the virus was given the name of COVID-19 and the general public were told that this was a new deadlier version of Coronavirus. 

This is nonsense.

Accidentally modifying a bacteria into a virus is as silly as accidentally modifying a bluebird into an attack helicopter. They are not remotely similar or the same thing. Also, birds are not a possible reservoir of SARS-CoV-2; it is a distinctly mammalian virus. Everything in this hypothetical is nonsense.

11 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The simplest explanation is usually correct. 

Wuhan had a research facility doing research on human coronavirus before the covid outbreak. 

The outbreak started in Wuhan and spread to the world. 

Yes, the simplest explanation is usually correct.

But Wuhan is not the only research facility that was doing research on coronaviruses at the time of the outbreak. Rather, the Wuhan facility happened to be the only research facility located in close proximity to actual zoonotic reservoirs of coronaviruses. Most likely a human came into contact with bat guano, got a SARS-CoV-2 precursor, gave it to a pangolin or something, and then the pangolin (or a capuchin or whatever) gave it back to humans with some intermediate mutations.

That's the simplest explanation.

[SunlitZelkova]

I wasn't going to reply to the "extraterrestrials making it" thing but because it has continued I will.

A reason extraterrestrials might do this is similar to how some humans derive pleasure from hurting animals. If a species has become so advanced as to be capable of surviving interstellar travel, manipulating viruses without detection, and somehow releasing that virus on Earth without being detected, they may very well not treat humans as "people" as much as just chimpanzees with very sophisticated sticks (tools).

But, there is no way of proving any of this, because part of the theory revolves around the extraterrestrials being impossible to detect. Furthermore, because we don't know anything about theoretical highly intelligent extraterrestrials (we merely project ourselves or the behavior of our fauna on to them), it is mere speculation, not based on any real evidence.

So seriously pursuing this possibility basically amounts to a conspiracy theory or pseudoscience.

[sevenperforce]

4 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

A reason extraterrestrials might do this is similar to how some humans derive pleasure from hurting animals. If a species has become so advanced as to be capable of surviving interstellar travel, manipulating viruses without detection, and somehow releasing that virus on Earth without being detected, they may very well not treat humans as "people" as much as just chimpanzees with very sophisticated sticks (tools).

But, there is no way of proving any of this, because part of the theory revolves around the extraterrestrials being impossible to detect. Furthermore, because we don't know anything about theoretical highly intelligent extraterrestrials (we merely project ourselves or the behavior of our fauna on to them), it is mere speculation, not based on any real evidence.

So seriously pursuing this possibility basically amounts to a conspiracy theory or pseudoscience.

If we want to use logic, that boils things down pretty quickly.

• If undetectable aliens created COVID, they did so with an undeterrable purpose.
• COVID has served no discernable purpose.
• Therefore, undetectable aliens did not create COVID.

This is a valid syllogism. It is, of course, subject to numerous collateral attacks. Here are the logical attacks that would make this syllogism fail:

• Undetectable aliens can manipulate viral genomes without detection but cannot accomplish their intended purpose.
• COVID has served precisely the purpose which an undetectable alien race might want.
• Undetectable aliens could have created COVID with no purpose whatsoever.

So if you accept any of those attacks as valid, then the possibility of an undetectable alien origin for SARS-CoV-2 remains. Otherwise it is nonsense.

[kerbiloid]

The extraterrestrials made the covid to implement qr codes because they can't distinguish 8 bln of humans by face, all of them look same..

[DDE]

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

That's the simplest explanation.

Is it, though? Wuhan is by no means "in close proximity" to the suspected reservoir of COVID precursors in Southern China and Indonesia. Transport by lab samples begins to look simpler than a mine worker's cuddly pangolin.

3 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

If humans were going to construct a pathogenic virus using this construction method, they would do exactly what you said: use their existing collection of germs as inspiration. It would be fairly straightforward to splice together nasty stuff from different species and make a very nasty pathogen. But that's not what we see with SARS-CoV-2. The spike protein is evolved to infect the hACES2 receptor with remarkable specificity. That's not something you get from splicing; that's the result of evolution.

Hardly. Swapping spike proteins between coronaviruses (the pangolin are singled out because there's a known coronavirus with the same kind of spike protein), altering the spike proteins for lethality in a deliberate fashion (including insertion of furin cleavage sites), or passing the virus through human or human-like tissue (including the simulation of the air-liquid interface of human lungs) in order to force it into developing greater infectivity are all common research techniques that have been in use for decades. The parts are there.

https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-through-the-lens-of-gain-of-function-research-f96dd7413748

Edited January 10, 2022 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Wuhan is by no means "in close proximity" to the suspected reservoir of COVID precursors in Southern China and Indonesia.

Afair, it's 1000 km far from the close proximity of that bat areal.

***

Btw. Covid is a batman virus. Literally.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2017 article.

Quote

the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, would be the first on the Chinese mainland.

Quote

... Such labs are often controversial. The first BSL-4 lab in Japan was built in 1981, but operated with lower-risk pathogens until 2015, when safety concerns were finally overcome

Quote

the complexity of the project, China’s lack of experience, difficulty in maintaining funding and long government approval procedures meant that construction wasn’t finished until the end of 2014. The lab’s first project will be to study the BSL-3 pathogen that causes Crimean–Congo haemorrhagic fever: a deadly tick-borne virus that affects livestock across the world, including in northwest China, and that can jump to people. Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS,

Quote

“The world is facing more new emerging viruses, and we need more contribution from China,” says Gao. In particular, the emergence of zoonotic viruses — those that jump to humans from animals, such as SARS

Quote

But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says

Quote

“These facilities are inherently dual use,” he says. The prospect of ramping up opportunities to inject monkeys with pathogens also worries, rather than excites, him: “They can run, they can scratch, they can bite.” Trevan says China’s investment in a BSL-4 lab may, above all, be a way to prove to the world that the nation is competitive. “It is a big status symbol in biology,” he says, “whether it’s a need or not.

nature.2017.21487.pdf

 

...

2015 article

Quote

A large number of SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoV) have been detected in horseshoe bats since 2005 in different areas of China. However, these bat SARSr-CoVs show sequence differences from SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in different genes (S, ORF8, ORF3, etc) and are considered unlikely to represent the direct progenitor of SARS-CoV. Herein, we report the findings of our 5-year surveillance of SARSr-CoVs in a cave inhabited by multiple species of horseshoe bats in Yunnan Province, China. The full-length genomes of 11 newly discovered SARSr-CoV strains, together with our previous findings, reveals that the SARSr-CoVs circulating in this single location are highly diverse in the S gene, ORF3 and ORF8. Importantly, strains with high genetic similarity to SARS-CoV in the hypervariable N-terminal domain (NTD) and receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the S1 gene, the ORF3 and ORF8 region, respectively, were all discovered in this cave. In addition, we report the first discovery of bat SARSr-CoVs highly similar to human SARS-CoV in ORF3b and in the split ORF8a and 8b. Moreover, SARSr-CoV strains from this cave were more closely related to SARS-CoV in the non-structural protein genes ORF1a and 1b compared with those detected elsewhere. Recombination analysis shows evidence of frequent recombination events within the S gene and around the ORF8 between these SARSr-CoVs. We hypothesize that the direct progenitor of SARS-CoV may have originated after sequential recombination events between the precursors of these SARSr-CoVs. Cell entry studies demonstrated that three newly identified SARSr-CoVs with different S protein sequences are all able to use human ACE2 as the receptor, further exhibiting the close relationship between strains in this cave and SARS-CoV. This work provides new insights into the origin and evolution of SARS-CoV and highlights the necessity of preparedness for future emergence of SARS-like diseases.

Quote

All sampling procedures were performed by veterinarians with approval from Animal Ethics Committee of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIVH05210201). 

China’s first P4 laboratory opens in Wuhan (hubei.gov.cn)

 

(I'm not enough trained in biology to know whether the following sentences equates to gain-of-function, but here you go:)

2017 publication

Quote

Recombinant viruses with the S gene of the novel bat SARSr-CoVs and the backbone of the infectious clone of SARSr-CoV WIV1 were constructed using the reverse genetic system described previously...

 

 

Quote

 

the two prepared spike DNA fragments were separately inserted into BAC with Es, Fs and other fragments. The correct infectious BAC clones were screened. The chimeric viruses were rescued as described previously [23].

Determination of virus infectivity by immunofluorescence assay

The HeLa cell line was kindly provided by Australian Animal Health Laboratory, CSIRO (Geelong, Australia). HeLa cells expressing human ACE2 were constructed as described previously [17]. HeLa cells expressing human ACE2 and Vero E6 cells were cultured

 

 

Quote

Our previous studies demonstrated the capacity of both WIV1 and WIV16 to use ACE2 orthologs for cell entry and to efficiently replicate in human cells [17,18]. In this study, we confirmed the use of human ACE2 as receptor of two novel SARSr-CoVs by using chimeric viruses with the WIV1 backbone replaced with the S gene of the newly identified SARSr-CoVs. Rs7327’s S protein varied from that of WIV1 and WIV16 at three aa residues in the receptor-binding motif, including one contact residue (aa 484) with human ACE2. This difference did not seem to affect its entry and replication efficiency in human ACE2-expressing cells. A previous study using the SARS-CoV infectious clone showed that the RsSHC014 S protein could efficiently utilize human ACE2 [33], despite being distinct from SARS-CoV and WIV1 in the RBD (S1 Fig). We examined the infectivity of Rs4231, which shared similar RBD sequence with RsSHC014 but had a distinct NTD sequence, and found the chimeric virus WIV1-Rs4231S also readily replicated in HeLa cells expressing human ACE2 molecule. The novel live SARSr-CoV we isolated in the current study (Rs4874) has an S gene almost identical to that of WIV16. As expected, it is also capable of utilizing human ACE2. These results indicate that diverse variants of SARSr-CoV S protein without deletions in their RBD are able to use human ACE2. In contrast, our previous study revealed that the S protein of a R. sinicus SARSr-CoV with deletions (Rp3) failed to use human, civet and bat ACE2 for cell entry [34]. In this study, in addition to Rs4231 and Rs7327, we also constructed infectious clones with the S gene of Rs4081, Rf4075, Rs4085, Rs4235 and As6526, which all contained the deletions in their RBD. These 7 strains, plus Rs4874 and the previously studied WIV1 and RsSHC014, could represent all types of S variants of SARSr-CoVs in this location (S3A Fig). However, none of the strains with deletions in the RBD could be rescued from Vero E6 cells. Therefore, the two distinct clades of SARSr-CoV S gene may represent the usage of different receptors in their bat hosts

Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus (plos.org)

...

... 

 

All articles predate the outbreak in Wuhan.  Does the simple fact that Wuhan had a new and perhaps inexperienced team looking into bat coronavirus equate to a lab-leak?  No... but it is highly coincidental.  Especially when considering the source of the bats studied is quite a ways away from Wuhan.

Regardless - all terrestrially sourced.  Not alien

Edited January 10, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Jacke]

15 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Accidentally modifying a bacteria into a virus is as silly as accidentally modifying a bluebird into an attack helicopter. They are not remotely similar or the same thing. Also, birds are not a possible reservoir of SARS-CoV-2; it is a distinctly mammalian virus. Everything in this hypothetical is nonsense.

Yes, the simplest explanation is usually correct.

The viruses that overlap between mammals and birds go after the same receptors that Influenza does, the ones in common in mammalian lungs and bird intestines.  And any other virus that goes after them is going to be in competition with Influenza strains, which ain't going to be easy.

[KerikBalm]

On 1/10/2022 at 4:55 AM, sevenperforce said:

use their existing collection of germs as inspiration. It would be fairly straightforward to splice together nasty stuff from different species and make a very nasty pathogen. But that's not what we see with SARS-CoV-2. The spike protein is evolved to infect the hACES2 receptor with remarkable specificity. That's not something you get from splicing; that's the result of evolution.

#1)  We don't know what their "existing collection of germs" is because they took their database down shortly before the recognized start of the outbreak, and have kept it down since.

Infecting the hACE2 receptor could be from splicing, if you have one such receptor to splice in. They were explicitly testing S protein modifications for their ability to infect mice expressing hACE2... so this could come from those deliberate modifications, or serial passage (ie evolution in a lab).

On 1/10/2022 at 4:55 AM, sevenperforce said:

Accidentally modifying a bacteria into a virus is as silly as accidentally modifying a bluebird into an attack helicopter. They are not remotely similar or the same thing. Also, birds are not a possible reservoir of SARS-CoV-2; it is a distinctly mammalian virus. Everything in this hypothetical is nonsense.

Absolutely correct, that idea was nonsense

On 1/10/2022 at 4:55 AM, sevenperforce said:

But Wuhan is not the only research facility that was doing research on coronaviruses at the time of the outbreak.

Wuhan is a city, it hosts several research facilities doing research on coronaviruses. It has the largest collection of specimens, and is (was?) the world leader on CoV research

On 1/10/2022 at 4:55 AM, sevenperforce said:

Rather, the Wuhan facility happened to be the only research facility located in close proximity to actual zoonotic reservoirs of coronaviruses.

This is absolutely false, it is located far away from any zoonotic reservoir of SARSr coronaviruses. If you aren't restricting your statement to SARSr-CoVs, then its absolutely false that its the "only" facility, because CoVs are everywhere, in the rodents of every city. 

On 1/10/2022 at 4:55 AM, sevenperforce said:

That's the simplest explanation.

Its hard to say what is the simplest explanation.

Here's a few simple explanations:

1) The WIV was engaged in studies specifically meant to experimentally see if newly discovered/modified SARSr-CoVs could spillover into humans, using live virus... one of them could, and infected them too.

2) WIV researchers went looking for new potential pandemic pathogens to bring back to the WIV. They succeeded, and infected themself in the process.

3) The only known Sarbecovirus with a furin cleavage site, which broke out far from any natural reservoir in the same city as a lab which had earlier proposed systematically collecting Sarbeoviruses and adding furin cleavage sites to them, in fact came from that lab and not a distant reservoir.

On 1/4/2022 at 10:26 PM, sevenperforce said:

Yep. A lot of people will make the argument "well prove it wasn't created in a lab" and that is very silly because you cannot prove a negative. However, you can still make a very good argument that if it had been created in a lab, then one of the many, many smart people examining it would have found traces, and since they haven't, it almost certainly wasn't.

There are many flaws with this line of reasoning. It equally applies to the natural origin hypothesis.

You can provide evidence for a mutually exclusive hypothesis. To date, there is no data specifically supporting a natural origin. You also have a flawed idea of what traces one would or would not be able to find if it was made in a lab. One cannot distinguish between natural recombination, and unnatural "splicing".  One cannot distinguish between a natural virus, and a synthetic virus produced from the consensus sequence of multiple natural viruses (as the WIV proposed doing in a rejected 2018 grant - note rejected by one funding source does not mean that they didn't do it)

There's also many intermediates between "engineered in a lab" and "completely natural". At one end of the scale, you have the scenario 2) above - where WIV researchers go looking for a natural virus, and get infected with it. The lab activity resulted in the spillover (bringing a novel virus to a dense population), but did not create the virus. Then you have possibilities like studies that we know were funded, where they were taking new SARSr-CoVs, and testing their hypothesis that S-gene divergence predicts spillover potential... by modifying S genes and seeing if they spilled over into cell culture or animal models. In this case, its a natural virus with just a few changes meant to anticipate what might naturally happen. If the goal of the research was to assess possible natural scenarios in the lab, then naturally the lab scenario looks like a natural scenario.

Early on, thanks to leaked e-mails, we do know that multiple " of the many, many smart people examining it" found the furin cleavage site to be suspicious (but would not state so publicly). It is not found in any sarbecovirus (thus unlikely to arise by recombination, and requires insertion of 12 nucleotides, thus very unlikely to evolve in a single step). We know the WIV proposed systematically adding furin cleavage sites (same 2018 rejected grant application), and they have a publication history of adding furin cleavage sites to coronavirus spike proteins. But the SARS-CoV-2 site is sub-optimal you say? well so are the ones added in their previous publications, because they were aimed at assessing the minimal changes required for the natural virus to acquire the cleavage site.

 

The facts we have:

1) The WIV has an extensive collection of un-discolosed SARSr-CoVs. 

2) They have disclosed the 2nd closest virus to SARS-CoV-2 (96.14 % collected by the WIV in 2013 vs 96.85% collected elsewhere in 2021), in 2013, took an interest in that clade, and began repeatedly sampling that location over the following years

3) In 2018 they reported at least 2 novel bat SARSr-CoVs capable of infecting mice expressing hACE2, sequences undisclosed

4) In 2016, according to a grant report, they had 15 Bat SARSr-CoV isolates fully sequenced, with an undisclosed number not fully sequenced.

5) In 2018, they proposed systematically adding furin cleavage sites to SARSr-CoVs, and have a publication history of adding furin cleavage sites to CoV spike proteins

6) SARS-CoV-2 is the only known SARSr-CoV with a furin cleavage site, despite extensive study of SARSr-CoVs dating back to 2002

7) The closest known viruses in nature come from 1,500 km away from wuhan or more

8) No known natural virus is closer than 96.85% to SARS-CoV-2, so no animal reservoir has been identified

9) The WIV planned to synthesize consensus viruses from viral sequences with 95% or greater sequence similarity

10) The WIV had sequences with 95% or greater sequence similarity to SARS-CoV-2

11) The wet-market was not the site of the initial outbreak (hundreds of animal samples tested negative, all sequences were from the B lineage, which split from the A lineage, so the A lineage or A-B precursor was spreading in wuhan before reaching the wetmarket)

[Vanamonde]

Like the previous thread about COVID, this discussion was getting into the question of origin and who is to blame. That involves politics, which is not a subject we can allow on this forum because of the animosities it stimulates. Time to move on to other discussions.