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1. The whole pangolin-as-intermediary theory rests on one single sequenced pangolin SARS-CoV virus, published in Fall 2019 by Guangdong virologists, who were sampling pangolins that had been seized from smugglers that Spring. Nobody has ever found a pangolin virus like that againhttps://twitter.com/UngeheuerDarin/status/1401992628028297218 …
2. The virus they found had nearly-identical spike protein to SARS-2. Otherwise it was more distant. The spike is a big part of what determines inter-species compatibility. If this spike could infect pangolins & humans, maybe pangolins were intermediary.https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/11/11/979/htm …
3. The origins of this 2019 paper should be a matter of great moment to everyone. Were Chinese virologists widely sampling smuggled pangolins in 2019? If so, why? If not, why this one batch?
4. The pangolins were severely ill with SARS-like symptoms and most of them died within a few months of their seizure. Given that nobody has been able to find this mysterious virus in any pangolin ever again (and I assure you, it's not for want of trying) ...
5. ... the more probable hypothesis would seem to be that the pangolins were not the ordinary host for this virus; and that they picked it up somewhere in the animal-smuggling chain. That is of course if you believe this story is real.
6. After Corona hit, a small group of (mostly Chinese) papers started pointing to pangolins as a possible animal intermediary. The virus sequences they presented were all more or less ripped from the 2019 paper. To varying degrees they all obfuscated this.https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.184374v2.full …
7. Most would believe that the zoonotic (natural) hypothesis of Corona's origins requires an animal intermediary, to get the virus from bats to humans. Some might find it odd that the only evidence of such an intermediary was published a few months before the outbreak ...
8. Other pangolin samples have turned up Coronaviruses, and even some SARS-related ones, but none with the anomalous spike protein.
This is a ludicrously thin empirical bases for the natural origin theory, so thin one might almost hypothesize that it was constructed in advance as a failsafe mechanism to protect gain of function research.
Or there were earlier leaks of similar viruses with similar spike proteins, and it was thought prudent to plant the virus sequence in an article on pangolin coronaviruses.
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