The other big argument is that the furin cleavage site on COVID-19, which Crowe accepts is wonky and hard to replicate in a lab, isn't evidence of natural origin because the Wuhan lab researchers "have used insertions that are nearly identical to it."
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To prove that, he links to one study that....does not prove his point: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12985-017-0766-9 … As you can read, the Wuhan researchers were sequencing wild viruses. Their entire point is: Hey, we've found some novel coronaviruses in these caves that could be a problem.pic.twitter.com/knSJ45MxEm
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Maybe he was actually talking about this study (which was done out of Beijing, not Wuhan) where experiments on a similar cleavage site were being done, specifically to help develop vaccines for coronaviruseshttps://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/11/10/972/htm …
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Gain-of-function research is specifically done to mimic what's happening in nature. Researchers (in China, or wherever) are trying to guess where pathogen evolution is going. Best we can tell, Chinese scientists were in the ballpark of COVID-19 but not *that* close.
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The rebuttal basically amounts to 'we don't have a firm answer on the intermediary host, and Chinese researchers were studying similar, but different, furin cleavage sites.' Taken together, that's not a slam dunk.
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Like I wrote, we have a pile of really good science supporting the idea that COVID-19 emerged from nature. The lab leak theory has a small heap of circumstantial evidence. Might that balance change in the near future? Maybe! But right now, we've got to face facts.
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Replying to @Justin_Ling
Pls do
@zeynep. Consistently right abt COVID19, thinks there’s something to the lab leak theory. Less an engineered/ manipulated virus, more a natural virus brought to Wuhan from S China by scientists. Then accidentally released via an infected lab workerhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html …1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @EnergiaPublica @Justin_Ling
Ralph Baric, maybe world’s leading coronavirus expert, says we cannot rule out engineering based solely on the genome, and has highlighted many things that can go wrong with just bat samples including recombination in the lab. Who am I to rule out things myself that he doesn’t?
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Replying to @zeynep @Justin_Ling
Sorry
@zeyneb if I misrepresented your article, the possibility of an engineered virus. My intent was to get@Justin_Ling to engage on a range of lab leak scenarios not just the possibility of an engineered/ gain-of-function virus. Love your work, thanks for the writing.1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
You're right that the possibility of a pure lab leak (i.e. COVID-19 was found in the wild, taken to the lab, then broke out) is the most plausible, but it's also a theory for which there is zero evidence beyond just the proximity of the WIV to the outbreak.
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zeynep tufekci Retweeted World Health Organization (WHO)
zeynep tufekci added,
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Evidence of a coverup isn't evidence of that particular coverup. We have a mountain of evidence proving China tried to hide the initial outbreak, because it didn't want bad press. It wanted to keep us from seeing them locking up and silencing their own citizens.
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Replying to @Justin_Ling @zeynep and
Still, it wasn’t much of a coverup if it was. In all the 2019 patients (and they admit it was there in November and even earlier) it looked like a bad Flu season combined with secondary bacterial pneumonia—among the elderly. And that is not at all unusual anywhere in the world
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