Incorrect. The RBD was a 90+ percent match to a pangolin coronavirus, the backbone was 90% + match to a sample collected from bats in Guangdong if I recall correctly, and you had GoF techniques in play that enabled seamless porting of nucleotide sequences that left no traces of gene edits. We've gone over it in previous articles...
Capabilities. Not motivations. Never ever lose sight of that. You will never know what makes another human being tick or do what they do, but you can definitely establish an upper bound on the trouble they can get themselves in to.
A 10% difference is massive for a 30k-base virus. In the public mind, "gain of function" has gained the aura of some sort of black magic, but creating SARS-CoV-2 from any combination of known viruses is beyond the capability of any lab. The amount of effort you'd have to put into it would be astronomical, and all for no apparent scientific reason. This line of speculation really is completely separated from reality.
I recommend taking the time to read the article, they cover this pretty well.
It seems that even of this were manufactured, it is not likely intentional.
>The Chinese research did not have the specific goal of making the viruses more deadly, and rather than SARS itself, it used SARS’s close cousins, whose real-world risk to humans was unknown—in fact, determining the risk was the point of the research. Just as when you trade in part of a poker hand for fresh cards, there was no way of knowing whether the final chimeras would be stronger or weaker.
The problem for this speculation is that given the types of experiments the WIV is known to have done, it is impossible to produce anything that looks remotely like SARS-CoV-2. The reverse genetics system used by WIV researchers is well known, and SARS-CoV-2 is simply not a product of it.
https://archive.is/tpxg1
Nicholas Wade's excellent medium post, one hundred percent worth the read, Possibly duped in the Bulletin of atomic scientists shtick floating around right now.)
I'm hedging the percents because my quick reference of previous post's substances is on my other phone, which died horribly, and having to play the "Dude, I had it elsewhere card, I swear" card is my punishment for shitty backup hygiene.
These are two of the better write-ups I've seen and deep dove into, and project evidence is a staple that's only gotten more and more confirmed with the number of eyes that have gone into it despite their initial total flub up of picking a name for it.
There is more than enough know-how condensed between Baric and Zengli Shi to swap RBD's and insert Furin cleavage sites without leaving traces of having done so. I had one paper that went into a hypothetical process for doing so, but I was an idiot and can't remember the author, and it wasn't the most straightforward search engine query because it was one of those middle of the night, just got done reading another paper, saw a query string that looked promising, did it, and pay dirt. Great when looking for a dopamine hit and ego boost for "haha I found it!"; Not so much for when life happens and you suddenly have to rewalk that mental path.
>_<
This is why I'm not an academic... Or more precisely, this is what happens when you let habits you built during college atrophy because you have a day job now.
> There is more than enough know-how condensed between Baric and Zengli Shi to swap RBD's and insert Furin cleavage sites without leaving traces of having done so.
Baric, Shi and others use particular reverse-genetics systems, which are well known to the outside world. Developing a new system is a significant effort. They don't just swap RBDs or spike proteins into random viruses that nobody has ever heard of before.
SARS-CoV-2 is an entirely new virus, different throughout its entire genome from any previously known virus. An engineered virus would use a known backbone, such as SARS-CoV or WIV-1.
Keep in mind that neither Wade nor Deigin actually has any expertise in virology, and it shows. Rather than listening to laypeople shooting from the hip, listen to what actual virologists have to say. Here's Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry on TWiV: https://youtu.be/Hez3xNv2ido
Capabilities. Not motivations. Never ever lose sight of that. You will never know what makes another human being tick or do what they do, but you can definitely establish an upper bound on the trouble they can get themselves in to.