Regardless of WHO is behind the study, the argument is SCIENTIFIC and should stay that way.
Here is the counter argument:
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, told The Daily Beast of the study that Basically, it’s all circumstantial and some of it is entirely fictional.
The paper leads with a claim that the coronavirus’ genes are “suspiciously similar to that of a bat coronavirus discovered by military laboratories” in China—an assertion Rasmussen says shouldn’t be surprising because “they are related SARS-like coronaviruses.”
The study’s authors made a similar claim about a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—which viruses use to breach and infect cells—and wrote that it’s similar to the original SARS virus in a “suspicious manner” and suggests genetic manipulation. “SARS-CoV also used ACE2 as a cellular receptor, as do other SARS-like bat coronaviruses,” Rasmussen says. “It is not suspicious and is in fact expected that the receptor binding domains that bind the same protein would be similar.”
Rasmussen also said that the paper misrepresented basic facts about another part of coronavirus spike proteins known as furin cleavage sites. The authors claim that SARS-CoV-2’s cleavage site is “unique” and unseen elsewhere in nature. But according to Rasmussen, “Furin cleavage sites occur naturally in many other beta-CoVs, including MERS-CoV and other SARS-like bat coronaviruses.”
THOSE COUNTER ARGUMENTS ARE SCIENTIFIC AND NEED TO BE REFUTED — SCIENTIFICALLY.
See #10. The cleavage sights do not appear where nature might have assigned them randomly.
If you see a cow with the head of a deer, rabbit ears, and monkey hands, you can be pretty sure it’s not a random mutation.
The left (and by extension The Beast) does not really believe in science, do they?
It is much easier to simply denigrate the scientist, deactivate her Twitter account, and make her ‘disappear’ than it is to have a meaningful scientific debate on the topic.
Debates are open forums for information to be released. They are not ‘newsfeeds’ conducted in one-on-one interviews where editors can create narratives.