RE: Why are you spreading baldfaced lies about Yan’s argument?
I am simply quoting the Columbia University virologist. Your argument should be with her, not me, and it should be a SCIENCE BASED argument, not an ad hominem attack ( e.g., Steve Bannon was behind the paper’s publication ).
There have been experts on both sides of the issues. Let me copy and paste a post from a different thread:
A different article with a discussion of the issue. Some scientists say no, another Russian scientist says, yes manufactured. (Dueling Russian Scientists!)
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/the-case-is-building-that-covid-19-had-a-lab-origin/
“Scientific assessments of the lab escape theory
On April 17 the Australian Science Media Centre asked four Australian virologists: “Did COVID-19 come from a lab in Wuhan?“
Three (Edward Holmes, Nigel McMillan and Hassan Vally) dismissed the lab escape suggestion and Vally simply labeled it, without elaboration, a “conspiracy”. (No bias here!)
The fourth virologist interviewed was Nikolai Petrovsky of Flinders University. Petrovsky first addressed the question of whether the natural zoonosis pathway was viable. He told the Media Centre:
“no natural virus matching to COVID-19 has been found in nature despite an intensive search to find its origins.”
And a Norweigan Viralogist:
“A new study about the possible origin of the coronavirus has found that Covid-19 is not natural in origin.
The study, led by Norwegian virologist Birger Sorensen, has found that the coronavirus’s spike protein contains sequences that appear to be artificially inserted.
“The inserted sequences should never have been published. Had it been today, it would never have happened. It was a big mistake the Chinese made. The inserted sequences have a functionality that we describe. We explain why t...”
(Link to story behind a pay-firewall.)
I believe there are MERITS to opening up the paper to the public like you and me to read instead of submitting it to a scientific journal peer review which may or may not even be published.
That means IN EFFECT, an open peer review ( both pros and cons ) for everyone, even in the scientific community to refute or support.
My personal verdict as of today: My verdict: Possible... still needs to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Yan’s argument IS science.
The DailyBeast is spreading ink in the water, by deliberately misquoting Yan’s argument.
And doing so in a way that plants in the casual user’s mind, the idea that Yan is misinformed (’Acktsually, there are all kinds of furin cleavages in coronaviruses, unlike Yan who said COVID_19’s furin is unique and not found in nature.’)
But YAN never said that! YAN said that THAT PARTICULAR GENETIC SEQUENCE for a furin cleavage site, doesn’t exist in nature.
And it is proven beyond the possibility of a shadow of a doubt, because the very virus given by the “natural occurence” apologists,
a) never shared a host with the Coronavirus precursors
b) indications are that it apparently can’t even infect its own supposed natural host (that is, it was most likely engineered too)