My point is simply because a report is ignored does not in and of itself invalidate it. I want you to tell me WHAT in that report is invalid and why the evidence presented is not to be considered.
Okay. It’s been a while since I saw it and I am relying on memory here.
What made the report invalid was that it was based on opinion and circumstantial evidence. Yes, there is reason to distrust the Chinese (especially their government). Yes, there is an institute of virology in Wuhan. Yes, the outbreak originated in Wuhan. But there is zero evidence to tie these separate facts together and derive a conclusion that Chinese scientists either created or modified a virus to make a human pathogen.
As I recall, this was a report issued early in the pandemic. It was quickly supplanted by more reliable reports based on real evidence available at the time.
Human knowledge of virus/host interactions is simply not advanced enough to be able to design from scratch a deadly pandemic capable virus. So that hypothesis can be thrown out the window.
It is possible to modify existing viruses. In fact, scientists do this all the time. But to modify one to make it into a deadly pandemic virus is a far more technically challenging process than doing something like modifying an adenovirus to make a non-replicating vaccine virus. To do so gets back to the problem that our knowledge of human/virus interactions is still very incomplete. I do not want to talk about technical aspects of patching together a virus, but I will say that even if a virus is modified to become more pathogenic, it has to be tested to see if it really has the properties its modifiers are trying to give it.
Furthermore, let’s assume that someone created and tested a modified virus in order to create the perfect deadly pandemic capable pathogen. The fact that the virus was modified rather than originating through normal evolutionary processes would be immediately obvious to anyone who knows molecular biology and has access to bioinformatics tools. When a new virus is discovered, one of the first things that happens is that it is cultured and its genome is sequenced. Once sequenced, the genome is uploaded into a database, making it available to scientists all over the world. I’m retired now, but I can still access and analyze the sequence of the original Wuhan isolate of SARS-CoV-2. Using various analytical bioinformatics tools, we can analyze the virus for signs of modification. Even here in my home, I have analyzed the sequence of the Wuhan isolate and found no trace of genetic engineering. Other scientists have access to far more advanced tools than I do and they, too, have found no evidence of genetic tampering. The fact that thousands upon thousands of scientists have examined this virus and concluded that it is a natural zoonotic pathogen is pretty conclusive evidence.
And the fact remains that the epicenter of the pandemic is the Huanan seafood market, which by now has been closed and extensively analyzed for forensic evidence. All of the evidence points towards the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into humans from an animal source (probably bats).
So, with evidence of the natural origin of the virus from animals and lack of any evidence of tampering, there is absolutely no reason to take seriously a low-confidence report written by people who are not infectious disease scientists. We can safely ignore it as irrelevant.