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.
Ok, let’s look at the Science Direct paper you presented in post 12 above.
Here is your link:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935122010295?via%3Dihub
[Quote copied]
Even if several early market outbreak cases may turn out to be explained by human-to-human transmission, we note that it remains unclear how the first person at the Huanan market was contaminated and whether the market was a site of animal-to-human contamination….
“ Epidemiological data are consistent with a single point of introduction of the virus at the market, which is compatible with a zoonotic origin, but *does not preclude other possibilities* such as a vendor infected outside of the market. Despite extensive sampling (Table S1), *no infected animal has been found at the market.* “
“ Even if several early market outbreak cases may turn out to be explained by human-to-human transmission, we note that it remains unclear how the first person at the Huanan market was contaminated and whether the market was a site of animal-to-human contamination. ”
Speaking about uncertainty, all the paper says is it most likely ( but not certain) that the original infection came from an animal to a human but they aren’t certain. They also concluded that they have not detected an infected animal.
The WIV as you said is about 12 miles away from the market. Could it not be possible that someone from the institute visited the market and was the original source of infection? If so, could it not be possible that the source of the virus was the lab itself?
See here for instance :
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
Evidence supporting the lab-leak theory is there, according to Nicholas Wade, a longtime science writer who has worked for Science magazine and the New York Times. Over at Medium ( the link above ), Wade weighs the evidence of both possibilities: the first being that COVID-19 naturally emerged from an animal species, the second that it leaked from the Wuhan Virology Lab.
Wade makes a few points that demand consideration. The first is that the bats that Chinese officials claimed to be the source of SARS-CoV-2 have yet to be discovered, even after an intensive search by authorities that included the testing of 80,000 animals. There is also no evidence that the coronavirus jumped from bats to people through an intermediary host, as SARS1 did in 2002 (a bat virus spread first to civets and then to people). Surely, if bats were the original source of COVID-19, scientists could identify the intermediary host through which it was spread. They’ve had no such luck.
Wade also points out a few other holes in the Chinese government’s story. For example, why, if COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan wet market, were there earlier cases of the coronavirus with no link to the wet market? And why should a naturally spread epidemic break out in Wuhan and (at first) nowhere else?
This is where the lab-leak theory starts to make more sense. It is no secret that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was studying coronaviruses, thanks in large part to funding by U.S. agencies, such as our very own National Institutes of Health.
In fact, In 2018, two years before the pandemic broke out, U.S. State Department officials warned the federal government after touring Wuhan’s facilities that the lab lacked a good number of trained technicians and investigators needed to conduct research safely.
Also see here from the Wall Street Journal :
[Quote copied]
Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.
The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”
Dr. Shi Zhengli, the head of the coronavirus research project, even admitted herself in an interview with Science magazine that much of her work was conducted at a lower safety level than was required.
I therefore cannot dismiss the possibility that:
Wuhan scientists were specifically creating novel coronaviruses “with the highest possible infectivity for human cells,”
It could be that this research wasn’t being conducted maliciously, as far as we know. Oftentimes, scientists will create and test chimeric viruses to learn how they attack human cell cultures and how they “spill over” from animal species to humans.
Here’s the problem:
The Wuhan Institute hasn’t shared raw data, safety logs and lab records on its extensive work with coronaviruses in bats, which many consider the most likely source of the virus.
Therefore, I am not as confident or certain as you that the source of this virus did not come from the lab. Whether it was man-made or not, is something that I cannot with certainty conclude entirely.