>The strongest version of the lab-created theory (in my view) is that they were studying coronaviruses / performing GoF research to understand the danger of coronaviruses. In that case, there would be zero point to using less efficient inserts or using esoteric seamless recombinant techniques to hide restriction sites.

I disagree. Your assumption that an engineer eill always go for the "most optimum" solution every time is flawed. If I have a more pessimum way to get 90% of the way there in hand, and need to wait two weeks for the most optimum component, I'll go with what gets me a result to get an interim datapoint to see if I'm even barking up the right tree.

>The mere fact that we can make genetic modifications that are well hidden doesn't add any information to the story since there's no evidence at all of anyone in the lab using those techniques and the resulting virus has a bunch of strange mutations that both made it more pathogenic in some respects and much less in others -- but the hard to predict ones made it more pathogenic and the easily missed ones made it less pathogenic.

Zhengli had extensive experience with those methods, picked up from years working with Ralph Baric and as someone who trains others, I assure you, you teach what you know works, and a student will generally build off of what their teacher knows for a fact works. You use the tools you have around you, and I'll wager they had a bunch more inventory from that work than otherwise. Do you happen to have copies of records of digestion kit purchases from around the time in question, and the ability to cross-check with WIV inventory records? If your answer is no, you have no business trying to rule it out as a possibility.

>It's not solely the presence/absence of restriction sites that would indicate a lab-engineered virus. All scientists are basically using the same set of tools in terms of computation models and molecular techniques -- so when you see a spike protein that is "optimized for ACE2 binding" as many breathless people claimed -- you can tell that it actually isn't all that well optimized, and the genetics / stats package that would have been used to design the variant actually indicate several better options if you were trying to achieve high-efficiency ACE2 binding [see the discussion paragraph here: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JVI.00127-20]

Explain to me why the FCS codes for the motif most common in human beings if it's evolutionary route was through intermediate hosts, and not predicated on the fact that most laboratory tools are going to have a human centric bias to them (humanized mice, digestions being made for tge human genome benefitting from increased acailibility based off of economies of scale, thereby satisfying all prerequisite assumptions of how they got there by "bored stocker of lab does what they always do)? Also explain to me why the intermediate virus was not only not sampled earlier, but even now still comes to light out of concerns of cross-contamination? Given, if you went ahead and lined up some samples on a machine with a known tendency misalign, I can't account for not putting buffer space between samples, but in a way this just solidifies the lab origin even more. People make mistakes handling highly pathogenic material. Hence the absurd level of risk with GoF, and the warranted not putting the case down til an exhaustive accounting of what went on is arrived at with adverse inference being warranted at continued attempts to mislead or further muddy the waters.

>So you have to simultaneously believe they're very competent at the molecular engineering needed to silently design viruses, but incompetent enough to use inefficient inserts and miss obvious, readily predictable areas to make it more pathogenic. Until we find a precursor virus or a whistleblower, we're down to weighing probabilities and I'd put "engineering using seamless recombination" very, very low on the list.. like below 0.01%.

You're acting like people are thinking this was a specifically engineered bioweapon. I ain't one of em. Research is more organic. It's called "The Art" for a reason. I'm 100% comfortable this is an outcome of someone with the best intentions doing and experiment, getting more of a hot tamale than they bargained for, not paying enough attention during handling or disposal, and then having a bad time. This is the case no virologist period wants to be considered. That they are human, prone to mistakes that can cause lethal outbreaks, and that the rest of society should just let the entire thing rest because it was just nature, (with or without a guiding hand).

I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Find me an intermediate host that doesn't have "lab animal" or "GoF" subject written all over it, and we can talk.

Yuri Deigin did a write up:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744920/

Ptoject E.V.I.D.E.N.C.E is still a mountain of circumstantial evidence that are in favor of availability of motive, means, and opportunity. Ralph Baric and Shi Zhengli, and their research students would have had more than enough reasons to actually do digestions that don't leave restriction sites. When you're out to create a virus to base a vaccine off of, or to quantify a risk factor relating to making a zoonotic jump you don't want your tools of the trade leaving kerf lines that'll interfere with immunological response formation.

There's a couple other articles that have been written up by prominent bioethicists, and there's evidence of malfeasance in terms of funding GoF research indirectly.

The case stands. Preponderance of evidence warrants further investigation. Not the opposite. If it were truly so unlikely, why was the last decade filled with such interest in being able to do seamless inserts and viral reconstruction?

No, no, no. I'm sorry. Just. Not. Buying. It.