OTOH, no one has found the zoonotic origin for ebola people looking for literally decades. That's also the case for a few other diseases as well. Just because the origin for MERS and SARS was found quickly, it doesn't follow that covid investigations will be as quick

If ebola had emerged right next to a lab doing high-risk research on ebola-like viruses, people would have (justifiably) been highly suspicious.

To add to this, the wet market theory is baloney. No bats were sold or traded there.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2

Your "most likely" theory seems extremely fringe with absolutely zero evidence. I can see how it's possible but it seems vastly more complicated than just a lab leak.

Zero evidence? Might want to look at the details of the NIH grant funding the research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. You aren't very informed on the subject, which is why you dismiss it as fringe.

https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje...

It's right at the bottom of the summary.

"3. Test predictions of CoV inter-species transmission. Predictive models of host range (i.e. emergence potential) will be tested experimentally using reverse genetics, pseudovirus and receptor binding assays, and virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanized mice."

But sure, it's fringe and unlikely that the virus leaked out of a lab where it was specifically stated by the scientists applying for the grant that the funding would be used for testing interspecies transmission of bat coronaviruses with humanized mice. The lab doing this being in Wuhan, where the pandemic originated is also totally fringe and unlikely, is totally unrelated, right?

Read this part of the thread again: https://twitter.com/MoNscience/status/1396243452099170305

Gain of function proponents are ignoring research that indicates it's not possible to generate a virus dangerous to humans without leaving specific telltales. While this study isn't necessarily conclusive or a door slam in the face of lab leak, it's pretty huge data point that makes it far less likely.

This is a horrible Twitter thread. He leads off with an immediate ad hominem against Nicholas Wade, complete with an accusation of racism. He then states, falsely, that it isn't possible to engineer a virus without telltale markers, ignoring more modern techniques which don't leave telltales. He also conflates engineering a virus with the argument of it leaking. The thread reeks of cognitive dissonance and cherry picked straw men, but the disgusting racism smear on Wade was just wrong. And I'm not even going to dig into the out of the gate comparison he used with climate deniers. Deeply insulting, and in bad faith.

I also forgot to mention that he deliberately ignored the humanized mice being the location of the serial passage work, and straw manned a "petri dish". Completely misrepresenting the fact that was most crucial.

In the future, using a Twitter account with locked comments is inadvisable. He blocked comments for a reason.

It's not an ad hominem, it's an attack on his credibility. He does not assert it's impossible to engineer a virus without markers he points to two reviewed studies saying known techniques will leave telltales. Like I said, it's evidence against lab leak but not conclusive.

His entire argument is very straightforward. Zoonotic origin is highly plausible, has caused previous SARS outbreaks, has no evidence against it. Lab leak is possible, though it has no precedent and there's evidence that makes it less likely. There's no conclusive evidence for either. The balance of evidence and history leans heavily to zoonotic. There is absolutely nothing anyone has said in this thread that he didn't directly address nor anything that weakens his argument. Anyone on the lab leak train right now is basing it purely on bias.

Saying that a lab leak of a SARS virus has no precedent is completely inaccurate.

There was a lab leak of SARS1 in 2004 which infected a lab worker and the people he came in contact with. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.the-scientist.com/news-anal...