FIrst, thanks for posting this debate. It took me several days to get through it, but It did change my opinion on the origin of covid-19.
While Peter ostensibly won with his natural origin premise, both parties failed to see the flaws in Peter's biggest arguments. Namely, 1) that the odds of a lab leak first surfacing at a wet market were 1 in 10,000 and 2) that the furin cleavage site was so unusual it would never be done that way in a lab.
Both premises include major logical fallacies.
Here is what most likely happened and why.
If a WIV lab leak occurred, where would it most likely surface? It would not surface first at the lab itself because EXTREME steps are taken to avoid both airborne and surface contamination at the lab.
No, the most likely location for a breakout would be a place visited by the infected lab worker that’s wet, densely populated, poorly ventilated, poorly lighted, and in very poor sanitary conditions. Not only does the Wuhan wet market fit that description, wet markets have historically been centers of previous virus outbreaks because wet markets provide ideal environments for viruses to grow and spread.
Peter’s second premise on the unlikely location of the furin cleavage site proving natural origin has a more egregious flaw. Quoting from the article:
This was a major win for natural origin because Saar had no convincing response, but it caused me to wonder, “Why would scientists purposely use such an unconventional approach when a logical, proven approach already existed?”
When the answer came to me, it was so shockingly simple that everything fell into place.
Scientists knew that adding a furin site would make the virus more infectious to humans, but doing it the common way would make it obvious that the virus had been engineered. If they were ordered to try to hide that the virus was man made, they would experiment with ways to add a furin site in a way that had never been done before.
My new opinion is that Chinese scientists were secretly trying to create a bioweapon at WIV and one of its early variants escaped by infecting a worker as I earlier described. This variant had been modified in a novel way to defuse allegations that it had been man made.
Before you ridicule my premise, ask yourself the following questions.
How likely is it that…
1. The CCP was actively researching viruses as bioweapons in 2019
2. That this research would be done at WIV… China’s #1 biosafe facility.
3. That this research would be highly secret.
4. That scientists would be ordered to try to hide that the virus was man made
5. That the CCP would shut down any attempts by outsiders to determine the origin of the virus until no smoking gun could be found. Records would be expunged. Scientists and journalists would be given gag orders or in extreme cases, disappeared.
Ironically, Peter won the debate because neither side was willing to address the 3rd posssiblity… Sars-CoV- 2 was a virus in the process of being engineered to be a bioweapon and also being engineered to not appear to be man made. It then escaped by infecting a lab worker who then carried it to an ideal location for growth and spread… the Wuhan wet market.
Let's look at Peter's statement again. "human engineers. … they would have had to eschew all usual gain-of-function practices in favor of inserting a weird furin cleavage site that shouldn’t have worked according to the theory they had at the time."
That is EXACTLY WHAT SCIENTISTS WOULD DO if they were ordered to hide that their virus had been bioengineered. They would choose an approach that had not been done successfully before.
