Primo Numero Uno wrote:
Harambe wrote:
1) you can engineer viruses without making rational mutations. Simply passaging infected cell lines will tend to select for more infective variants thanks to random mutation alone. Most protein/strain engineering involves random mutation to some extent
2) this doesn't rule out accidental release of a wild strain that was being cataloged in a lab.
When viruses jump from animals to humans they are very poorly suited for human infection and the spread usually stops before anyone know it started. But COVID was instantly highly infectious. This is highly suggestive of #1, it could have been given the chance to develop the ability to spread more easily in human cells.
I also think that there is a good chance that this was an accidental release of a wild strain that was being studied in the lab, but I do not see any particular reason to believe it was being engineered. The fact that the virus is highly infective is probably just bad luck. These type of animal-human transmissions happen all of the time and in most cases they are asymptomatic and do not spread, so nobody notices or cares. Once in a billion a virus wins the genetic lottery and you get a pandemic.