“RaTG13 couldn’t have naturally morphed into SARS-CoV-2,” he says. Neither could anybody have used RaTG13 as the backbone to engineer SARS-CoV-2, as some proponents of the lab leak theory have argued: the two viruses are different in 1,100 or so nucleotides spread across their whole genomes—a gap too large for any realistic effort. Making SARS-CoV-2 from RaTG13, says virologist Angela Rasmussen of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, “would have required a feat of unprecedented genetic engineering.”
This quote is not actually a point against the lab leak theory, because it addresses the issue of lab creation, not lab leak.
This is a very long piece based on extensive interviews in China, and as such I thought it gave some interesting context. But the author is so openly trying to defend the Chinese at every turn, it felt like reading a long attempt at spin control.
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The most salient point against a lab leak theory:
This quote is not actually a point against the lab leak theory, because it addresses the issue of lab creation, not lab leak.
This is a very long piece based on extensive interviews in China, and as such I thought it gave some interesting context. But the author is so openly trying to defend the Chinese at every turn, it felt like reading a long attempt at spin control.