I'm seeing this go around again by the usual lab leak cranks.

in covid •  11 months ago 

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This preprint is still in preprint hell for now going on 16 months. It has been heavily criticized by the scientific community.

I'll link to a published paper that critiques it. This paper is only based on statistical modelling and as the critique discusses they limited their scope to get this result. Perhaps most importantly, many of the paper's assertions aren't the smoking gun they claim to be.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935123002736?via%3Dihub

Over the last few years we've greatly expanded our knowledge about natural coronaviruses. For example three years ago we found BANAL-52 in Laos which is now the closest known relative to SARS-COV-2. What the authors fail to mention is how many of the qualities of SARS-COV-2 that we thought were unusual or novel are being found in nature. We just have only really touched the surface of the potential diversity of coronaviruses in the wild, which really just further emphasizes why virus surveillance is so important.

It isn't particularly relevant to the argument of course, but I should also note the author has been peddling the lab leak claim for years at the Brownstone Institute, Jeffrey Tucker's new "think tank".

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