Lab leak theory of pandemic origin is still on the table | WHO

They’ve tested nearly 100,000 animals at the wet markets.
Result = zero covid. Animals: “Not guilty, M’lud!”

My headline above Is more accurate than the one at the South China Morning Post: “Covid-19 data points to animal origin…”. No it doesn’t. For there is nothing new to add to the zoonotic theory of transmission via animals at a wet market, which has been extensively studied, whereas the lab leak theory has not been allowed, by the Chinese government, to be studied. Yet there remains a lot of circumstantial smoke — including early reactions by virologists that the genome appeared “engineered” — around the lab leak theory. 

One quote from the Post report:

The group of 27 scientists from around the world said the closest genetically related virus was a family of coronaviruses identified in horseshoe bats in China in 2013, which is 96.1 per cent close, and in Laos in 2020 with 96.8 per cent genetic overlap, but they were not close enough.

 Now, we all know, don’t we, that we share 98+% of our DNA with monkeys, yet look at the difference. 96% similar doesn’t cut it. As the leader of the SAGO group notes herself! The “they were not close enough” is from the team leader, Marietjie Venter. And it rather destroys the Post’s own headline. 

Thus the SAGO report does not exonerate Wuhan Institute of Virology, still less Chinese officials.  

References:

“Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO)”

Dr Campbell has thoughts