See? This is why you discuss politics on a tech site, odds are that there are people around that *knows* something!
Getting into the details, you guys mind giving us an idea about your credentials? You obviously have insight into the domain.
So the deduction actually arrives at the redundant logical conclusion : Rand Paul is an idiot. I am thinking of the case(s) where he tears into Fauci for the research into "gain function" at the Wuhan lab alluding that the virus was actually something they engineered at the site. According to abj13, this is not possible. Its actually right out.
So the question is reduced to the core of it. Did it *leak* from the lab? (did they ever realize what they had? when did they pick it up? can we go back and find prior break outs in China that they managed to contain?).
As I've mentioned, the data behind the virus being engineered by man in the lab is very weak, conflicts with the current status of virological techniques, and doesn't make logical sense. But let's assume it is for a moment, how was it made? There would be three ways I could invision it being theoretically possible
1) The virus was built from the ground up, meaning the creator(s) built the virus nucleotide by nucleotide. As I've already described in previous posts, this is not compatible with current genomic techniques. Science does not have the capacity to choose random nucleotide and therefore amino acid sequences, building proteins from the ground-up. Science has to rely on borrowing ideas from nature, and can modify those sequences. If the virus was built from the ground up, it would have taken years, used scientific techniques that don't exist, and an incredible amount of resources. SARS-CoV-2 is too different from any other known virus at this point in time. And logically, it doesn't make sense either. If you want to build the next SARS virus, you would build something close to SARS-CoV-1 and modify it. Building something completely new and different would take too long, used so many researchers and resources, and like I said, you would have to invent techniques that don't currently exist in the public scientific world. On top of it, you have no idea whether your virus will be more effective than SARS-CoV-1. To make this possibility a reality, you have to invoke a secret cabal of scientists working in secret for years funded by someone like SR Hadden.
2) The virus was built from a related virus but changed. I've talked about this too. SARS-CoV-2 is simply too different from any known virus. Even the possible ways it could have been created that people have suggested (taking the virus and growing it for months to years and letting it spontaneously mutate) conflicts with previous published science. This approach would have required years if not a decade's worth of waiting for the virus to be grown. But that's just growing the virus. If you are going to modify it, you have to develop essential techniques to handle the virus. Which cells do you grow it in? What are the cell culture conditions? How do you measure the virus quantity? PCR? Viral plaque assays? Then you have to sequence the virus. And if you want to further modify the virus, you have to build the reverse genetics system. So you have to take the sequences, build plasmids or an bacterial artificial chromosome, and then modify the sequences. And how do you know it works? This isn't trivial techniques, someone's entire career could be based off of what I just described. This is years to decades worth of science. Like with possibility 1, if you want to make some badass coronavirus, you're not going to dick around with some bat coronavirus, hope it develops mutations in cell culture over years, and build techniques that don't exist. If you wanted to make a nasty coronavirus, then use SARS-CoV-1 as your starting point and make small changes to create an even more deadly virus.
3) SARS-CoV-2 was identified from a sample, and purposely mutated for gain of function research. Even this doesn't make much sense. In order to study gains of function, you would have to know what the baseline capacity of a virus is, modify it, and determine if it is a more effective virus. So if someone is going to study gain of functions for coronaviruses, why the heck would you choose some unknown virus with unknown functions, and take years to study how it infects to understand how it works? Then you would have to build the techniques to modify the virus through reverse genetics, create the mutations, and it is likely your first attempt isn't very effective, so you have to go through several iterations of mutating the virus to create enhancements. Or you could use a virus that has been studied for 15 years, SARS-CoV-1, and insert gain of functions like this furin cleavage site that has been described. So which makes more sense? Spending years building a system to study a virus that nobody else has studied, building all these necessary techniques and skills, and then mutating it... or starting with SARS-CoV-1, not needing to build anything since it already exists, and mutate SARS-CoV-1? If one really wanted to examine the furin cleavage site, it would have taken only a few months to a year to do this for SARS-CoV-1. Again, one would have to invoke SR Hadden with a hidden cabal of scientists working for years on this possibility. Even from a scientific perspective, if you discovered a novel coronavirus that had some potential capacity to infect humans, this would be a major scientific finding. Altruistic scientists would want to get this information out, not only for public knowledge, but this would be a major paper (career advancement) and would get lots of scientific attention. You would have to invoke that somehow a government or SR Hadden was smart enough to recognize the potential, and squashed any reporting of the virus until years of required scientific effort to modify it was completed. So not only was there a secret cabal of scientists and enormous funds spent, but it was systematically covered up. Damn Pizzagate people, once again hiding the truth!
Now could have the virus leaked from the lab? Sure. They could have had some bat, pangolin, or other animal sample, and a researcher was contaminated and the virus got out. But that's harder to prove. But that is entirely different from someone purposely modifying/engineering a virus, which is what the a proportion of people want to invoke.