By saying “Wuhan lab origin”, you can roughly mean three things:
biological weapon, intentionally released,
natural virus collected, artificially improved, then escaped,
natural virus collected, then escaped in the original form.
The first we can safely dismiss: who would drop a biological weapon of this type on their own population?
We can also dismiss the third one, if you think in near mode what that would actually mean. It means the virus was already out there. Then someone collected it—obviously, not all existing particles of the virus—which means that most of the virus particles that were already out there, have remained out there. But that makes the leak from Wuhan lab an unnecessary detail; “virus already in the wild, starts pandemic” is way more likely than “virus already in the wild, does not start pandemic, but when a few particles are brought into a lab and then accidentally released without being modified, they start pandemic”… what?
This is why arguing for natural evolution of the virus is arguing against the lab leak. (It’s just not clearly explained.) If you do not assume that the virus was modified, then the hypothesis that the pandemic started by Wuhan lab leak, despite the virus already being out there before it was brought to the Wuhan lab, is privileging the hypothesis. If the virus is already out there, you don’t need to bring it to a lab and let it escape again in order to… be out there, again.
Now here I agree that the artificial improvement of the virus cannot be disproved. I mean, whatever can happen in the nature, probably can also happen in the lab, so how would you prove it didn’t?
I guess I am trying to say that in the Wikipedia article, the section “gain of function research” does not deserve to be classified as misinformation, but the remaining sections do.
By saying “Wuhan lab origin”, you can roughly mean three things:
biological weapon, intentionally released,
natural virus collected, artificially improved, then escaped,
natural virus collected, then escaped in the original form.
The first we can safely dismiss: who would drop a biological weapon of this type on their own population?
We can also dismiss the third one, if you think in near mode what that would actually mean. It means the virus was already out there. Then someone collected it—obviously, not all existing particles of the virus—which means that most of the virus particles that were already out there, have remained out there. But that makes the leak from Wuhan lab an unnecessary detail; “virus already in the wild, starts pandemic” is way more likely than “virus already in the wild, does not start pandemic, but when a few particles are brought into a lab and then accidentally released without being modified, they start pandemic”… what?
This is why arguing for natural evolution of the virus is arguing against the lab leak. (It’s just not clearly explained.) If you do not assume that the virus was modified, then the hypothesis that the pandemic started by Wuhan lab leak, despite the virus already being out there before it was brought to the Wuhan lab, is privileging the hypothesis. If the virus is already out there, you don’t need to bring it to a lab and let it escape again in order to… be out there, again.
Now here I agree that the artificial improvement of the virus cannot be disproved. I mean, whatever can happen in the nature, probably can also happen in the lab, so how would you prove it didn’t?
I guess I am trying to say that in the Wikipedia article, the section “gain of function research” does not deserve to be classified as misinformation, but the remaining sections do.