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Notes -
The "Proximal Origin" official release was March 17th, but the preprint was publicly released February 17th and was heavily used at that time, including by a Lancet Feb 19th paper (see popsci coverage here) and by individual relevant experts. So it's a pretty fast turn-around, and before some of the stuff they've since cited as cause was known for internal discussions.
I think this would be reasonable if the takeaway from "Proximal Origin", either the February or March versions, was merely to say that in-pangolin or in-human or in-some-unknown-species evolution of the necessary genome was possible, and that was it. It's even somewhat fair to use Occam's Razor and say that, if both the natural origin and a lab leak were both possible, favor the natural origin one simply out of priors. But that's not really how the paper was written, nor was read. Even the February version starts with the claim that "this analysis provides evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct nor a purposefully manipulated virus." Meanwhile, Andersen specifically worried about serial passage in private into April!
For the most part, the more conspiracy-minded people tend to focus on some chain of custody and data reliability issues for RmYN02 et all, but I think the more immediate problem's that the 600-miles criticism goes the other direction.
Raising the odds a highly similar virus could have evolved nearer Wuhan or from an animal species that was being brought to the wet market, assuming another species with similar environmental conditions to provides the same RCBs were available, still has to face the counterfactual of some guy from the building devoted to collecting viruses from 600+ miles away picked up samples and did some testing with it without sufficient caution. Sure, that's the sorta thing that rests so heavily on priors that I'd not be certain much one way or the other. But I'm not the guy who called any possibility a conspiracy theory that shouldn't even be entertained.
Even that on its own would just be a systems-level problem, except it's not just that Andersen et all were incorrectly calibrated. After all, I was incorrectly calibrated, even if I didn't go on national television about it. The problem's that these texts make incredibly clear that he and the other researchers weren't so clearly certain in private; they just clearly went into the publication wanting to have a specific answer, and doing so for pretty overtly pragmatic reasons.
Here's the timeline as I understand it:
On February 1 the scientists email Fauci saying they're uncertain if the RBD could be emerge naturally from evolution. Then, supposedly, he calls a conference where pressure is applied to them to change their results.
Both scientists testified under oath that this characterization of the conference is a misrepresentation - neither Fauci nor Dr. Collins organized or requested the conference, neither really spoke, and no pressure was applied to change results or push for any outcome. Maybe they lied under oath, but it seems like a silly thing to risk prison for.
On February 17 the preprint comes out with a less definitive thesis, not arguing they've disproven the lab leak but that "this analysis provides evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct nor a purposefully manipulated virus." - which it does.
On February 19 the latest data on coronavirus in pangolins gets released, demonstrating that this particular human binding characteristic can emerge naturally. This removes the uncertainty they mentioned on the 1st. They incorporate it into their research.
On March 17 the final version is released and comes out with a stronger position: "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," because the main lab leak argument seems pretty disproven.
In between the time they were uncertain and the time they have claimed a strong final analysis, over a month and a half have passed and new, directly applicable research has emerged. I do assume that politicization is baked into this stuff, and this study is certainly no exception, but there's nothing highly suspicious about getting new evidence and updating your position.
Also, as Nate Silver grudgingly points out, even in their final report they do not write off the possibility of the lab leak, only say that present evidence offers it no support: “More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another”.
The scenario here would be that Covid came from a scientist driving out 600 miles (or maybe up to 3000 miles, because these are imports from Malaysia) to find pangolins to test, took them back another 600-3000 miles, studied their RBD, and tried to make something similar? All I can say is it's not an argument I've heard anyone make before. Either way this scenario would still remove the skeptics' main argument that we should assume Covid is man-made because its RBD can't happen in nature; clearly it can.
Edit - removed post because of a misinterpretation. Rewording and posting elsewhere.
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