Even the article states that the fear of their research is:
>“If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,”
I'm sure engineering viruses is a difficult task, but we know that they were doing this sort of thing already via funded public projects.. and they also don't necessarily have to have developed it in the Wuhan Institute itself, but it's not unreasonable to think that a samples that were created elsewhere and being stored there for research.
Regarding: >the only thing that Eric Feigl-Ding actually states is that the origin of the virus isn't well understood.
He does also state definitively that the market was not the origin.. despite that everyone else in the world seems to accept this as fact.
You are correct that this is not my area of expertise, which is why I am hoping that people more knowledgable than myself can tell me why this thought process isn't worth pursuing.
> I'm sure engineering viruses is a difficult task, but we know that they were doing this sort of thing already via funded public projects.
Yes, but what they did is different from (and much easier than) engineering a protein for a new function, because what they did was combine parts of different known virus strains together.
If that was the origin of SARS-CoV-2, you would see precise matches to the different origin strains for the different viral proteins. Now of course, the origin might be different secretly collected wild viruses, but at that point the only reason why that's a compelling story is that it sounds exciting...
I'm presenting things that I've read that have made me curious and am trying to gather opposing information to create an informed opinion.
But yes, an engineered virus is the theory I am trying to gather information against.
We know for a fact that Shi Zheng-Li and his team has already worked on engineering coronaviruses previously:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavi...
Even the article states that the fear of their research is:
>“If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,”
I'm sure engineering viruses is a difficult task, but we know that they were doing this sort of thing already via funded public projects.. and they also don't necessarily have to have developed it in the Wuhan Institute itself, but it's not unreasonable to think that a samples that were created elsewhere and being stored there for research.
Regarding: >the only thing that Eric Feigl-Ding actually states is that the origin of the virus isn't well understood.
He does also state definitively that the market was not the origin.. despite that everyone else in the world seems to accept this as fact.
You are correct that this is not my area of expertise, which is why I am hoping that people more knowledgable than myself can tell me why this thought process isn't worth pursuing.
I do appreciate your feedback.