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Jiří Hudeček's avatar

My question is how would anyone know the virus epi characteristics in vivo without first starting a controlled outbreak between humans. You could hypothesize about the higher transmissibility but not the amount of asymptomatic infection, incubation period and lethality. Also the ORF8 protein, which is responsible for most of the unique features of SARS-CoV-2, especially its interactions with the human immune system, is completely novel and not known from any other virus. Again, how could have anyone designed it and have any confidence about its effects in a human population? https://www.pnas.org/content/118/2/e2021785118

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Double Individual Speculator's avatar

I absolutely agree. Nobody could ever predict its effects. That's why I don't think for a second there is any evil motive behind it. I think they were honestly looking for a coronavirus vaccine. And genuinely curiously although carelessly playing a little with passaging through humanized mice. Maybe they even weren't fully aware of its high transmissibility. It's the lying and cover-ups that were wrong and did the damage.

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Jiří Hudeček's avatar

Why would they produce a vaccine for an unknown coronavirus instead of the well-studied examples they published about? If there was no evil intent it makes no sense to hide the virus and not publish about it, like Shi Zhengli et al did about many other viruses.

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Double Individual Speculator's avatar

As I understand, they were looking for a universal coronavirus vaccine. They had a lot of samples from the Mojiang and those miners in 2012 that weren't yet disclosed or sequenced. It could be that they just started the work and had nothing yet to publish. But you are right, Zhengli really used to publish a lot. Who knows. What's your thinking? Was there some evil plan?

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