Clark
“SA and Dr Edd: but the debate about the possible origins of SARS-CoV-2 seems to be ongoing in the scientific community and the scientific literature,….”
Forgive me asking for a reference to this as I am not aware that there is a scientific debate about this. What I am aware of is this.
This is really not a piece of research but merely an opinion piece. The supposed authors postulate that the lab was the source of the infection on circumstantial evidence. This has been grasped upon by some in the right wing media, bolstered by Trump and Pompeo’s accusations against China for political reasons.
Here are some refutations of this, here and here
Now just to be clear what exactly we are discussing. I take it you fully agree with what Dr Edd has written and which is the consensus amongst many scientists that this is a natural virus because this has been proven beyond doubt. The next level of suspicion therefore is to say that the Wuhan lab stumbled across this virus before it started to infect humans. But where would they have got this virus from? A bat? Again this is highly implausible, even though they have a repository of many bat viruses as this is an important area of research post the SARS epidemics. The closest then known BAT virus had 96% homology with the SARS-Cov2 virus but lacked the determinants in the spike protein with specific affinity to the human ACE2 receptor. If they have isolated the active virus, it would have therefore very likely originated from another animal such as a civet or a pangolin or some other unknown animal and this would have been fishing in the dark. I guess another possible scenario to obtain such a virus is to ‘passage’ the virus in the lab, through some other animal or tissue culture and hope for the emergence of a mutated virus that can attach to ACE2. This would be a deliberate programme and would then involve a conspiracy within the Chinese authority to develop a bioweapon.
I guess one of the above scenarios are remote possibilities but until someone comes with more evidence it remains speculative, and I am afraid that there is no easy way to prove it in this heated atmosphere of antagonisms.