Thread by @WashburneAlex

I had the privilege of explaining the reasons for a lab origin to a literal 5th grader the other day. The argument went as follows.

Suppose you found a giraffe in the streets of San Diego - do you think that's a wild giraffe?

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Furthermore, suppose the giraffe was glowing green like a jellyfish, a weird trait we've never seen before in a giraffe.

What if we found a proposal from 1 year earlier where scientists proposed to make a glowing-green giraffe in San Diego?

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Imagine if giraffes at the San Diego zoo had ear tags and you looked closer at the giraffe to find an unusual hole in both ears that is in the exact size & location we've documented in other zoo giraffes, and we can show these holes are anomalous in wild giraffes.

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When we put all of this info together - a proposal to make a weird organism, the location of emergence of exactly that organism, the unusual traits of the organism, the weird marks consistent with organisms made by these same people - it's clear this is not a wild giraffe

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DEFUSE proposed in 2018 to insert an FCS in a bat SARS-CoV reverse genetics system in Wuhan.

A bat SARS-CoV (giraffe) emerged in Wuhan (San Diego) with an FCS (green-glow) and the restriction map of a reverse genetics system (ear piercings consistent with ear tags).

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