Thread by @GPIngersoll

Here is what we know and what we don’t:

1. We know the virus came from bats.
2. We don’t know how it jumped from bats to humans, the missing link
3. We know the kind of bat it came from was hundreds of miles from where the outbreak occurred.
4 ...

We know the lab right beside the outbreak was studying how viruses evolve to jump species.

5 We know this is called gain of function research.

6 We know this research was briefly banned in the US bec it has the potential to create, yes create, highly transmissible new pathogens

7. We also know that several of the naysayers say this virus is like 95% genetically similar to viruses already present in nature.

8. But we know that many of these naysayers have a vested financial interest in preserving this research.

9. And we know that it’s not

The 95 percent we’re worried about, but the five percent, the missing link that changed the virus.

10. Finally, we know that the main goal of this research lab was to ENCOURAGE that ‘five percent’ change in a virus that makes it transmissible to humans. That is what GoF does.

Bonus: We also know the extent to which China sought to annihilate all evidence and dialogue around IF the virus spilled out of the lab.

We also know that US media picked up a lot of the same talking points Beijing used to suppress discourse around this possibility.

You come up on a bloody crime scene, there’s Beijing scrubbing furiously and denying culpability. Later you find out that before Beijing was scrubbing, it was kidnapping and coercing witnesses.

Do you credulously repeat their defenses? Or does your skepticism meter tick up?

Last one I swear: We also know the long ... LONG ... history of this research leaking. And leaking from TOP US and British facilities.

Do you think Beijing’s facility was more or less trustworthy than facilities in the free world?