For the non-scientist who might be confused by the CoV-2 origin debate, a proper sentence by a scientist has two parts. The first part is the data, the observation; the second part is the conclusion that follows from the data.
Based on testing 80,000 animals and finding no CoV-2 in any of them, one can conclude from statistics that the prevalence of CoV-2 where the testing was done must be less than 0.0004%.
Given that the zoonoses, SARS1 and MERS, had >85% positive tests in markets, the likelihood CoV-2 is a zoonosis like SARS1 or MERS is less than 1 in a 1,000,000.
See how easy it is when you say, data first, conclusion last.
Don't be fooled by degrees or university appointments.
If all someone gives you is a conclusion, they are not giving you science; they're just bullying you.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I agree this is not an example of codon optimization for the same reason; it is done over a larger region.
But natural selection in betacoronaviruses has NEVER produced a -CGG-CGG- dimer codon pair. Repeating: there has never been this codon dimer in a coronavirus from nature.
So after scanning 580,000 betacoronavirus codons you suddenly have a -CGG-CGG- cannot be waved away with the 'sh#@' happens hypothesis. Remember, codons have a matching tRNA so putting the two rarest codons together is going to slow/stall transcription.
So we have a functional furin site that has never been seen in a betacoronavirus before that is coded for by a codon dimer that has never been seen before.