When he says definitively 'it didn't leak from a lab', what he *means* is that he personally hasn't heard a lab leak theory that he thinks is consistent with two unpublished preprints.
In what Universe is is OK to call a female Asian scientist (who is way more qualified and even-handed, BTW) a "liar" and a "grifter" because she doesn't agree with your scientific viewpoint that we should accept flimsy evidence and stop talking about other alternatives?
Market hypothesis is NOT even well-supported by evidence, let alone the overwhelming scientific consensus.
Plus, people holding the market hypothesis are basically alleging a conspiracy theory themselves, since it relies on China purposely or accidently removing evidence.
Why does he consider the Worobey and Pekar Preprints to be "facts" that "prove" a market origin, while the Gao preprint that was released at the same says it was NOT the market?
Oh yeah, because alleging a CCP cover-up is fine if it involves animals.
This one is proof by personal incredulity. 'I can't see how it could have happened, thus it couldn't have happened'
“The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”—Bertrand Russell
I know this might have been done before, but it's very enlightening to check out the Feb 17, 2020 version of "Proximal Origins" on the Wayback Machine and compare it with the final version.
Lead author Kristian Andersen has already called an engineered origin a "crackpot" theory in an email on Feb 4.
(after saying it potentially looked engineered on Feb 1).
The original from Feb 17 sounds like something a scientist would actually say.
Notice how they will avoid talking about passage in animals here - for example with mice with humanized ACE2 receptors - when talking about the RBD, because that might actually have worked.
Later, they *will* talk about animal passage, to say it wouldn't work for the FCS.
Baric was making "seamless" infectious clones of betacoronaviruses almost 20 years ago(!)
"The interconnecting restriction site junctions that are located at the ends of each cDNA are systematically removed...allowing reassembly without the introduction of nucleotide changes"
"...We purposely introduced several silent changes to remove preexisting Esp3I sites that resided within the MHV-A59 genome sequence and to distinguish between molecularly cloned and wild-type viruses..."
Proximal Origins (2020): No way SARS2 was the product of engineering - there are no traces of restriction sites.
Ralph Baric (2002): I invented a way to engineer coronaviruses without leaving a trace, and gave it a charming old-timey name.