SARS-CoV-2 update

I believe the null hypothesis on the COVID-19 origin was natural infection, not a lab leak. That's because that's how all other pandemics that I know of started. That being the case, the burden of proof is on the lab leak hypothesis to provide data falsifying the null hypothesis. In fact, the data for a natural origin just got stronger:

"Through a swirl of data obfuscation by Chinese authorities and politicalization within the United States, and rampant speculation from all corners of the world, many scientists have stood by the notion that this outbreak—like most others—had purely natural roots. But that hypothesis has been missing a key piece of proof: genetic evidence from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, showing that the virus had infected creatures for sale there.

"This week, an international team of virologists, genomicists, and evolutionary biologists may have finally found crucial data to help fill that knowledge gap. A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It’s some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses."

I do a have a quibble with the language in the first graf. Science doesn't deal in proof, it deals in evidence. All scientific conclusions are provisional and subject to additional tests that could overturn those conclusions.

You can read the whole thing here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/