https://news.yahoo.com/chinese-virologist-claimed-coronavirus-intentionally-150200793.html

As an example of the quack science they defend, we have this thoroughly ignorant statement:

“Most experts think the coronavirus originated in bats before jumping to people; one study found that it shared 96% of its genetic code with coronaviruses circulating in Chinese bat populations.”

According to the American Museum of Natural History, humans and chimps share 98.8% of their DNA. So the difference between the coronavirus in wild bats and the Covid-19 virus is three times greater than the difference between chimps and humans. As another reference, humans and mice share 92% of their genes, or in another estimate they share 97.5% of “working DNA”. Could a mouse accidentally have a human child or a human give birth to a mouse? That idea supposedly should pass for science, but it resembles something out of Greek mythology.

The article’s main point, that funding for the research came from an organization formerly headed by Steve Bannon as well as a Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui, that escaped the political persecution of the Chinese government and mass media, does not respond to any of the arguments of the article, which they dismiss merely as “poppycock” that no one can “decode”. Who funded the research that they cite with authority? Henry Wellcome, a guilded age American-born British robber baron and owner of Napoleon’s tooth brush.

I will review the paper itself in the coming days to follow this story.