> but there are many strong indications that it did.
Nope, there really aren't. We're now finding more and more naturally-evolved viruses in cave-dwelling bats that share plenty of features with SARS-CoV2, including the 'weird' features everyone was talking about at the beginning of the pandemic. All it really takes is to go and look for them. Occam's razor says this virus too is just one of many.
10's of thousands of animals have been tested for a predecessor to human Covid-19 though, for two years now, and nothing has been found, despite looking very hard and in ways that 'should have' found something had it been there. In all other known zoonotic crossovers, where we had the modern capability to test, the virus or a very close relative was quickly found.
Since we have exhaustively eliminated zoonotic origin, whatever is left must be the cause, even if it did not have the preponderance of circumstantial evidence that lab escape does.
> BANAL-52 is 96.8% identical to SARS-CoV-2; one section in BANAL-103 and BANAL-52 could have shared an ancestor with sections of SARS-CoV-2 less than a decade ago.
> RaTG13 is 96.1% identical to SARS-CoV-2 and the two viruses probably shared a common ancestor 40–70 years ago.
Once you let ideology infiltrate your reasoning, you’re no longer doing science. Just because you don’t like the implications of a particular piece of research doesn’t mean you get to dismiss it.
I think the parent poster was talikng about BANAL virus discovered in Laos, which apparently is closest to SARS-CoV2, but it doesn't have Furin Cleavage Site.
> The Laos study offers insight into the origins of the pandemic, but there are still missing links, say researchers. For example, the Laos viruses don’t contain the so-called furin cleavage site on the spike protein that further aids the entry of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses into human cells.
From [1]. So yes, the claim made by the parent poster is patently false.
Nope, there really aren't. We're now finding more and more naturally-evolved viruses in cave-dwelling bats that share plenty of features with SARS-CoV2, including the 'weird' features everyone was talking about at the beginning of the pandemic. All it really takes is to go and look for them. Occam's razor says this virus too is just one of many.