Over the past three years, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has repeatedly caused pandemics, generating various mutated variants ranging from Alpha to Omicron. In this study, we aimed to clarify the evolutionary processes leading to the formation of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron var...
As a result, we concluded that the formation of a part of Omicron isolates BA.1, BA.1.1, and BA.2 was not the product of genome evolution, as is commonly observed in nature, such as the accumulation of mutations and homologous recombinations. Furthermore, the study of 35 recombinant isolates of Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 confirmed that Omicron variants were already present in 2020. The analysis showed that Omicron variants were formed by an entirely new mechanism that cannot be explained by previous biology, and knowing how the SARS-CoV-2 variants were formed prompts a reconsideration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
The results section of the full pdf is an interesting read, though I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It poses an interesting question and ends on an grim tone (if truly an experiment, it's probably not the last).
I am confused whether I should put my tinfoil hat on or not.
I’ve always maintained that it was a lab-developed virus that accidentally infected a lab worker and then got out in the wild. Now it looks like it may have been a couple of different lab-developed viruses?
But opinions have gone back and forth so much on that theory.