we need to figure out what the fuck the marker is that this thing is latching on to
the filter it is applying is just bizarre
ACE2
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/exclusive-controversial-experiments-make-bird-flu-more-risky-poised-resume#In October 2014, U.S. officials announced an unprecedented pause on funding for 18 GOF studies involving influenza or the Middle East respiratory syndrome or severe acute respiratory syndrome viruses (SARS).
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Now, the HHS committee has approved the same type of work in the Kawaoka and Fouchier labs that set off the furor 8 years ago.
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Kawaokas grant is the same one on H5N1 that was paused in 2014. It includes identifying mutations in H5N1 that allow it to be transmitted by respiratory droplets in ferrets.
Ferrets are the key. Breed a avian H5N1 or SARS-like virus through 5-10 generations in ferrets (or civets) and it gains a receptor to ACE2 and become human transmissible, airborne.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002199751400005XIsolate a SARS-like bat coronavirus from a cave in china somewhere and breed it through ferrets (or civets for sars-cov-1) for 5-10 generations and you end up with something indistinguishable from SARS-COV-2. The claim of 'not engineered' is disingenuous at best ... if it was bred in a laboratory cage somewhere I would call that engineered, or manmade at least, even if there wasn't any gene-splicing involved.