[Jeff Lebowski]

From the abc link:

Any time scientists tinker with COVID-19 in the lab, that mutation either changes or completely disappears, Garry said, citing a new study published by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.


While some people initially speculated that laboratory work created that mutation, it is actually the opposite, Garry told ABC News.
"When you pass the virus with that [mutation] through cell cultures, you actually lose it. So that is not the way it could've been generated," Garry said. "It's more than a hypothesis at this point."



In the scientific community, though, alternative theories have not gained currency, according to Dr. John Ionnidis, a professor of disease prevention at Stanford Medical School. He told ABC News that the only scientific paper sowing doubts about COVID-19's natural origins had to be retracted after being rebuked by the scientific community.
Ionnidis also said that the COVID-causing coronavirus does not behave or look synthetic in any way.



"The way that it handles itself and binds to its receptors, they don't suggest anything that would be close to human manipulation," he said. "If it were man-made, it would not look like that."
Ionnidis said his conclusions are firm: "There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that this virus was not created in a lab."

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scient...ry?id=70207409