I seem to recall one of the original arguments for the “artificial origin” hypothesis last year was that the virus was too different from other known viruses and therefore it was implausible that it had developed naturally.
But if we see here an apparently-sudden jump to a significantly different variant, does that make it less surprising that the original strain was novel?
But if we see here an apparently-sudden jump to a significantly different variant, does that make it less surprising that the original strain was novel?