Genetic distance too large for any known virus to be a backbone
The argument
The closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 all sit near 96 to 97 percent genome identity (RaTG13 at about 96.2 percent, BANAL-20-52 at about 96.8 percent), and a coronavirus that divergent is too far to serve as a practical engineering backbone: building SARS-CoV-2 from such a template would require altering on the order of a thousand scattered nucleotides, which is not what using a backbone means. So no documented virus qualifies as a usable backbone.
Does it work?
- Does it follow?
- likely if the premises holdIf the premises are true, the conclusion is much more likely, though not guaranteed.constitution →
- Do the premises hold?
- 1 not separately assessed
Granting that a roughly 96 percent virus is too divergent to be a practical backbone, it follows that no documented virus (RaTG13, BANAL-20-52, all clustered near 96 to 97 percent) could have served as one, which is a strong against-conclusion for the documented route. It is not decisive for the full claim: it speaks only to known viruses and cannot exclude an undisclosed closer one, and its load-bearing premise, though the mainstream technical view, is contested by a credentialed minority on how hard such engineering would be. So the argument makes the claim's denial much more likely by way of the documented route without establishing it outright.
Premises
- UnassessedNo current assessment. Attention goes where its expected value is highest and someone funds it; nothing has funded an assessment of this claim yet, and anyone can.constitution →A coronavirus 96% genetically identical to SARS-CoV-2 is too divergent to serve as a practical engineering backbone
Where it is made
Passages where sources make, criticize or mention this argument. They record where it appears, not how strong it is, and none has precedence over another.
No source is recorded as making it.