In just two short years, we've gone from "Anyone suggesting COVID was manufactured in a lab is a conspiracy theorist who must be purged from polite society" to "Oh hey look at that the virus apparently contains DNA fragments patented by the folks who made $20 billion off the COVID vaccine:"

Fresh suspicion that Covid may have been tinkered with in a lab emerged today after scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus's spike protein.

They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic.

It was discovered in SARS-CoV-2's unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses.

Look, major caveat: I'm not a scientist. I don't think we have any scientists on the masthead here. Who really knows what this means, particularly so soon after the discovery of this weird feature of the virus?

We're obviously going to have to slog through a long, lengthy process of scientific debate, discovery and refinement.

Still.... if we're being honest...

The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.

They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna's sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution.

A "one-in-three-trillion" chance. Amazing. Just amazing.

Other scientists, meanwhile, are downplaying the apparent rarity of the arrangement:

'It's a quirky observation but I wouldn't call it a smoking gun because it's too small.

He added: 'It doesn't get us any further with the debate about whether Covid was engineered.'

Mm-hmm.

Not sure how much further we have to go in this debate, but time will tell!

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