"The Chinese government made Covid-19"

According to the US government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), “the [coronavirus] possibly came from an animal sold at a market” in China.

We could stop there, but many theories have pointed to potential sources of the virus: a bioweapons lab sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the United States government, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, etc.

Probably the most concrete evidence that other origin theories are false comes from analysis of the virus itself. Suppose that some person, lab, or entity were actually trying to create a new virus. The easiest way to make one is by working with template viruses, resulting in a new kind of virus that resembles the template. Analysis of COVID-19 shows that it is a new virus “not derived from any previously used virus backbone,” according to Nature Medicine. In other words, it does not closely resemble other members of the coronavirus family of viruses. Thus, the virus could not have been made using a template.

A more difficult method of creating a new virus would be to start from scratch, combining segments of DNA to construct its genetic information, also called its genome. It is possible to make viruses like the polio virus from scratch with a record of its full genome. However, scientists typically model new viruses based on preexisting templates, which would mean that the COVID-19 strain would resemble other viruses. Again, this is not the case for the new COVID-19 pandemic.

Working with pre-existing viruses or building a genome from scratch are the two known ways to produce a new viral strain. But then, could somebody have made the virus seem natural? Theoretically, this is possible: viruses mutate randomly and can become even deadlier than before, and scientists could technically preside over this process. However, coronaviruses do not affect all animals in the same way, meaning that finding a deadly strain for humans would require human cells. Combine this with the fact that scientists would have to check each randomly mutated virus on a human cell and this proves to be impractical when other methods of genetic manipulation exist.

Additionally, based on the unexpected form of the virus, a lab group would have been unlikely to choose the random mutations that would have led to COVID-19. Labs outside of China have genetically analyzed COVID-19 to show that it could not have originated from the labs in Wuhan. American scientists who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology have stated that the lab usually works with inactivated forms of collected coronaviruses under strict safety protocols.

Here’s what we do know. We know that COVID-19 is a zoonotic virus, meaning that it “jumped” from animals to humans. While it is true that coronaviruses like SARS and COVID-19 have originated from bats, it does not follow that the virus spread from Chinese people eating “bat soup.” Interactions between humans and bats, even in China’s wildlife trade, are rare, and “bat soup” is not a food that is common in China. Plus, even if someone ate “bat soup,” the temperature at which soup is cooked would destroy pathogens. Rather, studies show that there is more likely another intermediate animal, originally thought to be the pangolin, that transferred the coronavirus from bats to humans. Further evidence and research are required to determine the true intermediate animal.

So the virus could not have been synthesized by anybody, originated from scientific experimentation, or spread because of “bat soup.” Some argue that more research must be conducted to confirm the origins of COVID-19, citing the Chinese Communist Party’s track record of political abuses. Regardless, with the research conducted thus far, science has ruled out a deliberate act or lab accident starting the pandemic, and new information will likely confirm this.