Ridley ignores the fact that there are beta coronaviruses that have a single virus in their subgenus with a furin cleavage site. Hibecovirus and Sarbecovirus. Just having one virus with one in a subgenus is not unusual. sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Matt Ridley
@mattwridley
Mar 22
Even quite intelligent and well informed scientists repeated this line. Plenty of coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites. No sarbecovirus has one out of many hundred. Except sars cov 2. Why don’t people think before they tweet?

Mar 22, 2026 · 7:16 PM UTC

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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
we have never found a sarbecovirus in nature with a FCS Btw Matthew are you a Chinese bot like @dkupiecki? or an American? Do you bet on covid in renminbi or in dollars? Bc @dkupiecki's level of English is pathetic To all you bots struggling with English I say 好好学习，天天向上 ("Study hard and make progress every day")
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Are you a bot? New account, only focused on “COVID lab leak”. Read my comment again as I address that.
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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
The next evolution in your argument will be canonical vs. non-canonical, because you are jumping in on the backside of the argument. You should read Baric's Congressional testimony on FCOV. We can then discuss modulation of cleavage efficiency to maximize binding.
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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
lol. I think you might suffer from motivated reasoning. Yes, it is unusual. Impossible? No. Just highly, highly, unlikely. It's highly unusual in a vacuum, irrespective of other circumstantial evidence, all of which btw, points to a non-natural source. But, you do you.
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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
Recombination happens.
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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
Great point. He left out other stuff as well. x.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/… x.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/…
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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
Btw, when and where do you think Sars 2 picked up the FCS? It wasn't in bats, obviously.
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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
I think your post is misleading. Dr. Ralph Baric, who is deeply familiar with CoVs, testified that they did in fact find it unusual that no known Sarbecovs had FCSs. Also, I think the claim that these are undersampled is a stretch. x.com/ydeigin/status/1668693…
https://medium.com/@entropychase/untangling-the-web-a-2025-update-on-covid-origins-c46f03867731

ALT https://medium.com/@entropychase/untangling-the-web-a-2025-update-on-covid-origins-c46f03867731

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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
There are only 2 known hibecoviruaes. There are hundreds of known sarbecovs. 1 out of 2 is not comparable to 1 out of hundreds.
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Replying to @DopplerEffect93
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