This question has been through a substantial rewrite. I have deleted a number of comments that are no longer relevant. Please note that questions about motivations and your political points of view are off-topic here. Let's focus on the claim.

(I'm personally interested in seeing a good answer here, because I have been in a stalemate with a friend's father on this issue; I haven't been willing to spend the required time investigating just to satisfy one person.)

@Oddthinking : I noticed. I do think those comments shouldn't have been deleted, as the discussion might still have provided valuable information for some people. Nevertheless, I very much appreciate you for the hard work you put into fixing the format for this particular community, as I do think this is a discussion that needs exposure, because this issue literally affects all of us, right now, as we speak, in this time of surreal & unprecedented crisis. We are all entitled to know the truth, whichever that may be!

Let's be clear. This is NOT a discussion site. You can have that discussion on Reddit or similar. Here, we only want questions on a specific, notable claims, and answers based on verifiable, empirical evidence.

@Oddthinking : What are the comments for, if not for discussion? Anyway, I restate what I said before : I very much appreciate your efforts to change the format of this question to make it suitable for this community. While I'm very familiar with SO, this particular SE community is new for me, so I'm not used to the format requirements specific to this community. And I'm sure your edits prevented my question from getting deleted... at least for now!

biology.stackexchange.com/questions/90793/…

@Oddthinking : I found a few additional sources, which I referenced in my answer here. I would love to add these to this question, but I'm not entirely sure how to do so, with the current format!

As far as I know, aside from a Chinese diplomat openly claim that, there is no actual evidence presented.

@ychung : I listed multiple sources. You might start with checking them and moving on from there!

Related question.

Asking whether COVID-19 was developed by the US military, and then posting an answer on other questions asserting that it was, seems disingenuous to me. Between that, and your posts on this subject on Politics.SE, I get the distinct impression you're not asking this in good faith, but rather you've already made up your mind and you're just fishing for answers that agree with you.

@F1Krazy : My own research all leads to the conclusion that COVID-19 is a bioweapon. If true, I believe it is important the public becomes aware of this as much as possible, while everything is still unfolding. If now, I believe it is important to debunk this with credible counter-arguments rather then censor it. My "agenda", so to speak, is to raise awareness that this might be a bioweapon as well as to find counter-arguments for it, as I'm still open for the possibility that I'm overlooking things.

@JohnSlegers I mean, those claiming that need to at least provide how and when the virus could land on China via the US military, not just saying why it might benefit the US to do this.

My older comment was deleted for some reason (and with it a link to a fairly relevant, IMHO, older question), but the idea that the US has developed various then-new viruses like ebola or HIV and used or tested them as a bioweapon is alas a rather common conspiracy theory... and probably no closer to the truth than this latest claim on Covid-19.

@ychung : Have you even looked into any of the articles referenced?

@Fizz : I don't know about these other viruses. I never really looked into them in depth, because I frankly didn't care enough. This current pandemic is affecting all of us, however, which makes it very important that we understand what's REALLY going on and not rely on whatever authorities are telling us. Everything points to bio-warfare IMHO, and I would really really really love tl find someone who can conclusively prove me wrong. Because I really wish I was wrong... but I don't think I am...

@Oddthinking: I see you're reopened this. As you like to ask this: what would a good answer look like to you? Yeah, one could show (link to Bio SE) that it's unlikely the virus has a lab-made origin. But then, what if the US army delegation to Wuhan found a bat, tested it for viruses, and somehow infected some people with one of new viruses they discovered in the bat. How would you disprove that happened, etc.?

@ Fizz Lab made/modified has little to do with whether something is bioweapon or not, one could modify a genome for research purpose and then there is a lab leak.

@Fizz : What would a good answer look like to me? I suppose I'd consider any answer a good answer if it helps to answer the question whether or not it is a bio-weapon that we're dealing with, and where it originates from, by providing credible / authoritative sources

@Fizz: Hmm... That's a good question. I was actually hoping for an answer similar to the Bio.SE one, but your implied point - that conspiracy theories are often unfalsifiable; they just grow to include more people and become more elaborate in the face of counter-evidence - is a strong one. Some analysis of the claims showing that they are based one zero evidence would help. (Keeping an open mind: I think there are several ways to prove it IS a bioweapon - unlikely-to-natural-mutate edits of the genome, confessions, evidence of a cannister used to distribute the virus, etc.)

@JohnSlegers where does it have evidence when and how the virus land on China/Wuhan via the US military? Maybe you can list that out in your question because this would be so much more substantial than personal claims. Also, as far as I read, the first few cases in the most affected area in Europe are identifiable to people from Wuhan

@ychung : I just found this

@JohnSlegers If anything, that article points to multiple collaboration (not a unilateral US military is the villain) and a gain-of-function type of research which is potentially dangerous and risk leakage.

@Oddthinking Unfortunately, a conclusive answer is unlikely, with China itself suppressing all evidence and investigation of either the animal market and virus lab as well as a lack of evidence that points to possbility that it comes from a place outside China.

@Oddthinking It doesn't have to be unnatural to be a bioweapon. Natural smallpox on a population like the US where people born after ~1970 were never vaccinated could definitely be used as a bioweapon. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1326439 This Nature article gives reasoning why the virus is not believed to be genetically engineered. nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

@DavePhD That nature article contains very questionable claims. First in the abstract it says (clearly show not lab manipulated), then in the conclusion it says (more samples and analyses are needed). The reasoning is a bit of a stretch too. Basically, it says the virus does not have the optimal binding solution according to computational model so it is not manipulated...The second reason is a bit better but far from being able to conclusively rule out lab-modification as well.

@ychung Right, that's why I'm only putting it in a comment, not an answer.

@ychung : As someone who is a biogeochemical modeler by training, what is your take on this Indian study and the claims made by this Taiwanese professor? Would you say their arguments have any merits whatsoever? And what's your take on their retractions? Is it because they realized they made a mistake or because they were pressured from above?

@kutschkem : If it were a bioweapon, I'd assume there already is a vaccine out there that's sufficiently tested and anyone deemed important enough has already been vaccinated. Sure, it would be retarded to release a virus in the wild if you can't protect yourself against it. But what makes you so sure those in charge & their stormtroopers haven't already been vaccinated?

@kutschkem : Let's also not forget that the Trump administration has been populated with radicals / extremists like James "Mad Dog" Mattis, Steve Bannon & John Bolton. The mere fact that a guy nicknamed "Mad Dog" has been one of the leading figures in this administration should give a hint with respect to how radical these people are and how much risk they'd be willing to take in an attempt to defeat those they perceive as their enemies...

@Oddthinking why the two-stage edit?

@bobsburner: I had spent some time on the first part, and I didn't want to lose it - especially if someone else wanted to come in and make edits in the meantime, and there were comments being filed so I was afraid that would happen. But I don't want to defend it as good practice.

@Oddthinking The site could probably do with a per-user or public scratchpad for saving edits. It would probably be abused and removed very quickly though.

@JohnSlegers That preprint is bullxxxx for many reasons, the inserts they claimed that correspond to HIV are very short sequences, you probably would find it in human (and a lot other organisms) protein sequence as well. There are too many suggestive and cherry-picking elements, with too little evidence and validation to backup.

@JohnSlegers I would like to see some follow ups from the Taiwan prof. It is too premature to conclusively suggest a lab-modified/made virus. But as I said, relying on so few samples won't get us that far nonethless.