“This shouldn’t happen”: Inside the virus-hunting nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance
&gt; Everyone is looking for a smoking gun<p>It appears the analogy is lost on most people. &quot;Smoking gun&quot; evidence would not be some kind of absolute proof of the virus origins. The whole point of the analogy is that if you find the just-fired gun, and a gunshot victim, you don&#x27;t need to have seen the actual shot to deduce what happened and with what weapon. In the case of COVID-19, the smoking gun would be the virology lab down the street from the virus epicenter. Of course, smoking guns are rebuttable: there&#x27;s the possibility that another weapon was involved and all the evidence vanished. But you can&#x27;t consistently say that there&#x27;s a smoking gun and yet we lack sufficient evidence. At this point there <i>is</i> sufficient evidence to reach a conclusion, and all that remains is to weigh it.