I'm the poster. Yes, I've heard the bio weapon conspiracies. They tend to say that this "gain-of-function" property is proof of a bio weapon.

I posted this because

a) It was interesting to me

b) I was hoping the HN community might be able to help shine some intellectual light on what gain-of-function actually means in this context.

c) It is an article in what appears to be a reputable journal

But I see it is now flagged. So perhaps it is too much of a hot-button topic.

While discussing outbreak with the guy who works in computational biology, he told me a simple idea: most engineered bio-weapons are not as successful as normal viruses because viruses go through massive parallel evolution process constantly, and you can’t just engineer as effectively.

This is a very good article and sound science - I don't know how the linked article itself would try and spread bio-weapon conspiracy. I tried writing up an explanation, and I'm sure other biologists will come in with more concise and better understandable ones over the next few minutes - the terminology might be confusing because it overlaps with words used in a CS context, but I think it's relevant to HN and is a high quality article, jsut in a different technical field than what you might usually see so you might need a different set of commenters to work their way out of the woodwork and try and clarify/engage in the discussion.