Thanks for the response, I do appreciate it. So we can agree the virus was likely not originally isolated in China, and I too do not discount the possibility that Chinese officials are lying, although I have no particular reason to assume that they are. I don’t much buy into the ‘lab leak theory’, as there is quite a bit of evidence indicating the ‘virus’ likely did not originate in China at all, reportedly being found in European water samples from at least as far back as 2018, and evidence suggesting it originated in the US, with researchers only able to trace all 4 of the original strains back to America, their theory being the only place in which all original strains are found must also be the point of origin. I also agree that an initial failure to isolate the virus does not preclude the possibility of isolation by others at a later date, although it does reveal that the initial sequences used for PCR testing did not come from an isolated virus taken from a patient sample.

Here's where you start to lose me. There are labs all around the world where scientists can isolate the virus from samples take from local covid-19 patients and genetically sequence the DNA.

Yes, absolutely, there are countless entities that can isolate the virus taken from local samples, on that we agree, but the case that I am making is that they did not actually do so.

As I mentioned previously, a huge number of such studies have been performed (and I referenced several such papers written all over the world) and there doesn't appear to be much dispute about the DNA sequencing between these paper writers.

Yes, many studies, but to my knowledge none that actually document isolation of the virus, and statements from authors of several of the studies clearly show this to be the case.

Study 1: Leo L. M. Poon; Malik Peiris. “Emergence of a novel human coronavirus threatening human health” Nature Medicine, March 2020
Replying Author: Malik Peiris
Date: May 12, 2020
Answer: “The image is the virus budding from an infected cell. It is not purified virus.”

Study 2: Myung-Guk Han et al. “Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19”, Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives, February 2020
Replying Author: Myung-Guk Han
Date: May 6, 2020
Answer: “We could not estimate the degree of purification because we do not purify and concentrate the virus cultured in cells.”

Study 3: Wan Beom Park et al. “Virus Isolation from the First Patient with SARS-CoV-2 in Korea”, Journal of Korean Medical Science, February 24, 2020
Replying Author: Wan Beom Park
Date: March 19, 2020
Answer: “We did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification.”

Study 4: Na Zhu et al., “A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China”, 2019, New England Journal of Medicine, February 20, 2020
Replying Author: Wenjie Tan
Date: March 18, 2020
Answer: “[We show] an image of sedimented virus particles, not purified ones.”

(https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/)

These are the official statements given to journalists inquiring about whether the studies alleging isolation actually purified virus, and at least 2 prominent scientists have additionally stated that they are not aware of a single paper anywhere in the world to have done so.

There is indeed not much dispute about the sequencing precisely because the sequences have been reached by consensus. They were not produced by end-to-end sequencing of purified virus particles.

These studies have additionally identified mutated forms of the virus, that's how scientists identify variants. This seems really straightforward to me, I am having trouble following what you find confusing about it.

I really find nothing confusing about it, it is impossible to identify variants of a ‘virus’ which has itself yet to be identified and proven to exist through the scientific gold-standard of virus isolation (purification); it is clear that all of these studies you reference are genetically mapping sequences that did not originate from isolated virus. If you take a close look at the June, 2020 CDC study claiming to isolate virus, you will find that their “full genome sequence” did not originate from end-to-end sequencing of purified virus particles but rather came from just 37 base genome pairs of a multi-thousand stranded ‘virus’, and nucleic acids obtained from non-purified isolate material. Using RNA fragments that matched known SARS viruses (and other things, too, for that matter), they then computer generated full sequences, and ‘identified’ the complete viral sequence of ’SARS-CoV2’ through consensus.

Interestingly, the same study found that this ‘virus’ (isolate material taken from cultured patient samples) was unable to reproduce in human cells, only monkey kidney cells, the only lab method of indicating whether a virus is contagious to humans, whether human to human transmission is possible. The CDC study indicated that this was not the case (although only human trials could demonstrate conclusively), but these findings were never so much as mentioned, although they supported earlier findings of Chinese scientists - reported by the WHO - that there was “no evidence of human-to-human transmission.”

(https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0516_article)

Maybe this helps you follow my argument a little better, even if you do not agree... I am curious what you have to say about the study author admissions that virus was never truly isolated in their studies, and how this affects your understanding of all of the sequencing that followed.