It seems like bullshit. The ratio of synonymous to non-synonymous mutations, especially in the spike, is weird for sure. But nobody, including this article, is suggesting that Omicron was genetically engineered, it’s way too novel for that, you can’t just engineer 33 mutations into a protein and expect it to work.
He mentions the evidence that Omicron evolved in mice, this paper makes a persuasive case for this, I am personally convinced:
But then when we get to his suggestion of what he thinks happened, it’s “serial passage with various convalescent/vaccinated sera” followed by testing in transgenic mice. There are two big problems with this:
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He’s making a lot of fuss about the s/ns ratio, but then his explanation is just “it must have been in a highly selective environment”, with serial passage his suggestion. But that “highly selective environment” could instead just be created by the shift into a new species. That’s the contention of the mouse theory. “Over-representation of nonsynonymous mutations in Omicron ORF S suggests strong positive selection” is the headline of an entire section in the paper above.
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That theory is at odds with the evidence presented in the above paper for the mouse theory. In other words he’s accepting the conclusion and being like “well labs have mice, makes sense” but then going on to contradict the reasoning they used to get to that conclusion.