zlacker

>>ruarai+(OP)
This is a great article explaining why a lab leak should always be a suspect. The alternative theory is that a virus traveled on its own (via bats or other animals) from bat caves 900km away to Wuhan where there are 2 labs researching bats. One of the labs is lesser known but is right next to the seafood market and the hospital where the outbreak was first known. [1]

This article points out that a lab outbreak could have happened in the United States and many places in the world. We need to avoid demonizing China over this if we want to ever find out the truth and learn how to prevent another pandemic outbreak.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https://www.resea...

>>gregwe+pV1
There is no requirement that bats be transported to Wuhan. It's close to a known bat virus, and that's all we know. There are local bats in Wuhan, needless to say. Other species can easily be involved. The truth is that there is nothing particularly surprising about the way this virus evolved. Fundamentally this is a pandemic like any other. They happen in some species or another every year.

And that, more than anything else, is why we should be suspicious of "exotic" theories like human intervention. It's an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary proof. You seem to be arguing the opposite, when Occam is clear that we should be betting on natural evolution.

>>ajross+1n2
It is exotic to claim that the virus was engineered by humans, but that is not what this article (or myself) are claiming. Just that there is a lab outbreak.

Researchers have gone to a particular region of China and otherwise gone to great effort to find these particular bat viruses. I agree it is possible that they could be ignorant of the fact that the virus is in their own backyard. But it must a lower probability event that people got infected by such city bats given that we already know for certain the labs were transporting the bat viruses directly. Additionally, I would be surprised if they have not been testing nearby bats for such viruses since the outbreak happened. If they got a match it would be highly publicized.

>>gregwe+Br2
I suspect that it may have been "bred." That is, engineered in the same way that dog breeds are engineered, which isn't so exotic.