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>>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's not just that the closest known virus is a bat virus. The closest known virus, RaTG13 was discovered in a cave in Yunnan, and brought to Wuhan by WIV researchers where it was sequenced, and probably other experiments done on it. WIV has also changed its story twice about the history of RaTG13, first, the date of first sequencing (They initially claimed 2020, and then changed their story to 2018), and second, they did not disclose for months that it was in fact the same virus as BtCoV/4991, which they had previously published a partial sequence of.

Transportation by lab personnel is the only way that RaTG13 is known to have come to Wuhan. Any animal transport is possible but only speculative. This entirely flips what should be the assumed scenario vis a vis Occam's razor.