Nonetheless, we know there was a close relative documented in bats on the same continent within a comparable timeframe. The clearly obvious hypothesis is that animal transmission was the vector, for the simple reason that this is the way every single other pandemic, human or otherwise, has happened. There is nothing unique or notable about covid from the perspective of viral evolution. Period. So Occam says we go with the simplest theory.
Attempts to wave away that fact have nothing to do with science about what was happening in Wuhan and everything to do with modern political opinions about a government 1000km away in Beijing.
prima facie false.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu#Virology
“ it is widely believed that the virus was leaked to the public in a laboratory accident (may have been kept frozen in some laboratory beforehand).[4][5][10][11][12][13][17][19”
And on top of that, the original SARS leaked from Chinese, Taiwanese, and Singapore labs a minimum of 4 times.
So parent’s cited statement is false and does not apply.