1. Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature, and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural"
2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the possibility of a lab leak, because the US was itself funding gain of function research on novel coronaviruses in the Wuhan BSL4 lab
3. Lab leaks happen more often than most people realize[1]
[1]https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/20/18260669/deadly...
Frankly, it would be irresponsible NOT to provacatively suggest this thing we have no evidence of, repeatedly.
(1) BSL-3 lab doing bat coronavirus research...
(2) on gain-of-function projects...
(3) one block away from the epicenter of a coronavirus pandemic with bat ties...
(4) that nobody's being allowed into...
(5) when they have a history of coronavirus lab escapes.
I'm not saying we know this is what happened. I'm saying it's not a far-fetched position and there's a lot of experts who agree. I hear there's even an MIT Technology Review write-up about it.
It's still 100% speculation. The question to ask is, would there be this level of suggestive speculation if it wasn't America's newest top rival?
Their government has more support from their people than ours does -- ours is capped at 50% approval.
So go whole hog or go home. Hair-splitting is for cowards. Either include the people or, if you'd like, you can start wondering why they think that, maybe they have more context and things are more subtle. But you can't think one is black-and-white evil without including the other.
But evil is evil. And theres a really bad and consistent track record.
The Chinese government is not at war. They are vastly less at-war than the US is. They have no rally-around-the-flag effect and yet their people still like them better than we like our government.