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...
There is, from my understanding, reasonable evidence to conclude the virus was not engineered from the perspective of "we took genes from one virus and moved them to this virus," but there's no evidence disproving the idea that it was the result of gain of function research.
My personal feeling is that these statements are true:
* The virus is unlikely to have been engineered (in the way I described above) and leaked.
* There is circumstantial evidence the virus was the result of gain of function research and it leaked.
* There is circumstantial evidence the virus was a natural research sample and it leaked.
* There is circumstantial evidence the virus was introduced by an animal/person who traveled to the wet market.
Some of these are more likely than others, and an individual's own calibration for what is likely or unlikely will probably come into play more than evidence in the short term and possibly long term as well. I can say the vast majority of us are not qualified to answer the question either way though.
Here's the thing: in my mind, anyone who wants to claim the virus escaped the lab as a result of an accident needs to show how someone could have gotten infected with it while working with it in a lab using BSL-3 precautions. We're all just walking around wearing plain old surgical masks, and sometimes not even that level of protection, but literally a piece of cloth is enough to reduce transmission of this virus significantly. Now, tell me how someone wearing full body PPE gets infected with it.
Even at BSL-2, any procedures that would create aerosols are done inside a containment vessel, so, I can't honestly see it happening there, either. And, it certainly wouldn't have been at BSL-1, as that's reserved for known non-pathogenic organisms. Basically, the criterion for a BSL-1 lab is "we grow bugs here, on purpose." Clearly, any of the bat coronaviruses they would handle at WIV would greatly exceed that level of precaution.
With that in mind, IMO, the real interesting bit this article had to offer was to suggest the possibility that the virus snuck into the lab. Given the virus's relative inability to spread via surface contact and necessity of aerosolized droplet spread, you still have to answer the question of how it got out, but, it's at least an intriguing origin story.
So, in summary, yes, the only correct answer we can really say for sure is "we don't know exactly where it came from, if it leaked out of a lab, and what might have been done with it while it was in the lab." But, I'm having a really hard time believing a virus that gets largely stopped by a simple mask could sneak out of a BSL-2+ lab.