So again, I ask - even if it's true, so what? It's impossible to conclusively prove, and even if proven what exactly is proven? That an accident occurred? OK, so what?
The article attempts to answer this:
> The vitriol also obscures a broader imperative, Relman says, which is that uncovering the virus’s origins is crucial to stopping the next pandemic. Threats from both lab accidents and natural spillovers are growing simultaneously as humans move steadily into wild places and new biosafety labs grow in number around the world. “This is why the origins question is so important,” Relman says.
However the reality is from the perspective of the USA it doesn't even matter. Even if China was malicious and deliberately sent it off to us, it could've been easily stopped but we didn't do it. Unless we're going to go to war over this it seems like a pointless exercise as conclusive evidence will never emerge as it requires cooperation from China.
We're worrying about whether it was created from labs in China, meanwhile we couldn't even prevent a massive superspreader event in Boston via the Biogen conference, filled with people who already has an awareness of the virus to begin with.
Even now as I type this cases of the variant are increasing and the amount of people taking the vaccine is decreasing and silly accidents like the J&J fiasco are occurring. Not to say that we can't explore both things simultaneously, but it's pretty obvious that the return on investment will differ - one will do... what exactly? And another will prevent more cases.
The CCP prohibited the virus's genetic sequence from being published. After a lab published it, it was shut down.
>On 11 January, Edward C. Holmes contacted Zhang for permission to publish the virus's genome. Zhang granted permission, and Holmes published the genome on virological.org that day.[1][3] The Chinese government had prohibited labs from publishing information about the new coronavirus, though Zhang later said he did not know about the prohibition.[3] The next day, the Shanghai Health Commission ordered Zhang's laboratory to close temporarily for "rectification".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Yongzhen#COVID-19_pand...