- If there was any hard evidence actually proving they had SARS-CoV-2 in the lab before the pandemic, it will be long gone. Only an independent full access forensic level investigation would ever find any sign that evidence was destroyed, and that is never going to happen.
- It seems extremely unlikely to me that anyone from within China will A) blow the whistle or B) that we would hear about it.
- If a whistleblower were to escape the country, China would be able to claim they are lying, and it is a plot by the West to oppress the Chinese people etc. The chance that the whistleblower would be carrying irrefutable evidence of a lab leak is again almost zero.
We can keep shaking the tree, but I don't think anything truly satisfying is going to fall out. Consider that even if the USA for example had actual evidence of a lab leak, they would be better off using this as leverage over China secretly than releasing it publicly.
What actually can and should happen, is that some major change comes to virology research to absolutely minimise the chance of another lab origin pandemic. Wherever SARS-CoV-2 came from, we have had lab leaks before and we will have them again, that much is certain.
It’s 96.2% similar not 98%. The issue is that coronaviruses in nature don’t mutate fast enough for that to be the missing link, and they have tested something like 80,000 animals since the outbreak without finding anything closer. One possibility is that the gap was closed through gain-of-function or serial passage research.