zlacker

> The whole lab thing is people getting cause and effect mixed up, the lab is there because novel coronaviruses keep happening in that region...

That is not the case, the outbreak in Wuhan came as a surprise even to the virologists there.

The region where you would expect this to happen is Southern China, where there's bats living close to humans, not Wuhan, where there aren't any bats at all.

The virologists in Wuhan had to travel hundreds of miles to Southern China to collect samples from bats.

>>incrud+(OP)
The chief virologist heading bat research at the lab also was very surprised and gave an interview describing her efforts to see if it came from her own lab, being the only known store of bat viruses in Wuhan. Thankfully the genomic sequences were too far apart to make a direct jump credible so at the very least there must have been one intermediary carrier regardless. How the intermediary carrier, i.e. the pangolins, got it, either at bat caves in southern china or otherwise is the part still being explored. This may be the sort of thing where 100% proof is impossible, and a probabilistic answer is the best we will ever achieve.