People are accusing them of building the virus in a lab with literally zero evidence. Give the US a bunch of raw data to spin and it just makes that easier.
Maybe with people like Trump in the world who would definitely capitalize on that type of thing to cast blame there is inherent risk, but at least amongst civilized educated people, its obvious a virus could show up anywhere and disseminating information shows a clear desire to fight the virus as a member of the world, rather than a desire to use it as a political tool or to gain an advantage because china can execute more draconian mitigation measures than a "free" country like America would be able to.
Where China is clearly to blame is the reduced amount of information clearly inhibited the fight against coronavirus, in the world's fight against this thing china defected rather than cooperated.
Before any whataboutism is mentioned, Trump also defected and made a mess out of a response, lying to the public, and hiding cases. That doesn't make either correct and neither one justifies the other's actions. Both countries are clearly very in the wrong for their COVID reactions.
We knew or should have known the virus was coming for months before it was a problem in the US. It would take an incredibly enlightened politician not to try and scapegoat China for our failures, and they know this. Why gamble on our goodwill amidst all this rhetoric?
I don't think there is a lot of evidence for malice, but there is definitely evidence worthy of contemplation:
https://project-evidence.github.io/
Here is a study from 2007: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2258702/
> In this study, we investigated the receptor usage of the SL-CoV S by combining a human immunodeficiency virus-based pseudovirus system with cell lines expressing the ACE2 molecules of human, civet, or horseshoe bat.
That is literally building of viruses in a lab.
China's behavior is concerning.
I guess I should have specifically said covid-19 rather than "the virus", but I thought that would be clear from context.
This is a densely-populated, agriculture-heavy third-world part of the world that had bird flu and sars in the previous 15 years... random-ass diseases materialize there. Occam's razor says it's another one of those.
Clearly a lab studying coronaviruses is interesting. Clearly its possible that the lab could have had a leak. Clearly it's possible a farmer could have wandered into a cave, or run into a bat in the wild. Clearly it's possible that it didn't originate in China.
There is certainly enough evidence to investigate the lab being a possibility. It definitively being responsible or not is definitely of interest. There was a lot of cover up at the beginning, which implies to me a party who knows they are responsible.
From everything I've read on the topic, the best going theory that I understood is that in order for the lab to perform tests on coronavirus found in bats, coronavirus samples are collected from bats. A person must collect these bats from caves, not in Wuhan. A person might have collected the samples improperly or with insufficient gear, resulting in contracting and then spreading the disease.
That's not a "controversial" (read: conspiracy) theory, that's not an act of the state being evil. That's something that could happen anywhere in the world. That's something that could happen on accident. That's something that could be prevented by improved process/standards/equipment. By denying the possibilities of such things, it makes it look like there was a coverup or an explicitly guilty party. Everyone should want to know the nature of it's origin. It should obviously be a possibility.
> Occam's razor says it's another one of those.
To me occam's razor says that Wuhan is a first apparent epicenter. So it stands to believe it's the first place with major outbreak. Wuhan has a lab that studies this very disease specifically for it's epidemic properties. The most simple occam's razor explanation to me is that it has to do with the lab.
Even with this data US and other western countries dismissed it as non-threat for over 3mos while ridiculing China for 'draconian measures' and violating human rights.
1) Bat->Livestock->Human transmission
2) Direct bat->human transmission (your example fits here as a tiny subset, I don't think specifically employees of that one lab are the only people who could have had contact with a bat)
3) Lab leak
I'm rating the probabilities as I see them. Your scenario is possible! It's just not the most probable, and even if it were, there are a lot of possibilities.