zlacker

The "on purpose" bit seems highly implausible. AFAIU the ones with the means would have been the Chinese national labs and maybe their US collaborators. But releasing this right in their backyard would be an implausibly idiotic move on the Chinese part. Planting it by the US would both be terribly hard and a predictable own goal.

>>lrem+(OP)
Would your definition of "on purpose" cover the following?

> In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the Institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect HeLa. The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells.[11][12]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

You make a good point. The wet market is only 20km from the lab, so if this one is lab-based (and not a bizarre coincidence) it seems much more likely to be an accident.

>>lrem+(OP)
Just to be clear, I completely agree with you. That's why I said:

> engineered on purpose (not a real scenario in this case! Purely a hypothetical).

Because I'm thinking of future scenarios where this kind of thing happens and we want to uncover the truth, and in which it's more likely to be on purpose. Probably more relevant to a nuclear strike or cyber attack or whatever than a biological weapon, given collateral damage.

>>andai+c1
Oh, I read more into the "on purpose" than probably meant. Yes, a lab accident looks like a completely reasonable hypothesis to me. What I meant is that it's implausible that this has been released on purpose.