zlacker

It is exotic to claim that the virus was engineered by humans, but that is not what this article (or myself) are claiming. Just that there is a lab outbreak.

Researchers have gone to a particular region of China and otherwise gone to great effort to find these particular bat viruses. I agree it is possible that they could be ignorant of the fact that the virus is in their own backyard. But it must a lower probability event that people got infected by such city bats given that we already know for certain the labs were transporting the bat viruses directly. Additionally, I would be surprised if they have not been testing nearby bats for such viruses since the outbreak happened. If they got a match it would be highly publicized.

>>gregwe+(OP)
I suspect that it may have been "bred." That is, engineered in the same way that dog breeds are engineered, which isn't so exotic.

>>gregwe+(OP)
> But it must a lower probability event that people got infected by such city bats

There have been examples of bats excrement contaminating fruits on fields as a transmission chain. Accounting for these, often undiscovered, interactions is extremely difficult in terms of probability.

> we already know for certain the labs were transporting the bat viruses directly

In research from 5+ years ago, research which warned exactly about the fact how the virus already had overcome critical barriers to infect human cells [0]. A very plausible interpretation here can also be that said research was a warning about things to come, and is now mistaken as the original cause for it.

[0] https://www.nature.com/news/engineered-bat-virus-stirs-debat...