Read the section in the WHO report on COVID19 and listen to the reputable international scientist that actually went and visited the lab and interviewed the people who worked there.
https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus/origins-of-the...
Indeed. There's another important bit that you seem to be missing.
Did you know that Peter Daszak, one of the "reputable international scientists" you speak of who helped investigate and author that report was himself the project lead for the US funded gain of function research at the WIV?
Who would be more inclined or in a better position to cover that up than him?
Is that so inconceivable? The Chinese government has historically obfuscated facts and runs one of the largest media control operations in modern history. The WHO is also an organization of questionable trustworthiness and with suspicious subservience to China[1]. But the WHO wouldn't necessarily had to have been complicit. This could've easily been covered up by Chinese authorities during the many months of blocking external researchers into the country[2]. The research in the report you linked to started in January 2021.
As for the report itself, I skimmed a few pages and noticed some issues. My understanding is limited in this area, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
0. First of all, the conflict of interest of it being reported by WHO and Chinese researchers should be a factor in judging the validity of any of its claims.
1. From the arguments in favour of the intermediate host scenario (p. 115):
> Although the closest related viruses have been found in bats, the
> evolutionary distance between these bat viruses and SARS-CoV-2 is estimated
> to be several decades, suggesting a missing link (either a missing progenitor
> virus, or evolution of a progenitor virus in an intermediate host).
2. From the arguments against the intermediate host scenario (p. 116):
> There was no genetic or serological evidence for SARS-CoV-2 in a wide
> range of domestic and wild animals tested to date.
> Screening of farmed wildlife was limited but did not provide conclusive
> evidence for the existence of circulation.
3. From the arguments against the laboratory incident scenario (p. 119):
> There is no record of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in any
> laboratory before December 2019, or genomes that in combination could
> provide a SARS-CoV-2 genome.
The rest of the arguments that all labs complied with high safety standards, with no reports of illnesses or disruption are also coming from Chinese authorities, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Yet this is enough to consider this scenario "extremely unlikely".
4. China is praised multiple times for its "near-elimination of SARS-CoV-2", but the official data is comically suspicious[3]. A total of 4,851 deaths in a country of 1.4 billion people. That week of April 13, 2020 was rough.
Apologies if I sound inflammatory and conspiratorial, my disinformation senses are tingling.
Ugh and apologies for the formatting. HN please adopt Markdown.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM
[2]: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/05/china/china-blocks-who-te...
As far as I know, the government may have tried, but the scientists themselves were not down with it.
This sort of culture of the openness of science is why the Chinese government distrusts scientists inherently. And also why Shi Zhengli has maintained an extremely consistent story with the pandemic despite the government's changing its story like 3 times. Also why they've since silenced her. They don't trust their own citizens, and definitely not their own scientists.
Today they are all being harrassed by anonymous internet users because their conclusion didn't follow some conspiratorial paranoid anti-China story. What does that tell you?
There are people out there who happily make up stuff to fit a certain story. And people who will happily repeat it.
You can bury your head in ignorance and let yourself be manipulated by the likes of Steve Bannon or you can choose to listen to people, who actually have qualifications in the field and who have a meaningful reputation to loose.
>4. China is praised multiple times for its "near-elimination of SARS-CoV-2", but the official data is comically suspicious[3]. A total of 4,851 deaths in a country of 1.4 billion people. That week of April 13, 2020 was rough.
Indeed, the same day China decided to censor all covid death counts was the same day Chinese activists who were reporting on covid deaths using Github were dissappeared.
https://github.com/Terminus2049/Terminus2049.github.io
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/22/silenced-china-archivist...