“Researchers could have gotten infected during their collecting trips, or while working with the new viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The virus that escaped from the lab would have been a natural virus, not one cooked up by gain of function.”
>>halsom+(OP)
That's at least more plausible, but the workers who farm bat guano probably have many thousands more times the human-bat contact than the WIV workers ever did. They're far from the only humans venturing into bat caves in China.