zlacker

They may be, but the WIV wasn't. In the words of Dr. Shi herself:

> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.

https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/Shi%20Zhengli...

The closest animal virus to SARS-CoV-2 was found in nature about 900 miles from Wuhan (RaTG13, in Mojiang), closer to Chongqing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, or HK.

>>triple+(OP)
According to Wikipedia the lab had been established many decades ago, "The WIV was founded in 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory" and got its current name in 1978. For better or worse, open, public labs tend to be set up in urban areas, see the insane move of the work done at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center to college town Manhattan, Kansas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan,_Kansas in the heartland of American agriculture.