Imagine after the Chernobyl disaster somebody insisting that the reactor didn’t melt down, but in fact there was a giant earthquake that opened a fissure in the ground and shot a bunch of radioactive rocks all over the town, and that that then triggered a volcano which shot radioactive dust all over Europe.
At some point: the reactor in the nuclear power plant next to Pripyat is the source and alternative explanations are conspiracy theories.
Hey: maybe a bat carried covid all the way from the Laotian border and just happened to land right next to a lab doing GoF research in bat cornonaviruses. I’m not ruling anything out. But at this point it’s going to take a LOT of evidence to disprove the obvious.
There is possibly a form of survivorship bias here - it is likely that the WIV became the world leader in coronavirus research because it met the criteria for a BSL4 lab and is within a one to two day driving distance of places where previous coronavirus outbreaks started. In some ways it is unsurprising that it would be near the epicenter of an outbreak.
I am not stating that it did not escape from the lab, just that there are additional factors to consider and the likelihood it was an escape is less obvious than you are making it out to be.
For anyone who comes to look at these conversations at a later date, the most recent information about work by Peter Daszak has shifted my opinion. I find it to be significantly more likely that it was a lab leak following the new evidence.
At some point: the reactor in the nuclear power plant next to Pripyat is the source and alternative explanations are conspiracy theories.
Hey: maybe a bat carried covid all the way from the Laotian border and just happened to land right next to a lab doing GoF research in bat cornonaviruses. I’m not ruling anything out. But at this point it’s going to take a LOT of evidence to disprove the obvious.