> Likewise, it's not that there's compelling evidence of a lab leak (now or in 2019/2020). It's that we're sort of left with it by process of elimination. For example: if Covid-19 came from an animal population (eg via Wuhan wet markets) then why hasn't that population been found? The sources of SARS and MERS were, I believe, found relatively quickly.
there's a great deal of compelling evidence for alpha leaking from a lab; e.g. the director of the WIV publishing papers about introducing furin cleavage sites, which have otherwise never been detected in coronaviruses, into bat coronaviruses in the years leading up to the pandemic. if anybody has not read the nicholas wade essay in the bulletin of atomic scientists from last year that was mentioned briefly in the linked piece, i strong recommend it: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...
there's a great deal of compelling evidence for alpha leaking from a lab; e.g. the director of the WIV publishing papers about introducing furin cleavage sites, which have otherwise never been detected in coronaviruses, into bat coronaviruses in the years leading up to the pandemic. if anybody has not read the nicholas wade essay in the bulletin of atomic scientists from last year that was mentioned briefly in the linked piece, i strong recommend it: https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...