We have a record of successfully tracing viral origins. This is extremely detailed and difficult science. The last two coronavirus outbreaks took around fifteen years to understand. The previous pandemic was HIV which took even longer than that. Thinking that there is a quick and easy way to understand the origins of SARS-CoV2 variants based on narrative inference is essentially asserting that it is different this time. That might be the case, but it will probably take a long time to be sure. In the mean time we can be confident that we understand previous natural viral origins and also predict that there will be more coronavirus outbreaks no matter what people do in labs. Science and history did not suddenly change because there is an interesting hypothesis linked to a dramatic narrative.
I am in no way informed about this area but from just a layman/logical perspective:
> The last two coronavirus outbreaks took around fifteen years to understand.
Is it possible that because these diseases had less impact, less people worked on them? It seems like virtually every scientist in even a tangentially related field is working on Cov-2. Not to mention that we have made significant improvements in technology even over the last decade.
I am not saying that this proves or disproves your comment, but couldn’t it be said that more people, resources and technology could get us answers faster in 2019? Especially if we are building of research and knowledge we have acquired over the preceding 2 decades?
