[Natsu]

I think it's clearly not a bioweapon, and there would be no benefit to China for releasing it, but it's exactly the sort of thing that lab was investigating, so part of me wonders if there wasn't a leak of a research sample. Even if it were so, I would never blame all Chinese people for it.

[btilly]

Occam's razor is for the obvious, it was a cross species jump of a disease from another animal (in this case a bat). Which happens somewhat regularly, and was already known to be a concern.

[Natsu]

Maybe, but I somehow don't feel like their government would have fought to hide as much info about it unless they were embarrassed about something, so I feel like the razor cuts the other way. Can we really trust a government that hid things for so long? That said, I doubt we'll have any real proof one way or another.

[btilly]

Local officials hid information because nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. This is an ancient tradition in China.

Once the news bubbled up to smart people at the top who understood math, their reaction reversed.

There is no way that if people at the top had known what was really going on, they would have let the Moon festival happen.