[therealx]

I know vitamine E acetate is a scourage in the vaping community, but I was under the impression that outbreak was a distincly different thing, at a different time.

Although the uninteresting answer is often true, I do dislike that people refuse to entertain anything remotely fringe. Some of the declassified CIA documents stated that they intentionally furthered this attitude as much as they could, as it allowed them to make many of thier projects dissappear.

What is the most promising theory of origin? A 5-10min search didn't help.

The lab theory is of course the most fun, but not the most probable. The fact that they were working on similar diseases, the lab was newish, and the country itself isn't exactly well known for IP security make me not discredit it as fast as I normally would.

The animal->human route via food (or less likely, bites/other contamination) seems to be most likely. It's happened plenty of times in the past, and given the SES level of the area and cultural norms, it could have definitely happened.

The rest of the ideas seem like a long tail where all of them have fairly obvious "gotchas" that make typing them out a waste, but I'd love to hear what other people think.