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by loopercal 1847 days ago
Historically, and happy to be proven wrong here, we've never seen a lab-leak of a novel virus cause a widespread outbreak. We have seen zoonotic transmission cause an epidemic/pandemic. So at least for me, I was working off of, "Is it likely that we're seeing something for the first time? Or is it likely this happened the way it's happened before?"
2 comments

Depends on your definition of widespread. There have been level-4 leaks multiple times in the past. England had an outbreak from a level 4 lab in the past 20 years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_foot-and-m...

Notice the use of "novel virus", you gave an example where a known virus escaped. SARS-COV-2 was not known before the outbreak in Wuhan.
I will reply the same way I did to another comment:

I like your reasoning. My question is: do you think that is why the mainstream media completely rejected the idea of lab leaked virus?