[jmyeet]

The problem is there are really only two contenders for Covid origins: lab origin (I much prefer this label than "lab leak") and zoonotic origin.

Zoonotic origin is the obvious choice. As a general rule, nature is way better at evolving pathogens than humans are. The problem with this theory is we haven't yet found the wild population from which Covid originated. Now this can take time, sometimes years. But for SARS/MERS this was established relatively quickly. The other problem is the bats widely thought responsible were hundreds of miles away from Wuhan.

Since Covid has entered certain wild animal populations it's possible we'll never know.

That leaves us with lab origin. Lack of evidence for anything else is not positive proof for lab origin of course. But lab origin hasn't been ruled out either.

There are lots of variations on lab origin theories. Deliberate release, accidental release, naturally-occuring pathogen, gain-of-function reserach, the authorities knew, the authorities didn't know, etc. Given the asymptomatic nature of Covid I personally think that if this is the origin, accidental release is the most likely cause.

So what evidence supports this? The CCP's failure to cooperate with WHO investigations is a big one. Right at the beginning, WHO fell in too quickly with China's narrative too. Plus China did punish the doctor who originally raised the alarm about a novel coronavirus (who later died from Covid).

I personally think it's way more likely that China doesn't want to know if it was lab origin rather than they're covering it up. Like there's literally no upside to finding out. Every level of the government doesn't want to know or be the one responsible for screwing something up. It's a bit like the Columbia space Shuttle disaster where it was suspected a foam tile damaged the shuttle but using satellites to image the shuttle met with internal NASA resistance. Part of that was there was nothing they could do but also people just don't want to know sometimes.

Another issue: the missing coronavirus database that China had that was taken offline in late 2019. Weird timing. Again, no proof of anything. Perhaps it's changed now but as of last year this hasn't been examined by anyone in the West (like the WHO).

[notahacker]

> But for SARS/MERS this was established relatively quickly

It wasn't for SARS though. It took 14 years to identify the theoretical native reservoir in bats (ironically the result of the bat coronavirus study programmes the lab-leak hypothesis centres on) in a different province from the SARS outbreak. Civets were identified early on as the probable intermediate animal although the links with the Tanuki are arguably stronger, and we don't know how, why or where the interspecies crossover happened. So basically the same origin debate, without any of the political intrigue.

If there was a popular theory that the SARS epidemic had started as a result of a lab had collected bat coronaviruses, manipulated them and leaked them, there would arguably be less evidence against it

[skipkey]

For me, the primary evidence of lab origin has always been statistical in nature. I have read that there are thousands of wet markets across Asia. So when Covid shows up at one near an institute studying similar viruses instead of one of the thousands of other wet markets, Occam’s razor says it came from there. When we can’t find source animals nearby zoonotic origin requires a much more complex chain of events.

My assumption from close to the beginning has been that most likely, some low-level employee at the institute considered it a job perk to take animals he was supposed to have euthanized and cremated and sell them to a vendor at a market he had connections to for a few yuan.

Does this prove lab origin? No. But barring compelling evidence otherwise it makes lab origin the most likely cause.

[shusaku]

The danger here is the birthday paradox. If it emerged at some other wet market, we would be attaching significance to some other city landmark to drive our alternate hypothesis.

[isitmadeofglass]

> But for SARS/MERS this was established relatively quickly.

And for HIV or took close to a decade, so let’s see where we are in 2030. The argument “we haven’t found it after 2 years so it must not exist” borders conspiracy theory.