> “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” [0]
Given that a leading virologist who specifically studies bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology considers this a possibility, I think it's safe to say that it's not some wild conspiracy theory. I obviously don't know what happened, and it seems very plausible that the virus came from standard zoonotic transfer, but it's a bit unfair to characterize this as a conspiracy theory.
[EDIT] The article was actually changed since I read it:
"She is distressed because stories from the Internet and major media have repeated a tenuous suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally leaked from her lab—despite the fact that its genetic sequence does not match any her lab had previously studied."
So it sounds like she came to the conclusion that it wasn't an accidental release in April.
[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...
And all the ambiguity means any stance on accidental release vs standard zoonotic transfer is going to be driven more by politics ("China is evil!" "No it's not!") than by any empirical evidence.
https://medium.com/@yurideigin/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throu...
As I understand it, the best reasons to suspect lab escape are:
1. The horseshoe bats thought to carry the virus live about a thousand miles away from Wuhan. Why wouldn't the virus start over there instead of in Wuhan.
2. The Wuhan Virology institute was a "BSL-4" lab, China's first and only. The BSL-4 lab is the only kind rated to handle very severe or infectious pathogens.
2.5 There were preexisting documented concerns about the safety protocols at the lab, saying they were substandard.
3. The Wuhan lab worked on "Chimeric coronavirus" exactly like Covid.
There's a lot more evidence and analysis from people more capable than me (see sources 3 & 4), but to me, the basic case "We are absolutely certain it came from bats a thousand miles away and definitely not the bioweapons lab next door researching this exact type of virus" makes me pretty suspicious. Add on to that the "mainstream" consensus has been wrong at every step, no lockdown, it's the flu, masks won't help, slow and few tests, etc - and I don't think anyone is really justified in dismissing the lab escape theory out of hand. Perhaps the experts are wrong. Again.
I'm actually not familiar with the evidence claiming that it's certainly zoonotic. My understanding is that is less likely due to the fact that it looks like a combination of a horseshoe bat virus and a pangolin virus - which theoretically could happen if a bat caught a pangolin virus, those two viruses infected the same cell, while reproducing the viruses were accidentally merged to cause the resultant virus to still be viable and have gained function, and then that unlucky bat traveled a thousand miles away to Wuhan to enjoy a bat stew...
Either all that, or, again, the neighborhood bioweapons lab with sloppy safety controls that was genetically modifying coronaviruses accidentally let one out.
1. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-wuhan-lab-complicate...
2. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539
Whether or not this is a bioweapon is unclear. If it is, perhaps it's designed to shut down economies rather than kill people. On the other hand, perhaps it isn't a weapon at all and is just a research project similar to the other Chimeric coronaviruses produced and studied at the Wuhan lab.
There may be plenty of virologists who think this couldn't possibly have come from a lab, but the problem right now is that when they say it couldn't possibly have come from a lab, they don't have any good reason, that I've seen, to support that conclusion, whereas there's a lot to suggest lab escape is possible. I'm willing to listen to people who know more than me, but I need them to actually show some evidence. The people who are showing evidence are those I linked to in my previous comment in points 3 and 4. It seems like there's a great deal of evidence for a lab escape.
In fact, I would say it's "likely". If you see a nuclear leak somewhere, it's not a "widely implausible conspiracy theory" to think it might come from the nuclear power plant in that same area.
I don't know if it actually comes from that lab. I'm just saying it's not a wild conspiracy theory to think that it might well come from there.