I feel like I am reading a Snopes fact-checking article here. The arguments I presented are deliberately twisted enough so that they can be "debunked". Your linked article doesn't even mention WIV, let alone the database that was taken down on Sept 2019.

> A tiger escaping a zoo is unusual. A previously unknown species of tiger escaping a zoo is substantially more unusual.

One of the closest relatives of SARS-CoV2 was discovered in 2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RaTG13 and only published in 2016 or later. So yes, it's very common for labs to have virus samples and then publish later. And a pandemic killing millions is also an unusual event. The cause of an unusal event is by definition one or more unusual event(s). I am not sure exactly what you are arguing here. Speaking of unusual events, viruses routinely escape labs: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/20/18260669/deadly....

Also, please present facts. Not some weird zoo and tiger analogy. Viruses are collected for research purpose in labs, not to sell tickets to general population to make money. And, research is by definition novel or _previously unknown_, if you will.

What about a unknown species of tiger showing up next to a lab collecting tigers from all over the world and engineering hybrids?

WIV was bringing in bat's and pangolins from all over asia and engineering them to cross between species and enter cells using the a human Ace2 protein pathway. They published several papers you on their success making new viruses that do exactly this.

This is not proof, but you have to admit it ups the probability.

I'm not sure, but my understanding is that there are two databases of interest. The NIH one that WIV uploaded sequences to, and a separate WIV database. The WIV database went offline entirely in sep 2019 and hasn't come back. In early 2020 sequenced uploaded to the NIH were deleted. A some the NIH sequences were the ones recently restored and mentioned in your link.