> Lab leaks happen all the time

Honestly, that's terrifying to read. Do you have references to numbers of leaks or other information on the subject?

There you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

You can also search previous Covid related discussions here on HN for more information.

Interesting that the 1989 Reston, VA release was not included...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hot_Zone

Page says: "The list is grouped by the year in which the accident or incident occurred and does not include every reported laboratory-acquired infection. This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources."

Wikipedia is crowd-sourced project, anyone can edit it if he or she thinks it is necessary(either something might be missing or something might be wrong).

Also useful to look at a list of known LAIs (Lab-acquired infections): https://my.absa.org/LAI

Most of these don't spread beyond the initially infected lab workers, but the sheer number is staggering.

>We should learn from our mistakes not sweep them under the carpet.

My understanding is that at the start of COVID19 scientists in related fields immediately assumed that a lab leak was the likely cause, and were dumbfounded to hear such a strong and immediate consensus (the Nature letter, for example) against such.