A lab specialized in investigating Coronaviruses in the city where the first outbreak was, is at least suspicious imo. The fact that the Chinese authorities weren't exactly helpful (to my knowledge) in debunking the lab-leak hypothesis is extra suspicious. But then again, if they really would have wanted to cover it up, they might have looked for another city to point to as the source of the outbreak, I don't know how feasible that would have been though.
It is a little suspicious, but also not too far fetched: Where would you put a lab researching Coronaviruses? Somewhere near where it exists in the wild.
No. It’s not where they exist in the wild. The closest related virus (RATG-13) to n-cov-2 come from northern china (Yunnan), where they were imported to the Wuhan virology lab to study. What a coincidence!
Secondly, other Coronaviruses have appeared in southern China -- notably the original SARS' first known case was in November of 2002 in Guangdong.[1] Wuhan is well-placed (relatively centrally) to do that kind of research.
Thirdly, RaTG13 likely isn't the closest related known virus anymore.[2][3]
Quality comment. That person is confused about a couple things, but the main point that Wuhan is 1-2000km from the most likely places to find such a virus in the wild.
It could have been brought to Wuhan in a human, in an animal to eat, in an animal to study, or in a culture. I don't see how newer evidence eliminates any of those possibilities.
It's also confused about that - there are tons of horseshoe bats in Hubei Province including in caves 60 miles from Wuhan[1] and there are absolutely sars-like coronaviruses in the horseshoe bats in Hubei.
RM1 and RF1 in this paper are sars-like bat coronaviruses isolated from horseshoe bats in Hubei:
The horseshoe bat's range spans from Japan to Portugal. That doesn't change the fact that all the closest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 we've discovered have been found in the far south of China and Cambodia, 1-2k miles away, nor does the presence of more distantly related SARS-like coronaviruses.
If we find a closer relative near Wuhan, that will change the hypothesis. But we haven't.
That’s not especially convincing to me because the closest relatives we’ve found aren’t actually very close relatives. Ratg13 is decades removed from the SC2 lineage, so knowing that it was found closer to Laos is a very weak signal in my opinion about the origins of SC2.
As one of the parent comments has already noted, RaTG13 is no longer the closest known bat virus. BANAL-20-52's spike is only 16 AA substitutions away from SARS-CoV-2, and that was found in Laos.
No one expected spillover in Wuhan, including Dr. Shi, per the quote from her that I've replied with elsewhere. Even those very confident in natural zoonotic origin are typically proposing something like SARS-1's wildlife trafficking conduit, not spillover in Wuhan.
Well, the level of coincidence also depends on the number of coronavirus research facilities, and the number of cities. If there aren't very many coronavirus research facilities, and there are many cities, it becomes an unlikely coincidence.
