Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance researching the origins of pandemics, pointed out in April that nearly 3% of the population in China's rural farming regions near wild animals already had antibodies to coronaviruses similar to SARS. "We're finding 1 to 7 million people exposed to these viruses every year in Southeast Asia; that's the pathway. It's just so obvious to all of us working in the field..."
Daszak and EcoHealth have been working with Shi Zhengli for over 15 years[0]. He is not a neutral observer on this particular issue. And this year he has made a number of statements (like the one you quote) which do nothing to refute the lab leak hypothesis, and which only serve to direct attention elsewhere.
Weren't there antibody studies of people in the US around that same time frame that claimed 30%+ (somewhere in that range if I recall) of the American public already had covid-19? There was some sort of issue with cross-reactivity that later came out. Did the above link take that into account?
Being similar to SARS is not meaningful evidence to draw a conclusion about COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 virus). His data is from 2015 and cannot possibly indicate that anyone had been afflicted with COVID-19 at that time.
What he is saying is that animal-to-human coronavirus transmission is common - which most people agree upon. ...and possibly implying that there may be cross-immunity protection - also as many suspect.
...but for COVID-19 specifically, there is no evidence that it circulated in rural China prior to entering Wuhan.
...and sadly China is blocking the collection of samples for exactly that sort of serology/antibody analysis.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/23/8417296...