You sound like you've decided long ago. But, when 6M+ people die of a virus that happened to originate near a sloppily-run virology lab with lead scientists making $30,000 who just happen to be researching gain-of-function on the same virus, it's natural to expect that some people will at least want to know more. Right? Not even circumstantial evidence is enough to go down that path?
Except that it is a high tech modern laboratory with stringent protocols, and while there have been dozens of lab leaks from other labs working on contagions that have escaped those labs, in a 100 years of these kinds of labs existing, there has never even been a serious outbreak, let alone an epidemic or pandemic.
And, repeating myself, the stunningly vast amount of historical evidence that viruses always come from animals, and always, in all known cases, first infect humans because they're working and living in close proximity to animals.
And that every other outbreak, epidemic and pandemic in the history of the Earth developed this way, and there being a wet market in Wuhan with the densest amount of infections and all of the initial infections within blocks on all sides of that market, and surprisingly few around the Wuhan Virology Lab...
So you are correct that I knew a long time ago the pandemic had to have started at that unsanitary wet market where the craziest live animals are bought and sold, and the pandemic could not possibly have been caused by a leak from the Wuhan Virology Lab that caused COVID-19.
Now, if it had ever happened before, ever, that a lab leak caused an outbreak, I might reconsider. But it's never happened, even with dozens of viable leaks of contagions. But pandemics have always been caused by the same thing throughout history, always always always and never otherwise (are you hearing me?), which is people close to animals. That's it. That's all there needs to be. That is the simplest explanation, and it is rational and it doesn't take 50 unlikely events in a row to have happened. That wet market is, or at least was, a reactor for a global pandemic.
Give it a read over some coffee. There's some other good deepdives by some biotechies as well, it'll take me a bit to get my brain to cough back up the magic query to get back to the articles in question.
I think it is worth having a gander at a list of pandemics that were caused by people living and working in close proximity to animals.
Antonine Plague, 165
Plague of Justinian, 541
Japanese Smallpox Epidemic, 735
Black Death, 1346
Mexico Small Pox Epidemic, 1519
Cocoliztli epidemic, 1576
Italian Plague, 1629
Naples Plague, 1656
Persian Plague, 1772
Cholera Global Pandemic, 1846
Third Plague Epidemic, 1855
Russia Typhus Epidemic, 1918
Spanish Flu, 1918
Influenza Pandemic, 1957
Hong Kong Flu, 1968
HIV,AIDS, 1981
All that is necessary to explain the COVID-19 pandemic is that wet market in Wuhan. No other explanation fits all the evidence, and no other explanation is necessary.
It would be suspicious if China never behaved this way, but China always behaves this way. Always. It also would go miles if we could identify any other significant outbreak caused by a lab leak, because regardless of the hedging on that page, it is not at all clear it is possible a lab leak could cause a pandemic. We take it for granted as obvious, but it simply is not, because it has never occurred before. Also, if that wet market didn't exist, entertaining the lab leak hypothesis might be rational, but even without the wet market, if it never existed, it is more likely the first human infection was caused by a wild animal rather than a lab leak. Except the wet market did exist with astoundingly unsanitary conditions along with many species of wild animals for sale and in close contact with people, and the location includes a bat infestation to boot, and someone got bit by a bat there.
I think it is just crazy and crazier to even remotely consider the Wuhan Institute of Virology over the wet market. The wet market is a tight and reasonable explanation. For it to have been WIV, we need a whole string of unlikely events.
That may be so, but if the pandemic was caused by a lab leak, we should have seen a concentration of infections surrounding the WIV, and at least on that side of the river. But instead, we see a concentration of the initial infections surrounding the wet market on the other side of the river. So the lab leak hypothesis simply does not fit the evidence.
Biolabs and genetic engineering are very recent developments for humans. It would not have been a possible orgin in the past but it is very possible now.
You are mistaken. Bacteria and viruses have been under serious study in modern labs since the 1930s. Since that time there have been dozens and dozens of leaks of contagions. And bioengineering has existed since the early 1970s.
The effort here is to try to show how unique the WIV is. But it isn't unique, it is a typical virology lab, just like all the other modern virology labs.
There's really nothing there. But the Wuhan Fish Market is certainly ground zero for the pandemic, the infections maps prove it, and the unsanitary conditions at that wet market with people in close proximity to live wild animals is all that is needed to explain the pandemic. It is the simplest explanation. Nothing else is required to cause a pandemic other than people in close proximity to animals, and we know this because every other outbreak, epidemic and pandemic in the history of the Universe was caused in precisely the same way.
