I'm not a tinfoil hat person, but it is starting to sound more & more like this was an accidental lab release:
After reporting that Covid-19 occurred naturally, U.S. intelligence modified its stance to say it might have leaked from a lab.
www.newsweek.com
Quotes from the article:
* The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency updated its assessment of the origin of the novel coronavirus to reflect that it may have been accidentally released from an infectious diseases lab, Newsweek has learned. The report, dated March 27 and corroborated by two U.S. officials, reveals that U.S. intelligence revised its January assessment in which it "judged that the outbreak probably occurred naturally" to now include the possibility that the new coronavirus emerged "accidentally" due to "unsafe laboratory practices" in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pathogen was first observed late last year.
* The DIA report, however, cites U.S. government and Chinese researchers that found "about 33 percent of the original 41 identified cases did not have direct exposure" to the market. That, along with what's known of the laboratory's work in past few years, raised reasonable suspicion that the pandemic may have been caused by a lab error, not the wet market.
* Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists have for the past five years been engaged in so-called "gain of function" (GOF) research, which is designed to enhance certain properties of viruses for the purpose of anticipating future pandemics. Gain-of-function techniques have been used to turn viruses into human pathogens capable of causing a global pandemic.
This was a known issue: (use the Wayback Machine if it gives you a paywall)
Quotes from the article:
* “The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.
* There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved.
This is a really interesting read:
In a highly significant development, Professor Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), has added his voice to those who believe the new coronavirus was created in a laboratory. Interviewed on the...
www.dr-rath-foundation.org
* Labeling the virus as “a professional job…a very meticulous job,” he described its genome as being a “clockwork of sequences.” “There’s a part which is obviously the classic virus, and there’s another mainly coming from the bat, but that part has added sequences, particularly from HIV – the AIDS virus,” he said.
So:
1. The Chinese virus lab is right down the street from the wet market
2. They were cited for safety problems
3. One of the dudes who got a Nobel prize for discovery of HIV said it looks lab-created
I mean, just based on my Internet armchair quarterbacking & what I've read on the Internet...the idea that this was an accidental lab leak seems pretty dang likely. Because the alternative is...there's a virus lab right down the street from the wet market...that was cited for safety problems...and multiple scientists are suggesting that it was a tailored virus due to the genome sequence...but it just happened to come from the wet market randomly. And I wouldn't imagine that China would (1) release this on their own population to spread to the rest of the world & risk economic collapse, especially without (2) a vaccine in place to make & sell ahead of time.
I could be way off base, but it sounds like (1) this was lab-designed, and (2) accidentally leaked (or maybe intentionally, by a disgruntled or extremist employee). We will probably never know the exact truth, but based on the symptoms, spread, and globalization of this virus, it seems like this is a legitimately viable option to consider.