alt Hacker NewsNobody expected natural zoonotic spillover near Wuhan, and Dr. Shi's lab was not situated with that in mind. In her own words:
> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.scien...
The virus doesn't seem to have been engineered from any previously known sarbecovirus, but the WIV had the largest collection of novel sarbecoviruses collected from nature in the world, and had proposed in DEFUSE to engineer them in collaboration with Dr. Baric at UNC. DARPA rejected that proposal, in part for safety reasons, but the WIV was technically capable of doing the work alone.
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...
> Dr. Shi's lab was not situated with that in mind
Never said that, labs are close to places with high viral reservoirs because it is easier to get animal samples to study, obviously, not to guard against outbreaks. Neither one "expects" such an outbreak, obviously. The fact that it is a tail event does not mean it is arbitrary, though, ie that it can just happen anywhere with equal chance.
The other arguments have been answered 1 million times and they are not worth even discussing about anymore. They only exist as justification for somebody really wanting certain conspiracy theories to be true.