Did COVID-19 Leak from a Wuhan Lab?

First, the lab has been collecting and doing research on bat coronaviruses for years and, perhaps not so coincidentally, the outbreak begin in Wuhan and nowhere else.

Wade is particularly suspicious of EcoHealth Alliance researcher Peter Daszak who oversaw a National Institutes of Health grant used to fund research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In any case, even if Daszak is honest in his denials that doesn't mean that NIH funding might not have been diverted to gain-of-function research by lab leaders in Wuhan.

Certainly some research supports this contention, whereas other researchers report, "Furin cleavage sites in spike proteins naturally occurred independently for multiple times in coronaviruses. Such feature of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is not necessarily a product of manual intervention, though our observation does not rule out the lab-engineered scenario." More research and analysis will be required to sort these claims out.

Among these are the common bent-wing bats that are also found in the Yunnan caves from which the Wuhan virus researchers collected coronavirus samples.

Have Chinese researchers sought totest for the presence of a virus similar to the COVID-19 virus among that species of bat in Yunnan? The Chinese government still has plenty for which they ought to answer.

If not, then Chinese researchers and officials should expect continued-and increased-skepticism about their assertions that the COVID-19 virus was not introduced to the world via a lab leak.

https://reason.com/2021/05/12/did-covid-19-leak-from-a-wuhan-lab/