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There are good political/social reasons for wanting SARS-CoV-2 to have entered humans directly from animals, and many pushing the WIV lab accident hypothesis have nefarious intent. I am nonetheless surprised at the degree of confidence people express in a natural origin.
I've looked at a lot of the evidence, and, while the direct transfer from bats remains the strongest hypothesis, the case is far from airtight. And it might never be, because even if it were true, we'd be lucky to find evidence in wild bat populations that would erase all doubt.
And there is an at least plausible case for lab accident too, in that the virus first appeared in the rough vicinity of a lab that is studying precisely this kind of virus and doing the kind of experiments that, if something went wrong, would lead to disaster.
That said, we have to be extremely careful about interpreting the circumstantial evidence relating to the Wuhan virus lab (WIV).
First of all, it's not random coincidence that they're working on bat coronaviruses. They're doing so because there were very good reasons (SARS, MERS) to worry about a new beta coronavirus pandemic coming from the viruses natural reservoir in bats.
Also, that the outbreak originated in Wuhan is far from a smoking gun. It is a major population center within the range of the bats in which the most closely related coronaviruses have been found, making it a strong candidate for where a wild outbreak would be first be observed.
So there's a bit of "blame the fire department for fires because there's a fire station located near most burning buildings" going on here.
But accidental lab releases are certainly not unprecedented, and there are many people who have long thought it was just a matter of time before there was a major outbreak caused by a lab accident involving research on potential pandemic virus strains
And there is certainly a lot of work going on with molecular manipulations of virus strains and in vitro and in vivo selection for various viral properties that would make a release, if it happened, very bad.
Ultimately, this all boils down to a matter of priors. We know there have been beta-coronavirus outbreaks of animal origin before, so there's really nothing surprising about there being another one, and the data are certainly consistent with a wild origin for COVID at this point.
On the flip side, the known events are more or less exactly what you'd expect if there was a lab release from WIV. So if you think lab releases are a serious potential danger (which they clearly are) and likely (not clear), I can see why you'd think the evidence supports this.
I do think it's important to look at the evidence, as I hope the WHO are doing now, and let the data fall where it may. However, I am somewhat terrified of the consequences of it turning out to have been a lab release.
The bolstering of conspiracy theories, the negative ramification for scientific research, and the inevitable geopolitical fallout coupled with racism and xenophobia would be horrific.
If this does come to pass I hope the scientific community responds constructively, first of all by not nationalizing it. If something went wrong, it's a global scientific problem, not a Chinese one.
And even if a lab release is ruled out, the very possibility that this is what happened here should give us all pause and lead to more care and thought about not just about how we work with dangerous pathogens, but also about what kind of dangerous research is worth doing.
