Your quoting one line of a long post, which concludes:

But the genetic confirmation of so many animal species, including potential intermediate hosts of SARS2, is astonishing (to me at least) even though there was already a lot of evidence that they were there.
As one colleague (Joe DeRisi) described the Huanan market “It’s literally Disneyland for zoonotic transfer”.

It still comes down to "probability". And the most probable is that it originated in some animal and was eventually transferred to humans...
And after humans contracted the virus it spread throughout the market to lots of species.

The problem is that for a virus to be maintained over time, has to have a reservoir species somewhere that isn't affected negatively by the virus, but which the virus can survive and thrive within... Humans aren't a reservoir species as the effects of the virus negatively affect the host and immediately create an immune system response,
Bird flu, for instance, affect birds very negatively. But could be reservoired in humans because, apparently it doesn't affect us...

The most probable origin--before China and gain-of-function scientists muddied the waters--is that it came from bats with SARs like viruses that were located nearby in the Wuhan lab and where gain-in--function research was going on. The odds that the pandemic would have just happened to have occurred in the only place in the world where this was going on are astronomical.

Horseshoes bats are the primary reservoir. No indication that there were any such bats with SARs like coronaviruses even close to Wuhan other than the Wuhan lab Those bats are a 1,000 miles away from Wuhan. If those bats infected an intermediate species why wouldnt the pandemic started a 1,000 miles away where the intermediate species would have been infected? And with Covid already being highly adapted to transmission to humans it is not at all clear there needed to be an intermediate species (and of course that Covid was so highly adapted to human transmission is suspicious in itself).

"-before China and gain-of-function scientists muddied the waters"

The issue became muddied when it became politicized in the US. When it became about finger pointing by right wing politicians who wanted to blame China and avoid blame for a less than adequate public health response to the pandemic.

Anything that Trump and Rand Paul put their grubby hands on was going to be poisoned. Especially when the potential culprit was a Chinese government that is insular, protective and reactionary.
And China was going to be sensitive whether it was a naturally occurring virus from a wet market, OR whether it improbably leaked from a high security laboratory.

Is it possible that the Chinese Government could have "muddied the waters"?

Or is that not even conceivable in your mindset?

Can you not follow the plot?
The Chinese reacted negatively to being blamed for the virus. And they did what most reactionary authoritarian governments do, they bottled up. A totally predictable reaction.
They are responsible for this reaction.

However a sophisticated, intelligent, thoughtful western leader would have understood that this would be the response to a claim that the virus was "the fault" of the Chinese...
And would have understood that for a properly comprehensive investigation, the cooperation of the Chinese scientific community, and the Chinese government would be required.
That would have required a nuanced, patient response. (The kind of response that the scientific community had at the beginnings of the out break when the Chinese were closely cooperating with scientists around the world leading to the incredibly speedy DNA profiling of Covid19 by Chinese scientists. . That all occurred before the thing became political.)

Of course that only matters if one would prefer that we actually conclusively solve the issue of the origins of Covid 19. Because that would be more useful to the health of the human race, and the stability of the world economy than scoring a few political points with one's base... (Which is what Trump and his administration seemed interested in accomplishing as a distraction to their really poor public health reaction to the out break of Covid 19).

The Chinese government are responsible for allowing the conditions in wet markets that allow for the easy zoonotic transfer of virus and/or other pathogens... Its probable that they don't want to fix these conditions because they are a large economic engine in China.
They may also, though far less likely, be responsible for a mistake at the Wuhan laboratory. (I say less likely because scientists operating in the lab would be the first potential victims of a leak, and they more than anyone would understand the importance of ensuring it didn't happen.)
But we'll never know probably.

And frankly that's because for 4 years the US was governed by an incompetent.

You ever wonder why the world takes an interest in the US domestic political situation. The main reason is that actions by the US often affect much of the world. The other is kind of like driving by a car crash on the highway.

So, that would be a yes?

This is interesting. Someone did an assessment of the mitochondrial DNA in the sample from the racoon dog stall. The racoon dogs had the highest readings. However, they found readings of some coronaviruses that infect humans and cause colds. Basically that comes from people who have colds. But those readings were higher than Covid. Here's the kicker: you would expect that since Racoon dog mitochondrial DNA predominates in the sample that the Covid reading would be higher than the coronaviruses that cause colds in people if they were the intermediate carrier. Why? If Racoon Dogs had been the original Covid source then they would have coughed up a lot more Covid virus than humans coughed up those cold coronaviruses since humans had a much lower presence in the stall. So that finding is inconsistent with the Covid coming from Racoon Dogs...

Ain't science great!

https://mobile.twitter.com/stevenemasse ... 4954191873

Yes Science is great.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/202 ... found.html

from the guy who thinks its likely raoon dogs and likely not a lab leak... The whole article is interesting because it illustrates how the knowledge base built on viral genetics..

Worobey had signed on to the lab leak letter, but continued his investigation . If you don't feel like reading the whole thing here's the key paragraphs.

This creates two possible scenarios, as Worobey sees it.
In one, a researcher at the virological institute gets infected during a lab accident. They travel 15 kilometres across the city to the market. They go directly to the area of the market housing wildlife known to be susceptible to coronaviruses and start a transmission chain, while infecting no one else along the way. Two weeks later, another infected lab worker does the exact same thing again.
In the other, wildlife already known to be a risk for carrying coronaviruses infects multiple people at the type of market where humans are continually exposed to them.
The apparent coincidences and analogies that underpinned Worobey’s initial thinking now look wobbly to him.

And this :

Worobey takes no issue with anyone hasn’t assessed the evidence yet — he started there himself. He does take issue with those actively ignoring the full scope of evidence, or worse, distorting it.

The results of the FBI’s and other intelligence agencies; reviews, which have offered a range of assessments in where COVID came from and their confidence in those conclusions, are “a huge embarrassment to the intelligence community,” Worobey says.

“The U.S. government, and governments in general, are making a huge strategic error and compromising national security by trying to ask our intelligence agencies to answer scientific questions, because they get the wrong answer or no answer at all,” he adds, noting that the government, busy pursuing the lab leak, has done nothing to address the “recipe for pandemics” that wildlife markets represent.

“The shots on goal are coming from there constantly, and not from labs,” he says

.

By politicizing this issue, and including groups who don't have the skills or education to properly investigate, we've virtually guaranteed that there will be another viral outbreak at a wet market..

GIGO. The source for the data that initial cases circulating around the market...is China! And they've been manipulating data since Day 1. By far the most likely scenario is a lab leak in October--virus percolating around a while--and then breaking out big in December in the market where a lot of people congregated. And, no, China doesn't really care if the outbreak came from an wild animal market. But that it came from their top lab would be a blow to their ego...



https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... ify%20wall

Well China does owe more cooperation. However once you politicize it... . (There was always going to be a danger that China would take umbrage from scrutiny over the issue even if it was left to the scientific community. But Trump and the trumpiss crudities doomed the process.)

The implausible scenario is the one Worobe now discounts. And he didn't add in the fact that scientists who understand the problem with lab leaks, somehow screwed up and got infected.
The his scenario ..

. They travel 15 kilometres across the city to the market. They go directly to the area of the market housing wildlife known to be susceptible to coronaviruses and start a transmission chain, while infecting no one else along the way. Two weeks later, another infected lab worker does the exact same thing again.
In the other, wildlife already known to be a risk for carrying coronaviruses infects multiple people at the type of market where humans are continually exposed to them.
The apparent coincidences and analogies that underpinned Worobey’s initial thinking now look wobbly to him.

Its always the simplest answer...

It's starting to look conclusive:

Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag write on their Substack, Public:

According to multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy investigation by Public and Racket, the first people infected by the virus, “patients zero,” included Ben Hu, a researcher who led the WIV’s “gain-of-function” research on SARS-like coronaviruses, which increases the infectiousness of viruses. . . .

Now, answers increasingly look within reach. Sources within the US government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were members of the Wuhan lab suspected to have leaked the pandemic virus.

...

Meanwhile, another State Department cable from July 2020 concluded, “Beijing knew earlier than they admit” and “Initial outbreak could have been contained in China if Beijing had not covered it up.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morn ... oming-out/

We may start seeing this in a court of law as countries and individuals sue China for knowingly covering it up and failing to prevent the spread of Covid (which per the article they could have contained). The courts would be an excellent venue to evaluate competing claims.

Presumably the same three described identified a few years ago by US intelligence as going to the hospital in November, 2019 but we didn't know the names then...

"A U.S. intelligence report identified three researchers at a Wuhan lab who sought treatment at a hospital after falling ill in November 2019, a source familiar with the matter tells NBC News."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnew ... cna1268327

The zoonotic transfer theory crowd could never come up with a reasonable theory of how Covid got started in Wuhan that supported their theory. Yes, scientific research is the ultimate determinant but you don't leave your common sense behind especially in a forensic investigation on the origins of a virus. Out of all the cities in China The virus just "happened" to occur in the city with a lab where bats were being studied that had SARs-like viruses (with gain-in-function research going on), said bats that had originated 1,000 miles away (and if those bats transferred to a host animal you would still expect the outbreak to occur near those bat caves not in Wuhan). Those are reasonable, common sense inferences (circumstantial evidence) with significant evidentiary weight that should have guided the investigation.

And we still haven't done anything to rein in gain-in-function research, which basically serves as employment for scientists while subjecting the rest of us to potential pandemics worse than Nature can come up with..

And now we have similar issues with AI where resesrchers are messing around with systems they have little understanding or ability to control...

The number of potential threats to future human thriving--nuclear, Climate Change, pandemics, species extinction, arable land, water shortage, AI--just seems to be growing at an expotential rate with little being done to deal with these issues...

Clearly, human beings are at a crossroads where we need to come up with government systems/international agreements to effectively deal with these issues. These are planetary issues and the capitalism is failing utterly to deal with them. And in fact democracy itself appears to be in peril in the US and for all the complaints about the US the Pax Americana has been hugely beneficial to the world. If the US retreats from the world stage due to internal problems, the rest of the world will likely become a scary place...

We live in interesting...but troubled times.