Smoking gun in the original SARS took 15 years to find and it was found in bats in a cave 1100 km away from the first outbreak. What exactly are you expecting two years into this outbreak?
The "circumstantial evidence" is that pretty much all recent new infectious diseases in humans were traced to animals in the wild, or alternatively, sometimes not traced anywhere at all (Hepatitis C, anyone?). "Yes, but this one is special!", conspiracy theorists swear. Sure, Jan.
One analogy I heard recently is that lots of people get covered in paint worldwide, but if you see 10 people covered in paint right next to the dulux paint factory, you should probably consider the likelihood it came from there, even if the paint factory denies it.
Let’s not forget that we are talking about the outbreak being right next to a lab which was known to have inadequate safety precautions which was trying to make bat coronaviruses jump species.
We are also talking about a strain that, if it began in a lab with inadequate safety standards, could have very easily escaped due to its high infectiousness and low detectability due to asymptomatic carriers.
Might we find it in a cave? Of course. Might we find it started in WIV? Of course.
The only people I personally think are silly are people that outright dismiss either option.
https://archive.is/tpxg1
(Nicholas Wade's excellent medium post, one hundred percent worth the read, Possibly duped in the Bulletin of atomic scientists shtick floating around right now.)
I expect in the absence of a smoking gun, that people weigh the relative preponderance of evidence and do reasonable things. The preponderance of evidence clearly tilts in one direction over another, but the people closest to the subject matter at hand have rather tangible conflicts of interest in controls implemented if the story tilts against their preferred zoonotic spillover which conveniently absolves any human agency of responsibility.
Mother Nature throws us a curve ball every once in a while to keep us on our toes. Other humans do so with a probability approaching 1, and I see evidence of all the tools and expertise necessary to have constructed the ball from scratch, measure that, in fact, this is the ball that will curve the way we expect it to, and through it all I've seen the most grossly blatant active perception management of facts and science by media and government alike that I've ever had the misfortune to witness. I've had my eye on the community and volunteer collated pools of evidence and have actually been running down references and anomalies and watching things evolve since this first entered the public eye as rumors of a mysterious illness back in 2019, and even before that, when my interest was piqued by some seriously questionable research papers getting published every few years over the past decade in terms of "You were so busy wondering if you could, you never stopped to ponder if you should." I've done my level best to ensure that I fully delve into the subject area enough to actually form a reasonable stab at a fact based opinion, including integrating new info as it became available.
It's not my burden to prove zoonotic. I welcome those looking for it to find us the smoking gun we need to put lab-leak to bed. I also welcome lab-leak to do the same for zoonotic. Until then, I propose doing something about all the smoke in the room as it's a little odd how everyone just seems to have handwaved the possibility there is a fire making it.
In the grand scheme of things, the only people with anything more to lose are the ones most vocally advocating everyone not look behind the curtain, or actively making it more difficult to and that everyone else just doesn't understand.
I understand perfectly. China has sovereignty issues to deal with. They have a bunch of other red marks going on in terms of baggage foreign and domestic policy-wise and don't want to make it any easier for another one to get dropped on their doorstep. That's fine. I don't care half so much at this point.
I care that we've got a bunch of institutions at each other's throat trying to fist feed advantageous narratives and lies through omission instead of everybody putting all their cards on the damn table, and we're doing some of the most dangerous damn research I can conceive of in ways where it convenience of the researcher even comes into the picture. G-o-F on Viruses are the biological equivalent of bloody "let's make grey goo" in nanotech.
But I get it. That's life. It's absurd. It will continue to be absurd. People have to look at other people in the most uncaring or warped way to think helping anything along it's evolutionary path to human infectiveness is a good, viable research topic to take place anywhere near other people. I don't even begrudge Baric or Zengli Shi. I begrudge the complete lack of foresight and institutional self-reflection that surrounded this type of research even having all the necessary tools collected in one place without audit controls just in case this sort of thing ever came into question to keep it from blowing up in everyone's faces. assuming the risk it presents would ever be reasonably mitigated is the very definition of foolishness and blindness to human fallibility.
The "circumstantial evidence" is that pretty much all recent new infectious diseases in humans were traced to animals in the wild, or alternatively, sometimes not traced anywhere at all (Hepatitis C, anyone?). "Yes, but this one is special!", conspiracy theorists swear. Sure, Jan.