Maybe, just maybe, the lab studying viruses in bats was located in a region with many bats, and many viruses? The potential of these viruses jumping to humans w

Maybe, just maybe, the lab studying viruses in bats was located in a region with many bats, and many viruses? The potential of these viruses jumping to humans was the reason for the lab in the first place, after all. I imagine Iowa State University does some research into diseases afflicting corn. But if some new corn fungus shows up in Iowa, it’s probably because corn covers half the state, not because the lab is located there. Geneticists have already explained that the virus is perfectly natural: all the genes are similar to preciously-seen viruses, and genetic engineering leaves tell-tale signatures of the methods. That would seem to diminish any possible role of the lab to just being the place of transmission, something that could have happened just as easily outside the lab, where an expanding human population is in daily contact with the wildlife they’re encroaching on. That “wet market” theory is indeed far from certain. Bats aren’t eaten as often as people seem to think, and they are usually not eaten raw. What’s far more likely is simply someone coming in contact with bat shit. Bats like caves, and human dwelling often are even better. They live really close to humans and there is ample opportunity for contamination. I live in the middle of Berlin, and I have bats catching mosquitos right outside my window in the summer. If bats can make a living here, with climate on the cold side and every building being tightly isolated and passing every inspection German bureaucrats have come up with, imagine how much they enjoy the somewhat wilder structures of a quickly growing city. It deserves mention that it’s no coincidence these cables happen to be leaked now. It’s an administration trying to deflect blame. Yet they fail to do even that properly: these cables only raise the possibility of this lab being involved in any way. But what they prove definitely is that there was ample warning in time. And what difference would it make? Short of an intentional release (which only the most deluded conspiracy nuts believe), it’s negligence at best. That doesn’t change the fact that the federal government ignored dozens of warnings and wasted eight to twelve weeks. 9/11 was very obviously intentional, and the national security establishment still got raked over the coals for it. Imagine 9/11, but with ten similar attacks in other countries starting in late May, Interpol declaring it a “world-wide threat”, and a bunch of small terrorist attacks in Washington State at the end of July.