It's no mystery where it came from. A very similar virus (SARS-CoV-1) came very close to sparking a global pandemic in 2004. In late 2017 that virus was found

It's no mystery where it came from. A very similar virus (SARS-CoV-1) came very close to sparking a global pandemic in 2004. In late 2017 that virus was found in bats in a cave in Yunnan, China. The closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2 has no name, just the code RaTG13. In 2013 three miners cleaned out bat shit from a mine in China and all three died of viral pneumonia caused by RaTG13. Why that didn't spark a pandemic is not known, but basically we got lucky for the second time. Then, in 2019, we had the third incident, but this time we didn't get lucky. In theory this virus could have come from a lab, but it's far, far more likely it came from wild bats. And its cousin SARS-CoV-1 is still out there in bats. It could be let loose for the second time at any moment. That lab doesn't worry me. Bats do.