SARS-CoV-2 came to the world's attention because so many people in Wuhan got sick that clinicians noticed the unexpectedly high volume of patients. No special s

SARS-CoV-2 came to the world's attention because so many people in Wuhan got sick that clinicians noticed the unexpectedly high volume of patients. No special skill in virology is required to detect that, and there's no indication that the WIV was involved in doing so; if you believe it was, please post a reference. The genome of SARS-CoV-2 was first published not by the WIV but by Professor Zhang Yongzhen at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Centre: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052966/chinese-laboratory-first-shared-coronavirus-genome-world-ordered https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052966/chin... Of course it's possible that the WIV had discovered the outbreak earlier by more sophisticated means, and the CCP has chosen to conceal this fact. I don't think it's even that unlikely, considering all the other early warnings they tried and failed to conceal (e.g., the reports from Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist unaffiliated with the WIV); but the question would then become why.