The problem with this whole article is that we know of no suitable backbone virus to use, and we know of no suitable spike-protein sequence to form a chimera wh

The problem with this whole article is that we know of no suitable backbone virus to use, and we know of no suitable spike-protein sequence to form a chimera which results in SARS-CoV-2. The experiments done on the SARS-CoV-1 or WIV1 backbone don't remotely get you close to SARS-CoV-2 and you're dealing with centuries of evolutionary difference there. The RaTG13 virus backbone is also several decades of evolution away from SARS-CoV-2. Learning how to replicate a virus in the lab is also not simple so they're not going to be doing this with every virus they find. We know they managed to do it with SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1, but they'd need a reason to undertake it with any other virus. So you have to assume that WIV has a virus which they found which is similar to RaTG13 which they have never published, and for some reason they jumped straight to making that virus replicate in the lab and creating chimeras, and they also had a previously and still unpublished spike protein which was similar to the Pangolin spike which they used. Then for some reason they didn't do this in petri dishes, but used animals and/or somehow managed to aerosolize enough of it that researchers at WIV got sick from it. This is with a virus that we now know doesn't stick to surfaces very well at all, so the actual accident remains unexplained (they had a party and someone chopped up some chimera and railed it like a line of coke? that'd do it). While you're pondering all that keep in mind that the person who "broke" the story in the WSJ about the sick workers at the Wuhan lab was Michael R. Gordon. He's also notable for having co-authored with Judith Miller in 2002 the NYT story on Hussein's nuclear program and WMDs that arguably helped propel us into the Iraq War. It is also worthwhile to read Shi Zhengli's rebuttal to the lab leak theory: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/world/asia/china-covid-wuhan-lab-leak.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/world/asia/china-covid-wu... If you'd like some actual science on the zoontic investigation: "Evidence for SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses circulating in bats and pangolins in Southeast Asia" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1 "Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus" https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j... "Identification of novel bat coronaviruses sheds light on the evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses" https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00709-1.pdf