> incredibly lax safety procedures.
Or someone having a bad day. Human beings are not robots. In fact they are quite opposite, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
> all you need is for some people to be near some sick bats.
Seems that there are multiple problems with that..
1. High level of optimisation for Human transmission, without many mutations indicating the possibility that it was pre-optimised somewhere before making the jump.
2. Presense of double `CGG` which is left as a common market to denote lab insertions.
>The insertion sequence of choice is the double CGG. That’s because it is readily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it. An additional advantage of the double CGG sequence compared with the other 35 possible choices: It creates a useful beacon that permits the scientists to track the insertion in the laboratory.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-suggests-a-wuhan-la...
So on the other hand, for lab leak, only these needs to be satisfied.
1. They were doing GoF research on viruses trying optimise for human transmission.
2. Someone had a bad day and didn't follow the strict procedures, and ended up getting infected with a super charged virus.
What makes the above far fetched is only if you take the chinese researcher's word for granted, and accpet that there was no such research being conducted there, and no virus that was close enough was stored in the lab to start the research with. But without that, I think the lab leak is much more probably, and I think most experts will agree as well (They don't because they have a hard time doubting fellow reserchers without evidence).