It makes sense that employees of the lab got infected and zoonotic transmission and subsequent epidemic in the general population took place that way. It’s the simplest explanation also. I had thought a year ago that there was a contamination of some sort in to the town, perhaps via poor wastes management, but this scenario is even more likely.
Thanks for the link to the PNAS article.
That can be entirely true, and is not evidence that the Chicoms deliberately engineered a virus to have pandemic potential.
I worked at USAMRIID for a while. We were highly aware of the risks of accidentally releasing a lab virus into the wild. We discussed ways to avoid that all the time, through engineering controls and frequent safety training.
The Chicoms biggest crime here was to try to cover up the outbreak instead of taking steps to contain it right away. They should be held accountable.
Speaking of lab related outbreaks, did you ever hear of the anthrax exposure from the lab in Sverdlovsk, Russia? I used to show my interns an autopsy picture of a patient whose brain was completely black from the anthrax. It was stunning.