Over the years, several virologists have told me they believe a lab origin of Covid is more likely than a natural origin. I worried it might've been selection bias but it seems even virologists doing gain-of-function experiments told Kristian Andersen the same in 2020.
In 2020, many still thought virus experiments had been conducted at top biosafety (BSL4).
By 2021, it became better understood the work had been done outside high containment (BSL2) and the scientists had a plan to put furin cleavage sites into unidentified SARS-like viruses.
For those who haven't worked in BSL2s, there's a wide range of accidental and even intentional biosafety lapses that occur. Mainly because scientists working at BSL2 don't expect any real risk of causing a deadly outbreak or seriously harming themselves.
Some BSL2s are incredibly packed, with scientists from multiple groups going in and out of the same small space all day and even night, to the point where there are altercations over who booked which equipment for how long and who left the biohaz waste overflowing or unbleached.
Scientists working long hours under pressure from themselves or professors will sometimes even eat or drink in BSL2 spaces. Some use the same gloved hand that handles viruses or bacteria on their cell phones and earbuds. Some even use their mouths to inflate their used gloves.
If a scientist in Wuhan had created Covid-19 - a highly transmissible, airborne, pandemic-capable coronavirus - and grown this virus and used it for infection experiments at BSL2, it's only a matter of time before lab personnel are infected.
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