Consider the possibility that since Smallpox has been eradicated for forty years, someone in that lab may have thought nothing of the vials in there until after seeing the recent chatter about it, triggering a Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon in the lab worker, leading them to reporting the dangerous vials.
It's just so silly that people who took the prospect of a global pandemic seriously are looked at suspiciously by conspiracy kooks.
We had so many close calls in the past, including a bunch of Coronaviruses (SARS/MERS/a bunch of serious colds), it was obvious as international travel increased, population density increased and humans further encroached on nature that we would see things like Covid.
Experts had been warning us for years which is why nearly everyone with any brains opposed the idiotic dismantling of warning networks, Chinese CDC teams, and the pandemic response NSC unit under Trump.
