> how does "actual science like genome analysis" prove it wasn't a lab leak?
You're right, it doesn't, I was just using your own phrasing. What the science did do was provide verifiable evidence which supported the theory that the virus could have came from animals. Having actual research that can be repeated and verified will always win out over vague accusations or suspicions made without evidence, such as your claim that it all came from "scientists highly motivated to discredit the lab leak hypothesis."
On one hand we have wild speculation, on the other we have "SARS-CoV-2 emergence very likely resulted from at least two zoonotic events" (https://zenodo.org/record/6291628/files/Pekar_Zoonosis.pdf?d...) Neither of the two have to be correct, and neither offers definitive proof of how the virus spread, but if you can honestly look at those two things and say neither one offers any evidence or that that they provide an equal level of analysis I don't know what to tell you.
In the context of an issue of such global significance, given the degree of pressure a nation-state like China is going to apply, I think you are being incredibly naive to accept a single scientific paper on face value.
Here's a critique of the very same paper:-
So which is right? You don't know, I don't know...so maybe we need to also consider other scenarios too.
And contemplating the possibility of a lab leak, when a coronavirus outbreak randomly appears just down the road from a laboratory that studies coronaviruses (of all places in the world) is about as far from "wild speculation" as you can get. It's just simple commonsense, unless you have an agenda.
Here's some other examples where "wild speculation" must have been involved:-
And I havent mentioned all the other kinds of intelligence data used to analyse such an event, like satellite photos of the Wuhan lab carpark, or peaks in mobile phone activity in the area, or there are some indications that 3 scientists at the Wuhan lab came down with an "unknown" respiratory disease a month before the first appearance of Covid.
> I think you are being incredibly naive to accept a single scientific paper on face value.
No one accepted that one paper at face value, it's just one of several examples of papers and research where actual evidence was presented and explored.
The fact that biolabs exist and leaks have happened in the past are not actual evidence. That lab still exists today and leaks have still happened in the past, does that mean a virus is leaking right now? It's just wild speculation. Wet markets also exist and have been linked to outbreaks of disease in the past. These are reasons for investigations, not for accusations and conspiracy theories.
Gradually, real evidence for the lab leak theory started to emerge. Your parking lot picture and the sick lab researchers are good examples of evidence, even though they're only circumstantial, but none of that evidence existed when people started spreading lab leak conspiracy theories. Those conspiracy theories had no evidence at all.
Even still, investigations were carried out to see if the the virus really was a bioweapon, to determine if it came from the lab, and to see if it came from the market. As evidence that it came from the market grew, the people spouting lab leak conspiracy theories ignored all the evidence for everything else and continued to spread their conspiracies even though the evidence for a natural origin was much stronger.
Any time actual evidence that supported the lab leak theory emerged the media reported on it, and when enough evidence existed to justify the lab leak theory the media took it seriously.
You're right, it doesn't, I was just using your own phrasing. What the science did do was provide verifiable evidence which supported the theory that the virus could have came from animals. Having actual research that can be repeated and verified will always win out over vague accusations or suspicions made without evidence, such as your claim that it all came from "scientists highly motivated to discredit the lab leak hypothesis."
On one hand we have wild speculation, on the other we have "SARS-CoV-2 emergence very likely resulted from at least two zoonotic events" (https://zenodo.org/record/6291628/files/Pekar_Zoonosis.pdf?d...) Neither of the two have to be correct, and neither offers definitive proof of how the virus spread, but if you can honestly look at those two things and say neither one offers any evidence or that that they provide an equal level of analysis I don't know what to tell you.