>generally all agree that the question is subtle, unsettled
>(and will probably never be settled to anyone's satisfaction),

i agree, it is unsettled and the origin of covid may never be known

>but that the preponderance of evidence is still clearly in
>favor of the same kind of natural origin as every other
>coronavirus that's developed in the last million years,
>including all of the SARS and MERS variants that covid is a
>part of.

new gene editing techniques...are new. lab leaks happen. scientists now have ability to do things that they couldn't 20 years ago, let alone a million. they can create new viruses with unforeseeable consequences in labs. the wuhan lab was the leading lab in all of china (and up there globally) for sars viruses. the chinese govt used Wuhan as a negative control in a study assessing threat of diseases of zoonotic origin (was considered an unlikely ground zero for this vs places in south china with far more 'wet market' type activity'). a bat virus is considered the most likely starting point of sars cov 2. wuhan virology lab was going very far away and bringing these bat viruses in to study them.

>
>
>It's also a completely moot point, because the mere fact that
>all the other SARS variants emerged naturally means that we
>need to accelerate laboratory research on them, even if that
>presents a risk of lab leaks.

without you getting more specific, this is irresponsible. the HOW and WHAT of the science is important. there is a possibility that sars cov 2 started like this: researchers at wuhan virology lab go on far away field trip, find bats with little understood virus, take virus back to Wuhan, start experimenting with the virus, modifications they make (whether intentionally or not, who knows) make the virus capable of spreading and presenting a danger to humans...this virus infects a lab worker....there is a global pandemic.

so in this sceneario, if the researchers left the bats in far flung caves alone...we don't have a pandemic. so saying we need to accelerate lab research without prescribing how we can ensure this research is safe and will not lead to the accidental creation and release of viruses that pose a threat to humans is critical.

taking the lab leak origin hypothesis seriously means taking a hard look at the scientific practices that MAY have caused the pandemic. it's not a point-scoring practice in playing the blame game. the threat of lab-created pandemics is real and more needs to be done to make sure we aren't cooking up global disasters under the blind banner of "all science is good! accelerate! accelerate!"