Saying they were trying to generate SARS-CoV-2 in a lab is a very polemical way of saying that they were studying viral transmission in cell culture. They didn't create SARS-CoV-2. They created viruses that are extremely different from SARS-CoV-2.

> But, what precludes a lab from discovering a virus in the wild that is close to making the jump, and then pushing it the rest of the way?

The Wuhan Institute of Virology publishes identifying genetic sequences of the viruses it samples from the wild. SARS-CoV-2 is not among those viruses. The closest virus (RaTG13) that the WIV found before the pandemic was 4% different from SARS-CoV-2. If SARS-CoV-2 were engineered from RaTG13, then the two viruses would be virtually identical throughout most of their genome. The only differences would be those introduced by the researchers. Yet the two viruses have seemingly random differences throughout their genomes - the types of differences you would not get in gain-of-function experiments. A 4% difference corresponds to many years of divergent evolution. The two viruses might have split as far back as the late 1800s.

So it's certain that SARS-CoV-2 is not engineered on the basis of RaTG13. If you want to claim that the WIV secretly found a different virus, then for unknown reasons didn't publish about that virus, and then started doing gain-of-function experiments on it without telling anyone (including their American scientific collaborators), you're just so far out in the realm of evidence-free conspiracy land that it's not worth responding to.

> copied over the ace2 section from sars

The receptor binding domains of SARS-CoV and SARS-COV-2 are very different from one another. The blog you're looking to is nonsense.

Listen to actual experts, like the virologists at This Week in Virology, not bloggers making wild claims.