In many ways the more people try to make arguments for natural spillover the less likely it seems.
The theory, which the scientists pushing natural spillover argue is the best evidence, say:
1) no scientists think the bat would have come from near Wuhan
2) there were raccoons and civets and the wet market - though no bats
The amount of steps needed for it to appear in Wuhan, before any of the dozens of large cities with wet markets closer to the bat population, is a lot.
The number of steps needed for a lab researcher to get it while dissecting a bat or bat excrement is small.
The final quote seems to cover this:
>But Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and a persistent critic of attempts to diminish the likelihood of a laboratory leak, said that this was a straw-man argument.
Dr. Ebright said it was possible that a W.I.V. lab worker might have contracted the coronavirus on a field expedition to study bats or while processing a virus at the lab. The new paper, he argued, failed to address such possibilities.
“The review does not advance the discussion,” Dr. Ebright said.
