A theory emerged whereby a bat passed the virus to another creature, a pangolin, where the virus mutated before being passed to humans.
But while it can not be ruled out, there is a problem with this theory – all the samples recovered from the market are of a virus which was already adapted to humans.
There is a darker possibility: That far from being a freak of nature, the virus was man-made, and escaped from a laboratory in what would be just about the most devastating and expensive accident in history.
It sounds like a far-fetched science fiction novel. That is perhaps one reason why many scientists initially were reluctant to countenance the idea: They didn’t want to give ideas to conspiracy theorists. But steadily, evidence has begun to point at a man-made source. Over the weekend, the US government’s National Security Adviser, Matthew Pottinger, said that he now believes a laboratory leak is the “most credible source” for the pandemic.
Besides its wet market, Wuhan is noted for its Institute of Virology, a Chinese Porton Down where scientists study novel pathogens, and which has a special line in research into coronaviruses. Covid-19, and SARS, which briefly threatened to develop into a pandemic in 2003, are both coronaviruses.
The institute is known to have worked with a SARS-like virus which was found to have infected six men clearing bat droppings from a cave in Yunnan province in 2012. Three died. Moreover, the institute is known to have created viruses artificially as part of its work, because in 2017 it published a paper on the subject.
