Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins

They literally collected bat virus samples from all over China, from very remote locations and brought them to their lab for study.

Bat cave solves mystery of deadly SARS virus — and suggests new outbreak could occur (2017)

"To clinch the case, a team led by Shi Zheng-Li and Cui Jie of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China sampled thousands of horseshoe bats in locations across the country."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9

I don't think it was engineered per se, but let's not pretend that chaos theory isn't a thing. It's very realistic that this virus could have mutated on its own, in the lab, and infected a worker.

Ah, your missing the true nature of the 'idea'. As my dinner guest said last night, the theory making the rounds is that Wuhan virus is a man-made virus created in Wuhan and released to make money off the 'soon to be released' anti-viral or vaccination. That's the idea that has been knocked down by showing that this is a relative of natural occuring virii.

This statement seems the closest for that conclusion:

>Bedford’s analyses of RaTG13 and 2019-nCoV suggest that the two viruses shared a common ancestor 25 to 65 years ago, an estimate he arrived at by combining the difference in nucleotides between the viruses with the presumed rates of mutation in other coronaviruses. So it likely took decades for RaTG13-like viruses to mutate into 2019-nCoV.

But if the mutations are natural, that just means it wasn't engineered, it doesn't mean like you have stated, that it excludes storage in a lab at some point. Also not all activity happens in the lab, for all we know it could of been outside the lab and an affiliate exposed during capturing or during transport of bats to sample, breathing in virus particles exhaled or otherwise exuded by the bats, perhaps when their guard was down, not expecting to get sick.

Yeah it doesn't actually knock down shit, just means that either are possible. So... It changes nothing.