I have not read or analyzed this startup's claims, and don't know if they're substantial or worthwhile. However, I'm glad to see that this possibility is being given some attention. Such possibilities should be seriously considered because a lot of truths first begin as exploratory speculation. To attack someone for speculating is to disagree with truth seeking. There are numerous other past incidents where governments and corporations covered up past accidents and atrocities and only admitted the truth when it was undeniable. For example Union Carbide initially denied there was a huge gas leak that ultimately became the Bhopal disaster. The USSR denied there was a serious nuclear accident at Chernobyl until brave voices within their country spoke up. The US has numerous questionable practices revealed by Wikileaks or Snowden. All of these and other incidents were initially trivialized and dismissed by naysayers who were anti-truth or on the side of the perpetrators. Those seeking the truth were written off as crazy conspiracy theorists. We shouldn't let that happen in 2020.

With that in mind, I am surprised that no one in this conversation has mentioned Zero Hedge yet. Earlier in the year, Zero Hedge wrote about the possibility that the virus may have originated in a particular Wuhan lab (which was close to wet markets, and advertised research involving bats and coronaviruses). Zero Hedge received a lot of criticism from those who politicized this topic or were anti-Zero Hedge for other reasons. Just like with those other disasters I named above, the critics insisted that there is absolutely no possible way this virus originated from a lab. The same critique then extended to Trump and became further politicized when he correctly suggested halting inbound flights from China as a precaution. The focus on Trump poisoned civil discourse around the coronavirus. In the middle of all this chaos, Zero Hedge was banned from Twitter for "doxxing" researchers at the Wuhan lab (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/01/twitter...) although if you look at the actual Zero Hedge article in question, the researcher they named listed his contact information publicly, as he's the public face of the lab (so there's no doxxing). Zero Hedge later wrote an article covering the extremely biased attacks they were subject to from news media outlets (https://www.zerohedge.com/political/zerohedge-suspended-twit...), which is worth reading if you're into truth seeking. Embarrassingly, Twitter ultimately reversed their "permanent ban" of Zero Hedge (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-zerohedge/twitter...) but the damage was done.

Remember, we have no reason to believe the Chinese government's claims about the virus. They sought to oppress initial reports of the coronavirus, which delayed the world from knowing about it and being able to take the necessary actions (banning travel from China to their countries). The WHO was complicit in this by blindly relaying the CCP's claim that SARS-nCoV-2 does not transmit between humans (https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152), and in refusing to investigate the Wuhan lab themselves (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-world-health-...). And it is remarkable that after all these months of secrecy and denial, the scientists at this lab are only NOW (in December 2020) saying they are open to a visit and probe into the lab - after any evidence would be scrubbed (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445). This is obviously an underhanded offer given that the Chinese government just recently sentenced the Chinese journalist who challenged the government's early coronavirus narrative to 4 years in prison (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/world/asia/china-Zhang-Zh...).

All that is a long way of saying: please don't politicize this topic. Let's allow the open discussion, investigation, and research into the possibility that this virus originated from a lab or any other source.