[bingojess]

In the article there isn't any discussion of cause and effect, it is a probabilistic model. Eg. being near a virus lab makes it more likely it's a lab escape, being 1000km away from the main zoonotic reservoirs (bat populations) in China make it less likely it's of zoonotic origin. This is not to say it's impossible as researchers do travel 1000km from Wuhan to get samples from bats. I'll not comment on the probabilities they assigned to each hypothesis (they may very well be discounting the likelihood of zoonotic origins too heavily) but that is the approach they took.

[dash2]

The point is, the probabilistic model treats it as “very surprising” that the virus originated in a city where there is a virus lab. But that becomes less surprising if you consider that virus labs will often be located in cities at high risk from zoonotic outbreaks.