Comment by tripletao
The same set of authors has brought us at least two prior attempts ("proximal origin", "multiple zoonotic origins") to reject the possibility that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic arose due to a research accident. All have been covered credulously in the popular media, contributing to the false consensus that e.g. caused Facebook to delete opposing arguments. This false consensus has now broken to some extent, but apparently not yet among high-impact journals.
As for prior attempts, their result is grossly overstated. Biosafety Now has published a detailed call for its retraction:
https://biosafetynow.substack.com/p/crits-christoph-et-al-20...
I don't think the details are really necessary, though. Approximately zero cases outside China were traced to their introductions, despite the forewarning, and despite the restricted set of options (an airport or seaport). This isn't for lack of trying--it's just really hard to do that from epidemiological data that's necessarily scarce and biased, especially for a virus whose frequently mild symptoms mean most cases never get ascertained.
So why would anyone believe they'd succeeded at the much more difficult task of tracing that very first introduction? The usual answer seems to be "because the paper was full of math that I didn't understand, and I trusted the authors"--but that's a pretty bad reason, especially when the authors are funded by and coordinated closely with the agency that advocated for (and funded!) the high-risk research in question.
Thank you for the context. My reasons for thinking it was credible have nothing to do with "math I didn't understand."
I actually think the larger problem is how it spread via travelers and that some of the actions taken nominally for purposes of controlling the spread actually made things worse. People were herded together in airports to be checked or some nonsense.
We may never know the origin story and I still don't know what to suggest in practical terms for preventing something similar from happening again, but I do think it needs to be addressed someplace other than "wear face masks and use hand sanitizer" while otherwise doing the same stuff that helped spread the virus around the globe.