Comment by tripletao
I hadn't read your top-level comment here before I wrote mine, but I think you're responding to a different question from the one the authors intended to answer. The paper's language is rather muddy (even vs. the preprint), I assume because Cell required the authors to weaken their claims. The authors' comments to the popular media express their intent more clearly:
> "This paper slots into many other studies over the last few years that have been building the case for this very clearly being a natural virus that spilled over, very likely at the Wuhan seafood market," Kristian Andersen, co-corresponding author and professor at Scripps Research, told Newsweek.
https://www.newsweek.com/scientists-shed-light-wildlife-spec...
This paper is about that initial introduction of the virus into humans, not about subsequent human-to-human spread. The authors are arguing that SARS-CoV-2 was "very clearly" natural, and thus not a research accident. This forms the basis for arguments that additional regulation of high-risk biological research is unnecessary, since it's much harder to say that with the possibility that such research just killed ~30M people.
>This forms the basis for arguments that additional regulation of high-risk biological research is unnecessary >such research just killed ~30M people. It was a lab leak.. I should know. The Chinese government has admitted it in secret and let's say they have made agreements to make affected nations whole, behind closed doors and with diplomacy. This in turn has trickled into media and social media indirectly and directly from China inducements, making sure that the lab leak theory is both underplayed and framed in a "we can't know for sure" light. Textbook water muddying where all sides have something to gain. If it's any consolation the party responsible for screwing up and killing more people than Hitler, Genghis Khan, and Stalin combined.... they have been dealt with appropriately by China