(I'm not saying this to argue that the lab escape theory is wrong, just to argue that Reddit posts are difficult to appraise.)
That's some diabolical research.
To put it in DnD terms: The researchers have high intelligence, low wisdom, and probably low dexterity.
Here is China making a coronavirus like the one causing the pandemic, even acting on the ACE2 receptor and testing it in human cells, publishing it in early 2008: https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899
Here they are again, years later, still playing with extremely hazardous coronaviruses that act on the ACE2 receptor in humans:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711
This one gene-edits the host cells to have both human and bat traits, making it easier to breed bat viruses into becoming human viruses:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00705-010-0729-6
There are more. The ASM's virology journal published more of generally the same kind of stuff. I can't find the link right now.
Seems like not enough lessons were learned from SARS. How many pandemics are going to come from this reservoir before the world gets fed up with the mismanagement of it?
After the USA banned this research because of the danger, some of it moved out of the country. At least one of the researchers moved from the USA to Wuhan, China. The ban should have been a clear message: such research is unacceptably dangerous.