> Asking questions is a legitimate activity
Yes, but "just asking questions"[0] is also a rhetorical trick common enough to have a name, especially when the questions are leading, as some of yours are. That isn't to say that you're intentionally being nefarious, but hiding behind "I'm just asking questions" doesn't absolve one of responsibility for applying their own logical thinking.
> To the best of my knowledge, they do not naturally occur anywhere near Wuhan.
As I mentioned elsewhere, this is exactly the same story as with SARS-CoV-1. Bats from Yunnan are the source of a virus first found in humans in Guangdong, around 1000 miles away. So we have literally the exact same thing happening, in essentially the same area, in modern times. Given that, I have a question for you:
Which is more likely: that SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 had essentially the same transmission path, or that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a government lab, but as far as we know, none of the early infections were related to said lab, meaning that it would have had to spread into the community without any of the lab employees getting infected (this reduces the reasonable escape paths significantly)
> * Think hard about the wisdom of proliferating BSL4 centers in the middle of population centers of the size of NYC. That single fact is a scandal in itself.
Yeah, I'm not seeing the issue here. We stick nuclear reactors in population centers, and I'm unaware of any known leaks from BSL-4 labs anywhere ever, so they have a better track record.
The wisdom, by the way, is that you need researchers and infra to support BSL-4 labs. You can't stick them out in the middle of nowhere, they usually need things like attached universities.
[0]: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions