It doesn't have to have been engineered to have escaped.
Why this convolution keeps happening is beyond me, we "know" this isn't a bio-superweapon.
Taking this as read, either:
Researchers at the lab failed to spot something like this in the wild, in an area where they were looking for this.
So, failed to raise the alarm appropriately with acceptable transparency.
or,
Researcher work at the lab led to the collection of this from bats and some set of unknown situations led to it getting into the populace.
So, caused the disaster they were trying to prevent/research.
Either way it's clear China reacted as-if this was the end of days. Which is understandable given the nature of the work going on inside the lab
The fact that everyone involved seems to have thrown up barriers into a sensible discussion on this is unfortunate and renders most conversations mute such that we'll probably never know how bad it was.
Taking this as read, either:
Researchers at the lab failed to spot something like this in the wild, in an area where they were looking for this. So, failed to raise the alarm appropriately with acceptable transparency.
or, Researcher work at the lab led to the collection of this from bats and some set of unknown situations led to it getting into the populace. So, caused the disaster they were trying to prevent/research.
Either way it's clear China reacted as-if this was the end of days. Which is understandable given the nature of the work going on inside the lab The fact that everyone involved seems to have thrown up barriers into a sensible discussion on this is unfortunate and renders most conversations mute such that we'll probably never know how bad it was.