What most makes me doubt this story is how uncontrolled the release was. Would they really release an engineered virus in China itself? If so, why Wuhan? Is it a rebellious region or something?

I have no problem believing that China would try to develop a flu-like virus that can do huge economic damage to their enemies - but releasing it on the Chinese population intentionally because what, they know we're cucks and would refuse to close our borders in time to prevent it going global? I think that's too much of a hail mary even for the CCP.

Regardless of whether this virus was developed or merely isolated from a population of bats, I think it's much more likely that a sample merely leaked from a lab because their standards are shit.