Honestly, in the early days of the pandemic, I was hearing rumors from other public health officials that there was a strong possibility that a naturally occurring virus had escaped containment from the WIV. I had even posted about that possibility on the DWS forum. However, it started to become clear that there were many characteristics of this virus that did not make sense. If I recall correctly, the Deputy Director had stumbled across some papers authored by researchers at the WIV that showed they were engaging in gain of function research.
My own personal opinion, after combing through mountains of open-source intelligence, is that it is very probable that this is a chimeric virus that escaped containment. The WIV most likely took a bat-based coronavirus and engaged in gain-of-function research, specifically on what's called the "furin cleavage site". This type of work should ideally be done under Biosafety Level (BSL) 4 conditions, using a positive pressure suit in a negative pressure containment room. Instead, they were working on deadly viruses only under BSL 3 conditions, which is basically under a negative pressure box. It is very easy for a highly infectious agent to escape containment while under BSL 3 conditions. The sheer incompetence is mind-blowing to me.
What keeps me up at night is knowing that many world leaders have not learned their lesson from the COVID-19 Pandemic (which is still technically ongoing, by the way), and we are poorly prepared for another major pandemic. I fear that if we encounter a pathogen as infectious as SARS-CoV-2 but 10 times deadlier, we could see a total collapse in the functioning of society.