This is a lot to take in, and I don't think it needs to be taken at face vaiue without a lot of post-processing by folks familiar with the origins debate (which is thankfully happening now) - it's anyway paywalled but the teaser paragraph gets the idea across. Hersh has a history if cultivating well-placed contacts in intelligence. Of course, the closer one gets to the IC, the closer one is exposed to both incorrect underprocessed information and attempts at disinformation. So I'm currently filing under 'big if true'.

I have a source as well, it was from the Laos region ... and good odds exotic pet trade is what led to the virus jumping, (probably not a single jump but more convoluted,) over to humans.

Since I got an email asking why this was flagged, I might as well add the answer here too: most likely because it's hardwalled (i.e., paywalled with no workaround).

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989