In the mid 1960s, my mom worked in an infectious disease lab. One day, her and her colleagues were tasked with cleaning out a freezer full of samples. Shortly thereafter her and everyone else in the lab got a flu-like illness that did not clear up for many days.
It really makes me wonder how many lab leaks may have happened during this time period when we started collecting and storing samples but we didn't yet have the ability to track diseases like we do today.
Back in 2009 I used to date a girl in Connecticut. She was attending Yale. She was a very nice person but very sloppy. She would always break something or spill something, it was her nature. One day she told me she's running late with school stuff so "meet me at the lab". I came in, got thru security and went to her lab. There she was feeding some 200 mosquitoes sick with malaria, buzzing in a rather small jar, all packed there nicely. This was her assignment for 3 weeks that she had to do twice a day. I could never get over the fact how little security was in place and how, if jar would break, there was absolutely no way to catch them all, in the middle of summer, with all windows wide open. I will never forget this story...
It really makes me wonder how many lab leaks may have happened during this time period when we started collecting and storing samples but we didn't yet have the ability to track diseases like we do today.