it wasnt created, i.e. it isnt synthetic - in that regard those "debunking" articles are almost correct. The point here is that the "creation" is a red herring. The virus wasn't "created", it was selectively bred for higher virulence among mammals (as a way of getting closer to humans - "gain of function" experiments) like you'd do to get a new apple or corn breed. At some point either an employee got infected (or may be some limited human testing of a "flu" on some easy volunteer-able population like say prisoners as part of the experiments) or a carcass of a lab animal was sold at the market ...