Nonetheless, we know there was a close relative documented in bats on the same continent within a comparable timeframe. The clearly obvious hypothesis is that animal transmission was the vector, for the simple reason that this is the way every single other pandemic, human or otherwise, has happened. There is nothing unique or notable about covid from the perspective of viral evolution. Period. So Occam says we go with the simplest theory.
Attempts to wave away that fact have nothing to do with science about what was happening in Wuhan and everything to do with modern political opinions about a government 1000km away in Beijing.
The wet market in Wuhan was not selling bats.
Did you know that people use Bat Guano (literally bat shit) eyedrops to cure visual ailments in rural china? Among other risky practices. Bat guano is often handled with bare hands and used to fertilize fields without proper sanitary practices. The many tens of thousands of these events that happen everyday are a MUCH more likely scenario.
I have a PhD in virology and wrote a post all about this on Reddit a while back: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
I just find it incredibly suspicious that the massive city with a BSL4 lab doing research into bat viruses is where a bat virus first turns up.