Just because it's not engineered doesn't mean it didn't come from a lab. It could be a natural virus that was collected and escaped. The original SARS escaped no less than 3 times from chinese labs following the outbreak.
It could be lots of things. The focus on a possible escape from containment as the source seems odd given that - among other more likely causes - bat guano is also widely used as fertilizer, and bats, like humans, shed coronaviruses in their feces. Except that where we do so only occasionally and only when actively infected, bats' generally higher viral load and the high intraspecific transmissibility of a lot of these viruses means they do it much more frequently.
Except this started in the heart of a city the size of New York, near a market not known to have sold bats, within half a kilometer of a lab known to have been doing research collecting bats from neighboring provinces near villages with people confirmed contracted SARS like viruses from bats per their own state media documentary.
No one knows where this started. We know where the first confirmed case was reported, but that's not the same thing.
I carry no brief for the CCP. But I do find it difficult to say nothing in the face of what looks like a struggle among a variety of factions, none openly declared, to establish a narrative of responsibility for a world-altering catastrophe, with no closer or more consistent reference to facts of any kind than is judged useful in support of whatever claim is being pushed at the moment - and, most notably, with the only reference to potentially contradictory facts being to claim either that they're unfounded, or presented with ulterior intent, or both.
Last time I saw something play out that looked like this, it followed the World Trade Center attack and resulted in the Iraq war. That was a catastrophe from both a humanitarian perspective and one concerned with enhancing the geopolitical power of the US - but it was, at least, relatively minor in both respects. This one, if it plays out similarly, seems likely to be much worse.
And aside from all of that, what the hell, is your time of no value? If you're going to peddle what may very well prove to be war propaganda, at least you should have the self-respect to refuse to do it for free.
We absolutely do know where it started. Prehaps not precisely in physical space but that 13 of the first 41 cases had no connection to the seafood market is very strong evidence that whatever the source may be, it was socially and physically proximate to the market just like the lab but not likely the market itself.
To compare this to Iraq is absolutely preposterous and fallacious. The two have absolutely nothing in common and nobody here is suggesting we invade China over it but sure as hell they ought to be held accountable.
Do you not think people come from out of town, sometimes from quite far out of town, to sell food at a city market? That's how they work here in Baltimore, and anyone who's ever been to Lexington Market, or even seen a picture of what the crowds are like there (1), can have no trouble imagining how effective a transmission vector it would be for any contagious pathogen hitching a ride in an out-of-town vendor there. Why should things work differently in Wuhan?
"Held accountable" is a rhetorical phrase that was much used then, too. (2) So it's an interesting thing to find in an argument that this situation and that one are totally unalike.
This market is not known to have sold bats and by all accounts it did not. Consuming bats is a southern thing not a central thing.
Your theory also doesn't along with the evidence, that the first known cases had a significant population with no known connection to the market, 27 with connection, 14 without; and that other than the market there are no other obvious connections. If it were just some hawker you'd expect a much stronger connection to the market. And over a longer period.
I had a theory around guano used for fertilizer acting as a fomite, but found some research an hour ago that suggests SARS doesn't remain viable via that route, so SARS-CoV-2 probably doesn't either.
Do we know that bats are the only (or only likely) nonhuman host? Was there a significant population of cases with a known connection to the lab?
Pangolins Malasia I think are the next closest source genetically. China imports from there as well as Africa for TCM so but the known strains from bats are still match much much better.
You have previous known infections in the villagers who interact with bats and then travel to say the Wuhan live market. We study these viruses because we know they infect humans. The Spanish flu was a bird flu. There were no biosafety level 5 labs back then. We get viruses from other animals all the time.
Furthermore, gain-of-function research doesn't have to be by genetic engineering. The controversial experiment of a few years back which I vaguely remember was more like natural selection.
Also the only lab that handles this stuff in Wuhan is less than a couple hundred meters from the wet market that Chinese authorities claimed was the epicenter.
I'd believe this is a story of grave incompetence, and brazen managerial failure at a biolab. The intern gets bled on, bitten, or just breathed on by the test bat, gets a bit sick but comes into work anyway. After it seems to pass, she heads down to the market on the way home, and spreads the disease to one of the live animals, including humans, in the vicinity.
Boom, outbreak.
Could be as simple as that, with it being a pretty tenacious virus.
The proven conspiracy follows, when authorities up to the top sought to cover up this embarrassment, then to make sure that the damage was global so that they wouldn't be at a relative disadvantage, and could maybe start claiming that it came from somewhere else (as they are now doing).
Can you find your source for the market being a couple hundred meters away? This tweet has a map showing it's twenty miles away, but the source is the Daily Mail:
