[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by DiracSpike

Pangolins are from Africa though, and the bats that are the reservoirs for coronaviruses are from southern China. The reason the wet markets are so dangerous, as well as disturbingly cruel and inhumane, is that exotic live animals from all over the world are shoved in cramped unsanitary quarters which are rife for transmission. That's what makes no bats being sold at this seafood market such a big deal, that's a huge risk factor that now doesn't exist. Is it possible that a pangolin was infected at a wet market somewhere else and the moved to another wet market? I guess, that's what you'd have to be relying on, but now you're adding another magnitude of uncertainty there. You don't have evidence of pangolins being sold in Wuhan either. The lab theory by contrast is the only one that actually puts coronaviruses in Wuhan beyond a doubt, and also explains how bat viruses could end up thousands of miles from where they're from, they were specifically sought out by the renowed bat Corona virus researcher who worked there. You need multiple improbable happenings for the wet market, you only need one improbable from the lab which is accidental release, and when you combine that with the fact that this lab had been cited multiple times for unacceptably lax safety standards it's much less of a leap. Then you add in the fact that Chinese authorities ordered samples at the lab destroyed. Then you add in any articles and papers on the Chinese internet speculating that this was an accidental release were scrubbed or "withdrawn". All we're ever going to have for this (thanks to the dictatorship of China's censoring and destroying of evidence) is circumstantial evidence. It's certainly possible this was from a pangolin or whatever, but you can't say the evidence massively weighs that way. It weighs towards a lab release.

This would be like if there was a new virus emerging in Winnipeg (our national lab) of the exact pathogen type they were studying but instead it was blamed on a farmers market selling animals from Mexico despite those animals never being there.

Pangolins traded in China are coming from Myanmar.