“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”

- Shi Zhengli

Love or hate china, you gotta appreciate their brilliance in choice of location for a bioweapons lab.

there is no local bat population near Wuhan, China -- nor is Wuhan known to be some sort of wet market epicenter. It has wet markets like any Chinese city would.

The reason the wet market theory came to prominence was because commerce seemed like a reasonable explanation for how a novel coronavirus showed up so far away from its known animal reservoir (bats).

The reason the WIV is in Wuhan is the same as the reason why the CDC is in Atlanta or whatever -- Wuhan is a major city and it has things in it.