Theory 1: Natural Origin

Mojiang Mine Natural Origin Theory

Someone in the vicinity of the mine was infected through an interaction with an infected bat. (No bats (or pangolin) were sold at Nan Hua Seafood Market)

(Edit: In Sep 21 RaTG13 (96.3%) was beaten by BANAL-52 (96.8%) found in Laos. But it's the same logic - still has to travel 1000 kilometres-plus to get to Wuhan - and nowhere else.)

The virus was either ready to roll or may have undergone an undetected period of evolution within the human host.

That person could then have travelled to Wuhan thereby causing the outbreak.

*Note: The idea of an intermediate species, namely pangolin, was pushed by Nature Medicine, but we can safely dismiss this as illogical - see reasoning below.

Evidence

RaTG13, the closest relative, was collected from the Yunnan caves.

How to investigate

1. Blitz test bats in the Mojiang mine area (which is the exact same area that was reportedly home to the bats that caused SARS-1). You were doing that before Covid, so just redouble your efforts.

2. Test those humans living in the immediate vicinity of the mine. Or anyone who has been in the mine collecting viruses for research purposes.
3. Contract trace the first known cases in Wuhan to establish whether they had travelled from the Mojiang area or had close contact with someone from there.

Degree of difficulty:

None of that is complicated. It’s almost certainly been done already.

Problem with Scenario 1:

1. Given we can be pretty sure Chinese authorities would have already done the above testing, it’s a reasonable assumption we would know the results if it turned up anything that cleared WIV.

2. Why was there no outbreak at the site of the infection? It’s possible that the infected humans living in the immediate vicinity of the cave may have already developed an immunity (which could be easily checked through an antibody test) but there still should have been some sign of contagion in more populous areas of Yunnan.

*Some Western scientists (with massive CCP COIs) proposed the idea of an intermediate species, pangolin.  In this scenario, a bat from Yunnan vicinity would need to have infected a caged Malaysian pangolin (1000s of kms away) which would then need to be transported to the Nan Hua Seafood Market in Wuhan (more 1000s of kms away).  On the journey, the virus somehow underwent 50 years of evolution inside the pangolin.  Finally, in Wuhan, where they suffered 100% mortality rate (not good for a virus looking to cause a worldwide outbreak), a pangolin infected a human at the seafood market - where no bats or pangolin were sold!  The logistics of this make it impossible as a origin scenario.

• Edit: After this was written, FOI emails revealed that even the authors of the Pangolin Paper didn't believe it - they though it looks engineered.  The paper was purpose-written as disinformation to cover-up that conclusion.

Conclusion

It's unlikely, but it's not impossible. If 'patient-zero' travelled directly from the bat cave to Wuhan, 1000km away, probably by car, thereby not infecting anyone else, then stayed in Wuhan for two weeks or more ... it's theoretically doable.

On the positive side, being a small probability field, it's easy to prove one way or the other: trace the shit out of it.
If you're a totalitarian regime that's big on surveillance, you're tooled-up - it's not like you're gonna have privacy rights qualms.

The first reported case is mid-Nov.  We know it's highly contagious - the lying-dormant-for-years theory doesn't make sense - this virus hit the ground running.  There'd have been a period where people wouldn't have twigged - it's similar to the flu - so you'd expect that - but it's explosive by nature - so maybe a month before that?

So go ahead - use your high-tech-totalitarianism to trace it back to those first cases - let's say it is early/mid-October (though i'd bow to the CCP's intel on that) - now you've got to the origin window down to within a week or two.

Cross reference that with those locals in close contact with bats in the Yunnan area (including WIV/EcoHealth bat collectors) who travelled to Wuhan in that timeframe - bingo - you've got your origin.  Case solved.