Firstly we can thank China's prolific animal trafficking trade and the idiocy of "traditional Chinese medicine" for the fact that this virus ever came into contact with humans.
so very definitive; hence the waldo's citation request... surely... member kimmy won't vacillate on her certainty - factual certainty, no less! Let's see now:
One doesn't need to google very hard to find scientific articles regarding the link between China's rampant animal trafficking trade and the spread of this virus to humans. Here's a recent one:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52048195
Many medical experts are now pointing their fingers at China's animal trafficking and live markets as an ongoing threat to human health.
Yes, this outbreak evolved in wild animals, animals trafficked in huge numbers and smuggled in confined spaces, to maximize the chance of sharing virus among each other, then brought into contact with large numbers of humans at these live animal markets. If you wanted to create conditions to make it likely for viruses to transfer from host animals to humans, how could you do better?
from your own linked article: "
Prof Andrew Cunningham of Zoological Society of London (ZSL) said it was important not to jump to conclusions from the paper. "The source of the detected coronavirus really is unknown - it might have been a natural pangolin virus or have jumped from another species between capture and death.""
at this point your linked article's paper reference is one that has not yet been published - to allow it to enter into the peer-response cycle; a pre-release unedited manuscript has been offered by the Journal Nature. That being said, the paper/lead author state: "
This outbreak has been tentatively associated with a seafood market in Wuhan, China, where the sale of wild animals may be the source of zoonotic infection2. Although bats are likely reservoir hosts for SARS-CoV-2, the identity of any intermediate host that might have facilitated transfer to humans is unknown."
member kimmy, so... definitive to support your, uhhh... factual certainty!
and most certainly, there is no scientific based consensus that the virus originated at a Wuhan so-called 'wet market'; in particular,
study analysis shows that some of the first known patients had no direct exposure to the/a wet market. Most pointedly, study analysis shows that about a third of the first 41 confirmed infected patients had no direct exposure to the/a wet market... among them the first known patients where, in addition, "
no epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases":