You've done a lot of damage with flamewar comments in this thread. I'm banning most users who did that. I'm not going to ban you, because you've been a great user in the past and have a long history here. But please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22606977, stop now, and don't do any more of this.
Also the lab in Wuhan has leaked at least one SARS strain in the past.
>They're no more responsible for the virus
Do you understand the conditions of the ubiquitous meat markets in China? Do you realize how easy it is for pathogens to spread when you stack wild animals in cages on top of each other, torture and butcher literally everything, wild animals off the street, in open air and on the literal ground?
The reality is that most of China is third world. Sorry, sometimes specific cultural practices are harmful to people and societies.
This is a pretty common theme with black markets in general, on that note. See also: black market drugs being "cut" with harmful substances, black market sex labor being a vector for human trafficking and STDs, black market medical procedures being more susceptible to adverse outcomes, etc.
There are other good reasons to not eat exotic mammals, of course (i.e. if doing so puts species at risk of extinction), but the sanitation issue seems solvable.
These wildlife markets are a particular problem. But virologists (see: Pandemic on Netflix) highlight not just the wildlife trade be our enormous animal agriculture production as an explosive situation.
There's a reason you can find so many videos online of Chinese people torturing animals. There is a belief in China (and to a lesser extent in other nations like Korea and I believe Vietnam) that making animals suffer pre slaughter makes the meat tastier. And honestly it isn't a stretch that adrenal hormones released just before death can influence the flavor or texture of meat, but I don't know if that justifies cruelty...
https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=south+korea+bokna...
Fortunately, the two support each other, because if you're right, expressing your view in a thoughtful way makes the truth more apparent to others, while fulminating and attacking enemies merely alienates everyone who doesn't already agree with you. You end up discrediting the very truth you're advocating for. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
There is evidence for this.
NOTE: before you dismiss the source, notice that it is merely a commentary on a collection of individual sources that you can verify yourself. Now I do not agree with the conclusion in the link below, that this is a deliberate bioweapon, but there is ample circumstantial evidence here to at least presume that the virus could have leaked from the only level 4 biolab in China, which happens to be less than 10 miles from Wuhan. It's likely they were conducting legitimate research, all I'm pointing out is that the evidence for this actually coming from China is pretty good.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/did-china-steal-coron...
It's no less legitimate than a bunch of links on a Wikipedia page. Don't be lazy and dismiss this because you don't like the political leaning of zerohedge.
>Russian disinformation site
But we're just going to believe everything out of China without a second thought right now?
Everything in that link, all the suspicious relationships, all the published research (arrested smugglers have published on coronavirus very recently) is verifiable. Don't be lazy.