The virus likely didn't originate at the wildlife market, because many of the early patients had no connection to it.

There is a building of the Wuhan CDC (not the WIV) near the wildlife market, but the Wuhan CDC has numerous buildings and this particular one doesn't seem to be implicated in coronavirus research.

2 good points. Being in the same city as the virus lab is a lot less suspicious than being across the street.

Regardless of the lab theory it's pretty clear that the wet market was simply the first known super spreader location and not necessarily the origin given how a third of the first known patients had no connection to the wet market.

There are thousands of wet markets in China, but very few provincial capital cities (Wuhan is one). Out of all the wet markets in China, the virus just happened to originate at the one next to the provincial administrative office? That alone is enough evidence to make the provincial administrative office the most likely origin of the virus, right?

If they handle coronaviruses in the provincial administrative office, then yes. Do they?

Maybe they do secretly handle coronaviruses in the provincial administrative office; they can't prove they don't anyways.

This isn't a logical comparison.

The lab specifically collected live bat coronaviruses for testing. The provincial administrative office did not.

Snopes.com points out that the market wasn't "right next to the virus lab."

It was in fact a full seven miles away.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/

Back in Feb 2020, a rumor circulating on Chinese social media said that there was another lab in the city near the market, which was a competitor to the lab of Wuhan Institute of Virology that is most widely mentioned, under the umbrella of a university of agriculture/forestry/geology (I don't remember the exact details).

I am not sure about the validity of the rumor, though.

A couple of examples of Snopes intellectual dishonesty.

Mixture https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-smash-phon...

Mixture https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harris-believe-biden-accus...