> No coincidence need be invoked.

It is not just a coincidence, but a plausible hypothesis, just like the hypothesis that it is a zoonosis from an exotic animal market.

I think we have to take all possible causes seriously. Act as if it was a zoonosis and act as if it was a lab leak, in order to prevent another pandemic.

(Actually, I think the lab leak is both the more scary and the easier to prevent cause, so no matter what actually happened we should try to shut down this possibility as much as possible in the future.)

The book Viral suggests that the wildlife trade, especially the intermediate species under consideration, is significantly more prevalent in southern China. Further, wildlife trade is seasonal and Oct/Nov (when the virus emerged) is the beginning of the winter slow season, with most trade occurring in summer months.

Again, if it's zoonotic it's surprising that it would emerge in a city with much less animal trade than somewhere like Guangdong, and in the slow months of that trade.

There may be more wildlife trade to the south, but Wuhan has a substantial amount of wildlife trade, along with being the trading and transport hub in a region with lots of Rhinolophid bat habitat in rural areas (and areas where the human population has a considerable (several %) background prevelance of bat virus antibodies. Appearance in autumn could easily fit with infection from a traded animal a couple months earlier and perhaps a couple of host jumps to gain mutations that conferred pandemic potential. We won't know just how much of a long shot - or just how parsimonious a Wuhan emergence was unless we actually identified early hosts and the likely chain of events that occurred, but depending on the details, even despite the points you raise Wuhan could end up the 'likeliest' spot.

My point here is assuming zoonotic origin, it isn't a one in a trillion coincidence that Wuhan has a coronavirus lab. It has a coronavirus lab for the same reasons a zoonotic origin appears likely - it is within trading/sampling expedition distance to bat caves and is an urban hub. Perhaps Guangdong still was the more likely candidate for a pandemic emergence, but based on what we know today Wuhan appears to be 1-in-100 betting favourite, plus or minus an order of magnitude.