Coronavirus: Lab Leak Part 19 - Focus on Hubei Caves

The Washington Post via Yahoo (Oct 11) has an article up about the focus on the Hubei caves and the desire of the World Health Organization to look for the source of the virus in those caves. If the virus were found in the area, it could support either the zoonotic or lab leak hypotheses. 

Hundreds of caves are spread throughout the mountains of Enshi prefecture, an agricultural corner of China's Hubei province. The most majestic, Tenglong, or "flying dragon," is one of China's largest karst cave systems, spanning 37 miles of passages that contain numerous bats.

Nearby are small farms that collectively housed hundreds of thousands of wild mammals such as civets, ferret badgers and raccoon dogs before the pandemic, farm licenses show - animals that scientists say can be intermediate hosts for viruses to cross over from bats to humans.

The World Health Organization has requested access to China's wildlife farming areas such as Enshi, calling it a key step in the search for the origins of the coronavirus. Beijing has denied the requests.

The article goes on to state that China started to crack down on the wildlife trade starting in December 2019 and on through early 2020.

In support of the zoonotic theory is that the Wuhan markets got their animals from Hubei.

In support of the lab leak is that Wuhan scientists searched for bats in this area.

What happened to these wild animals? At least some of them were released into the wild:

"They were released back into the woods," said a man surnamed Yang at the Lichuan Juyuanxiang farm, which called itself Hubei's largest civet farm. "The government wouldn't allow us to raise them anymore."

Why would China not allow investigators into this area? Per the article, one reason is that China is trying to argue that the virus came from outside China.

Now the article doesn't state that they know for sure that the virus came from this area, but here is my thinking:

If you find the virus in any of the wild animals that are in the area, it would support the zoonotic spread hypothesis.

If you find the virus in just bats, the lab leak hypothesis looks more likely.