The main problem with the bat hypothesis is that with SARS and MERS, wild animal populations that very closely matched those coronaviruses were quickly found. F

The main problem with the bat hypothesis is that with SARS and MERS, wild animal populations that very closely matched those coronaviruses were quickly found. For example, with SARS it was very quickly identified that there were SARS infected civets in the animal markets SARS spread from, and then scientists went to the places in the wild were these civets were caught and also found SARS infected civets in the wild. The SARS they found in civets in the wild had a 99.8% sequence similarity with human SARS. If someone was to find coronavirus infected bats with a similarly high sequence similarity to COVID-19 it would take a lot of wind out of the sails of the lab leak hypothesis. But it's been two years now, and that hasn't happened. This doesn't prove or disprove the wild animal hypothesis, but the longer we go without a high sequence similarity match to animals in the wild the less plausible that hypothesis seems.