Murky origins of Covid-18

[Richard]

While China has stated the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan, U.S. officials are skeptical of the claim.
The U.S. had been providing multi-million dollar funding to a virology lab in Wuhan that had a poor safety record.
U.S. officials warned in January 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s work on “SARS-like coronaviruses in bats,” combined with “a serious shortage” of proper safety procedures, could result in human transmission and the possibility of a “future emerging coronavirus outbreak.”
The Chinese Institute of Virology's work on bats — led by Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist nicknamed “Bat Woman” for her work with that species — is conducted at a lower protection level than thought to be safe.
Shi — whose team published research in November 2017 revealing that horseshoe bats they had collected from a cave in Yunnan province were very likely from the same bat population that spawned the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003 — was then working on “SARS-like coronaviruses.” Shi’s team was also the first to reveal in February that the new outbreak was a bat-derived coronavirus.

As we know Trump is now agitating over his country's future funding to the WHO mainly because their Director-General - Tedros Adhanom - praised China very highly for its handling of the outbreak...

[Richard]

As far as I see it then, the Americans were paying the Chinese millions of dollars to research into 'bats' which were known to be a good host reservoir of numerous unpleasant viruses that bats alone(??) were totally immune to.
That bats have therefore become 'currency' for such experimentation in recent years.
That locals have been trading bats for, probably thousands of years, should tell us something.

I would not happily eat a bat!