Here is the original article that you are talking about.
And below is their description of the type A strain:
“There are two subclusters of A which are distinguished by the synonymous mutation T29095C. In the T-allele subcluster, four Chinese individuals (from the southern coastal Chinese province of Guangdong) carry the ancestral genome, while three Japanese and two American patients differ from it by a number of mutations. These American patients are reported to have had a history of residence in the presumed source of the outbreak in Wuhan. The C-allele subcluster sports relatively long mutational branches and includes five individuals from Wuhan, two of which are represented in the ancestral node, and eight other East Asians from China and adjacent countries. It is noteworthy that nearly half (15/33) of the types in this subcluster, however, are found outside East Asia, mainly in the United States and Australia.”
Half of the type A strain is still linked to Wuhan. They did point out that nearly half of the subtype with the C-allele mutations are found outside of East Asia. However, they didn’t say the travel and residence history of these patients. These data were obviously collected from patient samples early in the outbreak. Based on the case reports outside of China at the time (early days of the outbreak), most of the countries outside of China only tested people with travel history to China. That would means that these patients outside of East Asia should all have travel history to China.
Secondly, the original parent strain used in their study for comparing all the viral genomes was isolated from a Yunnan local bat species. And the authors of your article also said that the type-A strain evolved from this parent strain found in Yunnan bats. So how do you think a virus, that lives in a bat species local to central China of Yunnan province, managed to jump across half of China and the entire Pacific ocean and infect Americans? And while doing so, not touching a single Chinese in between? Did the Americans sneak into China and steal some Chinese bats and bring them back to the US? Then they infect their own people and went back to China? Uhhhh. How do you plan to prove any of these?
