My interpretation on what Vesicles has said in his many posts on the subject is something along the lines that there can be many mutations of the virus with all the oldest branches of the virus family tree appearing to track back to China
That's only true when they didn't discover earlier cases of coronavirus in Italy, the US, and else where. I don't dispute Vesicles's expertise in this matter. However, if the coronavirus was found else where in Dec and before Dec, then the premise that China is the origin of the coronavirus isn't set in the stone anymore.
The genetic of coronavirus that the early researches were based upon were samples from cases in late Jan and early Feb. Today, we have both CDC and the Italian and Spain scientists confirms the coronavirus were found way before Dec or at least in Dec. It just makes no sense that the outbreak in Wuhan is at its beginning and the coronavirus already showed up in the US in many people. People might argue first cases in Wuhan could even be much earlier but let not we forget that the Chinese doctors or whistle blower if you like to call them reported that they only see a uptick in cases after Jan 10 and only a few sporadic cases before that.
In addition, scientists have failed to explain why other Chinese provinces, countries such as Japan, SK, Vietnam, Cambodia, and southeast nations have less severe outbreak of coronavirus than the European and the US in the early days.