Did China's Wildlife Wet Market Ban Actually Stick?

We dive into two connected questions that most coverage never pulled together: what actually happened with the COVID origin investigation, and did China's ban on wildlife wet markets hold? The WHO's 2021 report landed on "likely zoonotic spillover" — but the investigation hit a wall when China refused a second phase. Meanwhile, wildlife wet markets are evolutionary accelerators for spillover, compressing decades of natural viral interaction into days. We break down the mechanism, the history (SARS, MERS, Ebola), and whether China's sweeping 2020 ban actually stuck or just drove trade underground.