You're right - there is a lot of stuff that just doesn't add up - and surprisingly little interest in uncovering the truth - whatever it might be.

Here's what we know:

1. Bats weren't sold at the seafood market
2. The kind of bat that carries corona virus doesn't live in Wuhan
3. The first known cases hadn't visited the market anyhow

(So all those scientific papers about how the virus 'probably' came from bats via pangolin via the seafood market are based on a false premise. However pointing this out seems to invoke an hysterical response amongst some scientists and journalist who label alternative analysis or even simple questions as 'conspiracy theories'.)

4. The only known bat viruses in Wuhan were held at two research institutes
5. Biosecurity at these facilities was lax. A report in the Washington Post says: "Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats."

At this point it's time to get out Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation by far is that the virus came from one of the Wuhan labs. Doesn't mean it's a fact - but it's way more likely than the seafood market premise that has absorbed so much attention and research dollars.

Unfortunately some scientists are locked into a mindset of getting grants to continue their line of research whether or not that research is of any value. In this respect they are more like lawyers representing their client whether the client is guilty or not. That's kinda understandable but it's not useful in terms of finding out exactly how this happened - and stopping it from happening again.