All you need for a market cluster is one infected person to visit once, & pass the infection along to one or more people who then also spend time there and pass it on. There's no challenging "why" needed.
Yes, but the coincidence of 3 gain-of-function researchers being the very 1st simultaneous infectees would be far more remarkable than a crowded place being the 1st spot that's noticed as a cluster.
No matter the origin of a new highly-nfectious respiratory disease, certain dense public places will quickly turn up as locations-of-spread.
But 3 researchers with likely larger-than-average scrupulosity about infection risks, working on increasing the virulence of bat viruses? Pretty sus!
