Do you know where you got this idea? It's completely wrong and incredibly prevalent; so I'm wondering if particular sources are misleading people, or if it just "feels right" and people come to it independently unprompted.

Beyond the general background already linked, Dr. Shi specifically did not expect that natural spillover of SARS-CoV-2 occurred near Wuhan:

> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.scien...

She could be wrong, but the idea that she chose her work location based on the natural abundance of sarbecoviruses is unequivocally false.