I remembered reading early on that someone sold a carcass from the lab to a wet market. I think that's probably Western propaganda and I have no idea whether that's true.

However, in China there were posters in every restaurant saying to avoid eating such meats. They started to appear in the first half of 2020. I saw them in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Hangzhou.

Maybe the government just saw it as a useful opportunity to steer the public toward factory-produced meats that fall under the "safe umbrella" of capitalism. Either one is interesting to think about