It’s a really interesting pathogen.
Potentially engineered - it it’s a little bit sci-fi like to believe a lab in 2019 exists that could execute a design at the level proposed by the bio weapon crowd.
Well, maybe it’s not a weapon per se but, rather, a research experiment conducted in a lab that has multiple purposes including weapons. Frankly it seems to dangerous to be a useful weapon and, yet, the Chinese appear to not be suffering anything like the rest of the world. Was it their extreme mitigation measures? Did they have the cure all along? Are they BSing us? One thing is evident, they have emerged as the clear winner in this event.
Don’t confuse design and effect. The design is gain of function. The effect is TBD. The fact that the design and effect make it an effective bioweapon are happenstance, not design.
Most certainly engineered for "gain-of-function". What functions were they trying to gain? This research was abandoned in Toronto, Canada in 2015 because the executives believed it to be too dangerous to continue. The Chinese picked all the materials and ran with them. Why?
Most likely they developed an early-stage prototype which was accidentally released from a bio-weapons research lab in late September 2019. Another possible (and accidental) release may have occurred in 2018.
- it it’s a little bit sci-fi like to believe a lab in 2019 exists that could execute a design at the level proposed by the bio weapon crowd.
That capability clearly does not exist at this time. It would take a lot of dangerous research to develop such a capability. Mistakes happen in dangerous research. COVID-19 is likely the result of one such mistake.
It is quite easy to believe that the Chinese are trying to develop an ethnic-specific plague that would exterminate non-Chinese populations. They have repeatedly published speculations about such things in their official military journals.
It is quite easy to believe the Chinese attempted such a program at Wuhan and failed in their early research attempts.
In the Stephen King novel "The Stand", there was a graffiti left on the wall of the bio-weapons lab by the doomed scientists:
"Now you know it works. Any questions?"
Could be why the Chicoms appeared to panic so hard when it first got loose: maybe they didn't know for sure, then as they gained more experience a bunch of the whatever-the-Chicoms-call-their-Politburo got together, and said, Let's psych the hell out of the US with this.
Thought provoking post.... so thanks.