Bought and paid for. She is convinced it wasn’t made to intentionally made to infect people because the Chinese dictatorship is a really really nice one. Riiigghhhtt.
There is zero question that any group of enterprising high school science club participants with an interest in molecular biology and access to the required resources could produce a gain of function Coronavirus with the capacity to start a pandemic. ZERO, and I would debate ANYONE in the world on that point.
If that's scary, it's because it should be. It is much, much, much easier to create infectious agents that can kill millions than it is to produce any type of nuclear weapon. We are living in a brave new world, and just like tracking plutonium, we are going to have to start tracking things like oligonucleotide orders, restriction endonuclease orders, and access to any viral or human nucleic acid sequences.
It truly is possible to design bioweapons that can target specific genetically similar groups of people. It wouldn't be straightforward to do so, but not impossible either.
People need to wake up.