Why create/release a biological weapon with such a low mortality rate?
“Why create/release a biological weapon with such a low mortality rate?”
They were designing it to be used on Taiwan. They wanted to incapacitate those on Taiwan to make it easier for when they invade. Awfully hard to put up a fight against an invasion when you feel like crap with flu like symptoms. China wants to take back Taiwan in one piece if all possible. Killing everyone, and bombing the island back to the 19th century is counterproductive to their plans.
This bug got out before a vaccine was ready for the military and CCP leadership. That’s why they went nuts trying to quarantine Wuhan the way they did. Some reports claimed the military was shooting people in the streets who were defying the quarantine.
That also explains the massive disinformation campaign to shift blame away from them
We don’t know that it was finished nor if it was intentional. A biological weapon isn’t necessarily designed to kill everyone nor is it necessarily to do so immediately.
They could be designed for different purposes. For example this one isnt killing everyone. If you intended to take over a country it would be far better to have them use all of their resources first so they couldn’t fight as well. When you moved in you wouldn’t want everyone dead if you needed taxpayers or outright slaves. You wouldn’t even necessarily want everyone to live, just those capable of working so it would be better for you if bums, the elderly, and maybe many children were to die.
Then again you could design them for other roles. What if you had control of a virus that just made everyone fall asleep for a couple of days. One so fatiguing that all the patient can do is wake long enough to urinate before passing back out. Doesn’t seem all that useful unless your intent was to pacify the aggressive population of an area while you moved in. For example, what if I wanted to invade the US but keep all of the population alive? Americans shoot back if actively confronted and reassembling a unit dropped in would be difficult if even a few farmers started shooting back. What if they all fell asleep for a few days and when they woke up I was already in charge of the area with an established foothold and assembled troops? They might just decide that there was no chance of fighting back and go back to farming which is what I would want as an invader.
Such viruses do exist, we had one similar pass through here not too long ago. I doubt that it would take much for those that know such things to make it last a day or two longer and make the target sleep more deeply. I might like to have something like that in my arsenal provided I had a way of inoculating my own troops.