An argument was made thus: "If China actually built a biological weapon, they would not have handed over the recipe so quickly and easily."
A1: For the sake of argument, lets assume it was bio weapon. (but incomplete) To answer that argument statement above (which was made in a American Council on Science and Health article April 13, 2020) it is a simple answer: They didn't. A2: How do we know it was the original genome? Or the correct genome? It would have already naturally mutated enough to conceal an S-protein splice/re-placement that would have, as Prof. Dr. Montagnier stated, "mutated back to a more natural form over time" to become nearly undetected by the average molecular biologist.
Q: How close is the genome we have to the original in the lab? (Or for humor, in the wetmarket) We may never know.
The CCP handed over the weaponized CCP virus genome, knowing that it would look like the SARS virus that did come from a natural source. I think when they got the virus from the bat research team headed by Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli, they wanted to know if it could be modified to become transmitted human to human. They knew that viruses get modified—mutated—when they infect animals. Hence, there is speculation that they were looking at the role of the pangolin as a intermediary, which would render the virus transmissible human to human. This was case of the civets cats, suspected of transmitting the SARS virus to humans. Perhaps this was research to prevent such virus attacks in the Wet Market.
However, I think the bio-warfare folks set this research on a different track. There is evidence of changes in the COVID-19 genome accomplished by unnatural means available to the genetics community. Gene splicing may have caused the virus to be more efficient in the duplication process inside the cell, and very contagious. Those two attributes made it a very volatile bio-weapon.
The next thing was to develop a vaccine or anecdote to protect yourself while using it. Before such a vaccine was developed, sloppy lab practices allowed the virus to infect Wuhan virologist, Huang Yanling, who spread it to the world. The virus performed as the bio-weapon it was designed to be.
Where is Huang Yanling now? In the Yangtze River?