Thank you for that comment about needing to find out if it is weaponized.
Ruthless it might be but at least that makes sense.
Ebola and samples have been in the United States and at the CDC in Atlanta, for many years.
This is from 2002 about being weaponized. Remember that the Army and DOD has been involved in assisting during Ebola breakouts since the first one in 1976.
“Though smallpox and anthrax loom as the likeliest boogeymen in a bioterrorism nightmare, the rare Ebola virus still evokes particular dread. This untreatable virus rapidly kills 80% to 90% of the humans it infects, and no one knows where it lurks in the years between its small-scale outbreaks, up to now confined to central Africa. Scientists in the former Soviet Union reportedly weaponized the virus.1
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) listed Ebola as a “select agent” in 1996, meaning that at least three antiterrorism statutes regulate it. Ebola is also one of the potential bioterrorism agents now targeted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. NIAID is seeking $1.4 billion for biodefense in fiscal 2003, a $1.2 billion jump over 2002. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) “has had a longstanding commitment to work on emerging infectious diseases, and this is a huge opportunity to advance that agenda and at that same time deal with the problems of bioterrorism,” notes Jack Killen, NIAID’s assistant director for biodefense research.
Soon to be showered with money, the Ebola research enterprise nevertheless will remain hamstrung by safety precautions that require space-suited scientists to toil in the few available biosafety level 4 facilities. An Ebola vaccine, though questionable for protecting large populations against an uncertain threat, might reduce investigators’ infection risk and speed their progress.”