Hi, Rosalie Leavey.
Q. The SARS virus and now the Corona virus have each originated from China. Is it possible both came from an attempt from China to create biological warfare and obtain world domination but it backfired?
A. The recent outbreak of a new and potentially deadly coronavirus in China has, unsurprisingly, kicked off a deluge of misinformation and conspiracy theories.
And while the center of the epidemic, and still the location of around a third of the cases, is Wuhan, in the central province of Hubei, other cases have rapidly sprung up worldwide—but the transmission of paranoia and inaccurate information has managed to keep pace. ?
On Sunday, January 26, 2020, the Washington Times — a paper with a distinct ideological twist published an article claiming that the virus’ outbreak could be linked to a military lab in Wuhan. Coronavirus link to China biowarfare program possible, analyst says
The article suggests a government-run lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, could have been researching military applications for the coronavirus and may have been the source of the outbreak. ?
Since that article appeared, various news agencies have speculated and drawn their own erroneous conclusions based on one man’s interview (read the article for his name). ?
Let’s tackle this recycled Quora concept question in parts.
“Is it possible both came from an attempt from China to create biological warfare…” ?
The main concept of biological warfare is to kill a lot of people and incapacitate many more so the ratio of cases to healthcare workers is around 6-10 workers per infected person.
The current Wuhan nCoV fatality rate is 2%. As of 1/31/2020, there are 259 deaths and 11,948 cases.
So, at 10 workers for 12 000 infected persons = 120 000 workers are needed. That number is easily obtained in China with ~ 1.4 billion citizens. This virus fails miserably as a bioweapon.
The mortality rates from anthrax vary, depending on exposure, and are approximately 20% for cutaneous anthrax without antibiotics and 25 – 75% for gastrointestinal anthrax; inhalation anthrax has a fatality rate that is 80% or higher. Anthrax is easier to manufacture, kills more readily, and ties up more workers tending infected victims. ?
The SARS fatality rate was at 14% to 15%, with the rate for people older than 64 years to be more than 50%. Again, a better choice over 2019–nCoV.
Therefore, as a bioweapon, it fails.
World domination? That idea went out with 007 and other cold war era concepts. US and China economies are too dependent on each other along with a free enterprise economy for either one to achieve world domination
Originally Answered: Is the Corona virus a bio weapon made by China?
The SARS virus and the 2019-nCoV coronavirus (and some other notable infectious diseases) emerged in China because of dietary habits combined with animal disease patterns, along with crowded living conditions and weaknesses of the medical system.
There is absolutely no evidence or logical reason for blaming this on biological warfare.
Chinese markets sell a wide variety of wild animals — often alive — for food and as traditional medical remedies. This exposes the people who catch and sell the animals and the people who butcher, buy, and eat them to a lot more animal viruses than you would encounter in a society of unadventuresome eaters. Now consider the fact that sick wild animals are easier to catch than healthy ones. And the fact that live animals in food markets can spread diseases more effectively than packaged and shrink-wrapped slices of meat in a supermarket refrigerator.
Then think of the crowding in housing, mass transit, and just about everywhere else in a country where a city of eleven million is not big enough for most of us to have heard of.
Besides all the evidence that these diseases have emerged naturally, there’s the fact that the conspiracy-theory version would require a rare combination of extreme intelligence, stupidity, evil, and carelessness.
To be able to bioengineer these viruses, especially SARS, back in 2001 when the tools for that level of genetic engineering hadn’t even been imagined yet, would have required truly extraordinary, even impossible, intelligence.
To think that world dominance could be achieved by releasing a disease like SARS would require unbelievable stupidity. (Anyone who could do this kind of science would have no business being ignorant of why it couldn’t work.)
The level of evil required to pursue such a scheme and the number of people who would have to be that wicked boggles the imagination, at least if you’re not a screenwriter or a certain kind of politician or autocrat. (But remember, a scheme that massive would require normal people in supporting roles.)
After the meticulous scientific and technological work needed to produce such dangerous disease agents, this scenario requires not one, but two, instances of astounding carelessness. Really, this story shouldn’t even make it into a B movie.