[jasondweller]

Many speculations are circulating in the midst of this pandemic that the COVID-19 was a bioweapon manufactured by the Chinese. Some speculations that the US Army brought the virus to Wuhan. It leaked -- like a genie out of a bottle -- from a lab in an accident.

[misappear]

Why don

[crashryan]

Considering the link goes to two sales page I suspect this is spam.

[Andrew999]

It can only be speculation one way or another at the end of the day. In a world where the evil nexus of media and politics has long since abandoned any notion of honesty or evidence, truth has become as slippery and flexible as a jellied eel.

I am a science graduate but I am not a specialist in this field and I don't claim to have all the answers.

My guess would be a strong no - because mass bio-weapons are pointless in that they would mostly kill the old and weak - not very useful. (Close-up bio-weapons that you can spray directly in someone's face might be more useful - but to be honest, no more useful than traditional poisons)

Also, viruses mutate all the time - even COVID-19 has had at least thirty-three variants last time I checked - most better, some worse. That makes viruses as a bio-weapon unpredictable at best.

The University of Cambridge's very reliable phylogenetic analyst Peter Forster currently favours bats as the last stepping point into humans suggesting it may have been harboured in animals for years before taking the step into humans. "Then, it started infecting and spreading among humans between September 13 and December 7. If I am pressed for an answer, I would say the original spread started more likely in southern China than in Wuhan."

This view is consistent with the long-held view that flu-type viruses come in two waves - usually around November and Feb-March. The Maths behind that is sound.

So, was it bio-engineered? Very very probably, no

Will there be a second-wave? Probably not (except that in delaying herd immunity through lockdown, there will be a 'catch-up' period when people do start to mix and travel, a bit of spiking - not a second wave in the epidemiological sense)

Will there be a vaccine? No, not a reliable one - viruses mutate too quickly. Any flu vaccine produced is merely mopping up the remnants of the last flu cycle - of course, that helps but you can't capture all the variants.

End of the day, it's a bad flu virus that will play itself out - a chunk worse than in 2018, a bit worse than 1968, about the same or a bit less than 1958, less than 1919. It's not the plague, it's not even measles, it's flu. If you are under seventy, you are pretty much safe. If you are under twenty-five, you might not even notice you've had it.

The world is suffering more from Behavioural Social Psychosis than the virus - or mass hysteria as we used to call it.

Of course, mistakes have been made. I'm guessing they vary from country to country but in the UK discharging old people who are still active with the virus from hospital back into nursing homes where there lots more old and sick people is probably pretty high in the dumb stakes.

[Captain Audio]

A virus doesn't have to be bio engineered to be used as a bio weapon. The Japanese did not have the expertise to genetically alter small pox or anthrax but they experimented with fielding these as weapons, and every major power stockpiled anthrax at one time. There's an island off the coast of the UK that is quarantined due to it becoming contaminated with anthrax decades ago during Bio warfare experiments.
Last I heard the species of bats that COVID-19 came from are only found some 750 miles from Wuhan. Quite a long haul to carry anything to a wet market.

[The Australian Panther]

Last I heard the species of bats that COVID-19 came from are only found some 750 miles from Wuhan. Quite a long haul to carry anything to a wet market. 

Which would indicate that either they were considered a delicacy and people would be prepared to spend money on them, or more likely in my opinion, and somewhat verified, that one of the two laboratories in Wuhan had experimented on them and somebody from the Laboratories got contaminated and accidentally let the virus spread.