[quote=spdrun]ucodegen — it would have been shockingly easy for (intelligence agency of choice) to transport a virus like COVID-19 undetected, even into somewhere like China.[/quote]
You are forgetting that China is a surveillance state, with multiple inspection points (checkpoints along the roads) and use of face recognition for tracking people. China also has no equivalent of the US’s 4th Amendment. Your cell phones are even inspected for content and sometimes tracking and spyware end up being installed.[quote=spdrun]
The low lethality would be a feature, not a bug, assuming the goal was to shut down economies, not to cause a massive amount of deaths.[/quote]
It might, however low lethality would make it more of a terror weapon than tactical or strategic. The US has enough experience with working on creating bioweapons that it avoids those that are highly communicable. Highly communicable diseases can not be controlled. They end up killing both sides.
[quote=spdrun]
It’s also apparently stable in feces, urine, and liquid culture medium for 24 hours at room temperature. Sounds like it could have been brought to China in a Snapple or Gatorade bottle…
This would indicate that the virus is more stable than the known human coronaviruses under these conditions.
Which would indicate that most coronaviruses are not as stable as SARS.
China also inspects for ‘Unsanitary Foodstuffs’ on entry, which is banned ref. I would say that faeces and urine would be considered unsanitary foodstuffs. BTW, a liquid container exceeding 2oz is not even allowed on aircraft these days, not even in the US. Even 2 oz containers going onto an aircraft are subject to sample testing. The containers you mentioned are the same size needed to make a reasonably sized bomb containing a compound called HMTD or TATP. These two compounds are part of the reason why there is a 2 oz limit on liquids on an aircraft. ‘Anonymous’ containers are watched these days. Unlike the US, if the Chinese find you transporting such a compound – the result is a bit more fatal to the one transporting than it would be in other countries. They are also more likely to find it ‘in-country’ than the US.
[quote=spdrun]Note that I’m NOT saying that COVID-19 is a bioweapon, just that smuggling a low-lethality weaponized virus into China would have been less difficult than you make it seem.[/quote]
I did not state that it was not impossible to deliver such a weapon, however not as easy as many people think – nor as easy as it would be in the US. Nothing is impossible to the truly dedicated though.
