Lots of disease comes out of China. That has long been the norm. Lots of people and lots of animals living very close provide many opportunities for animal viruses to mutate and leap to people.
The Wuhan Flu makes me wonder if the Chinese Communist Party would ever consider using this transmission route as a way to wage biological warfare on the world if the CCP thought its grip on China was slipping?
I don't believe this virus is deliberate, to be clear. I'm just wondering whether a CCP only interested in its control of China would sacrifice a whole lot of their own people to use them as the means to attack rivals and enemies abroad. Human wave attacks in a biological war, so to speak.
Or even to suppress domestic unrest. Hong Kong is certainly quieter during the Wuhan Flu.
If the CCP thought the people were rising up, a nice epidemic would nip that in the bud. And if it spreads abroad, what enemy could exploit the epidemic within China? The well connected and loyal CCP people could be protected.
Just an accidental "normal" epidemic combined with CCP secrecy means we need to monitor China much more thoroughly than we have up to now. The chance that disease could be weaponized makes it more important, no?
UPDATE: And if you think they would never do anything like that, remember that while the Wuhan Flu is demanding our attention these days, on a healthy day the Chinese Communist Party is simply awful:
On March 11, the US State Department, led by Secretary Mike Pompeo, issued the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2019. ...
The report’s section on “China (Includes Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet,” as its title reads, offers an effective “cold list” of trespasses committed by the CCP-led regime in its executive summary: arbitrary or unlawful killings, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions, arbitrary interference with privacy, physical attacks on and criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others as well as their family members; censorship and site blocking; interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association including overly restrictive laws that apply to foreign and domestic NGOs; severe restrictions of religious freedom; substantial restrictions on freedom of travel within the country and overseas; refoulement of asylum seekers to North Korea (where they have a well-founded fear of persecution). The Report notes substantial problems with the independence of the judiciary, totally dominated by the CCP, which controls the appointment of all judges and even sometimes directly dictates courts’ rulings, and the widespread corruption that plagues the country. It also underlines the coercive birth-limitation policy that in some cases included forced sterilization or abortion, trafficking in persons, severe restrictions on labor rights, and child labor.
Is that all?
No, don't forget the concentration camps for minorities:
One key point is the mass detention of members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (which Uyghurs prefer to call East Turkestan) under the false accusations of terrorism, separatism, and extremism. In the detention camps in Xinjiang Turkic people are abused, tortured, and killed: mainly Uighurs, but also ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and others. This situation, the Report notes, is paralleled by the repression of Tibetans in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and other Tibetan areas.
They seem like nice people.
UPDATE: And I already speculated that the CCP would use the virus to deal with their Moslem population.
UPDATE: And honestly, anybody could attack the world this way if they smuggle the virus into China and plant it in the wet markets.
Shouldn't the CCP shut down the wet markets as a self-protection method to reduce their role as a weapon that anybody can point at the world--and be blamed for it?
