[Symmetry]

Who the heck would want to be using a coronavirus as a biological weapon? Generally you want your bioweapons to have limited or zero human-to-human transmissibility - think anthrax or tularemia or y-pestis. And if you're evil and want to burn down the world you want something that's lethal to people who are conscription age, not just the young and old.

This[1] is what I'd expect a bioweapon accident to look like or maybe a multiply drug resistant outbreak of plague.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak

[voldacar]

I think the implication was that the virus may have escaped due to an error, and was later covered up by authorities and blamed on the local meat market.

You are totally right about how insane it would be to use a coronavirus as a bioweapon

[Symmetry]

Ah, that makes sense.

[kube-system]

Who suggested bio weapon? Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

[threeseed]

I've worked at a facilities department for a university that did infectious disease research. There were incidents of air filters and other protective systems failing and safety processes needing to be executed. It doesn't need to be stupidity but just a random failure.

And then China worrying about their international reputation attributing it to a seafood market.

[vatueil]

I don't think it's the most likely explanation, far from it, but it wouldn't have to be a bioweapon to have been released from a lab.

The reemergence of H1N1 in 1977 is believed to have been the result of a lab accident or vaccine trial gone awry, for example: http://www.virology.ws/2009/03/02/origin-of-current-influenz...

[sdinsn]

Note that the Chinese government has admitted they are trying to research bio weapons with high human-to-human transmissibility but engineered to only affect certain groups (like races).

[darawk]

Do you have a source on that?

[sdinsn]

Yes, Zhang Shibo (retired general and fmr. President of the PLA National Defense University) in his book. And a textbook from the NDU called Science of Military Strategy. Both these sources are from 2017.