[machina_ex_deus]

Just make sure you have the world media prepared with an appropriate wargame to simulate what would happen if an unrelated coronavirus would start spreading. Give it a boring name like event 201. Since it's all out in the open it's clearly not a conspiracy.

Then have the world media present you as the Oracle of Delphi because you had such an accurate prediction.

[ethanbond]

Doesn’t take a genius to know live animal markets in urban centers are risky and that respiratory viruses can emerge + spread.

[baja_blast]

> Doesn’t take a genius to know live animal markets in urban centers are risky and that respiratory viruses can emerge + spread.

Yes and when that happens the virus is circulating in an animal population. And this results in multiple independent outbreaks overtime across the entire region the animals live in. For example MERS a few years earlier has independent outbreaks in multiple countries, same with SARS. And it is due to the fact the virus is circulating in an intermediate animal species that for both SARS and MERS they were able to identify the animal that infected patient zero within months.

For SARS2 we have not found any intermediate species with the virus, or has there been other spillovers. You'd think that if it was circulating in something like racoon dogs there would be an outbreak in LAOS or we would find the ancestor virus in racoon dogs in bordering countries of China.

[ethanbond]

Sure. Doesn’t point at all to a deliberate leak like what GP was alluding to (the existence of a similar war game scenario implying that “they knew” it was going to happen).

[wen_1k_btc]

Especially if there happens to be an Institute of Virology in close proximity