Is coronavirus a biological weapon?

Coronavirus disease COVID-19 is an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel coronavirus. It is now an officially declared global pandemic.

COVID-19 cuts through income barriers and has hit the unlikeliest of places and individuals. The wife of Canada’s prime minister has tested positive for the virus. The Italian chief of army staff has tested positive. An adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader has died of COVID-19. Among other notables, Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, have tested positive for the virus. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has given a stark warning that up to 70 percent of the country’s population could contract the coronavirus. Stock markets around the world have since seen an unprecedented meltdown.

A lot of explanations have been advanced regarding the source of the coronavirus. Understandably, public-health officials want to pin down the virus’s source so that they can prevent new outbreaks. A lot of conspiracy theories are also making the rounds. The question essentially boils down to one point: was COVID-19 developed in a laboratory, and is it being used as a biological weapon to contain the formidable Chinese economic hegemony?

A related question is whether the virus was made in the laboratory purposefully, or did the virus made in the laboratory accidentally escape the laboratory. The lab-escape theory is so far the more widely accepted conspiracy theory. It had been circulating on social media for weeks, and gained considerable visibility following a New York Post article in late February.

Steven Mosher, a social scientist, summarises why he believes COVID-19 may have been accidentally spread by China’s National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers have studied bat coronaviruses. Mosher says that the lab is less than 10 miles away from the seafood market where a clustre of COVID-19 cases was first discovered.