China's secrecy, ambitions, and disregard for life or the environment are a problem. But so are the weapons-producing labs in the US, Russia, France, Japan, North Korea, and others. As the Covid-19 pandemic continues its destructive course, two theories aired widely. Two, and this is more fanciful but not impossible, that China deliberately launched a biological attack to position itself as the single greatest superpower while flattening its rivals' industrial and economic capacity.
Both theories have strong supporters armed with a battery of 'facts.' The problem is not with data, though. It's China itself, with its habitual secrecy, big ambitions, and absolute disregard for life or the environment. Allied to that is bio labs everywhere have been a source of serious threats, with the big powers seeing them as potentially usable as weapons of mass destruction, proved by the large number of such facilities worldwide.
The laboratory in Wuhan resulted from a collaborative effort with France after the first SARS outbreak in 2002. The lab is one of 20 such facilities under the Chinese Academy of Sciences but is the only one dealing with virology. Fully compliant with ISO standards, the Wuhan facility regularly interacts with a host of outside experts. Like other labs, it aims to protect populations against new viruses. But the trouble is the blurry line between defensive and offensive study, which lies at the heart of biological research and warfare.
Laboratories of diseases
Biological weapons use microorganisms or toxins to induce disease in humans, livestock, or plants. It is the deadliest weapon in any arsenal since, unlike nuclear weapons, there is no way to map its spread, including into an attacker's territory. Countries suspected or known to have such programs include the US, Russia, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Israel, Iran, and North Korea. The array of weapons includes anthrax, botulinum, smallpox, and other such diseases that once plagued the world. Even as research has provided vital vaccines against such conditions, countries have long used them in warfare. One of the earliest can be traced back to 600 BC when used purgative herbs to poison wells or plague-ridden bodies catapulted into cities during a siege. The latter probably resulted in the plague sweeping across continents, in one of the worst disasters.
Later, during World War II, the Soviets used a deadly bacterium (tularaemia) against German troops that caused skin ulcers, severe vomiting, and diarrhea. Japan's bio-research included experiments on prisoners of war and against Chinese cities. That was a mistake. It rebounded and killed more than a thousand Japanese personnel.
Historical evidence, therefore, shows that authoritative regimes will use everything possible to achieve their goals. But it also shows that the use of bioweapons can harm the aggressors in turn. But not a single country has used it against itself in any diabolical plan to get at everyone else, which indicates that Covid-19 being a 'deliberate' Chinese attack on the world is shaky at best.
When not deliberate, accidents take over.
The second question is that of accidents at research labs. Data is scarce since the very existence of such labs is a secret. Some incidents have been outed. A well-known Rutgers University scientist, for instance, warned that the anthrax attacks — where lethal spores were sent through anonymous letters across the US after the 9/11 attacks — were carried out by "a person who had authorized access to anthrax spores at a US military lab."
A US scientist working on avian flu rushed through safety procedures to get to a staff meeting in another case. The result was that a mild flu virus was tainted with the fatal H5N1 and sent to a poultry research farm. The facility was a BS-3 level lab. US government reports also noted other safety lapses, including anthrax stored in unsecured freezers and samples in Ziploc bags. Public health scientists have voiced their alarm at the development of mutant strains, while there are allegations that US labs linked to Ebola outbreaks in West Africa.
Other countries didn't do well either. As recently as September 2019, Russia confirmed an explosion at its Novosibirsk, which houses one of the two labs worldwide that store smallpox, among other viruses. In another incident, it took researchers 40 years to decode the genome signature of a virus that escaped a Soviet lab in 1979. Reliable reports have noted more than a hundred safety breaches at UK labs. The list goes on to encompass almost every country with scientific know-how. Experts like Richard Ebright have reported that SARS viruses have leaked from Chinese labs before, though Wuhan itself has a clean record. Accidents, therefore, do happen.
