Ok, but why are all the deaths happening in China? Thus far outside China, no-one of the infected people have dropped dead - to the contrary, some of them have already recovered and most are reported to be in good shape. Most likely this is because rest of the world has superior medical facilities compared to China, but still. If this is bioweapon experiment gone wild, it's really not very effective bioweapon.
I said this before, but it was like 100 pages back, so I'll say it again.
Bioweapons are NOT all "ACHOO-BLARGHDEAD" ala Captain Tripps, the T-Virus, the Walking Dead. Most of them are EXACTLY what the novel-corona-virus is.
You have three categories for them, stemming from the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction's three-phase plan where you not only want to kill the enemy, but kill EVERYTHING FOREVER, including your own shit so they can't have it.
First is the kind that jumps out of the alley and ass-rapes you, usually coming in Industrial Strength and Bargain Bin, so that the symptoms and stages are confused. The MAD versions are highly communicable, fast acting, and BLARGH DEAD right where you're sitting. Those ones wipe out everyone it comes into contact with, allowing them to only survive long enough to stagger around in delirium and infect other people with even the corpses being infectious (best for when the dogs and rats eat the corpse to spread it). We're talking real world ender shit. Stuff like weaponized bubonic plague type shit. The lethaler and more communicable, the fucking better. Plus, visible symptoms are great to cause panic and fear in the populace and hurry the collapse of the infrastructure. It's even better if it can be like e.coli and hang around forever in animals so that now even food is denied to the poor bastards who survived, because fuck you, that's why.
Then you have the "You're all gonna die, just very very slowly" that are related to the first type, but are designed to take much longer to kill you and leaves some poor bastards alive (preferably all fucked up with scarred hearts and lungs and damaged livers and kidneys, hell, even fever damaged brains if you can pull it off) as carriers. You want to pair it with a "FUCK YOU!" version of itself, so that doctors don't know which is which based on symptoms, which causes the medical system to collapse and the civilian population to freak the fuck out and start burning motherfuckers alive. These two are related and are Four Horseman quality weapons.
Lastly, you have dehabilitating agents. These are where your options come in. Fast acting from asymptomatic to symptoms or not. If not, you want it to be communicable EARLY in the symptomatic phase or at the end of the incubation phase, preferably the middle. OR you want it with a low communicability in order to control it. All of that is just for how the delivery and spread works, what you're really after is this...
Decent asymptomatic incubation stage with communicability in the end of incubation. Mucus and bodily fluid suspension. Hard hitting symptomatic stage. An R0 of at least 3 but no more than 7 in order to keep it from spreading like wildfire.
What this does is the following, and why it's the preferred bioweapon for Total War without the MAD component.
It keeps the troops in the barracks
Sickens political and military leaders
Stops industry
Keeps the citizenry in their homes
Collapses the medical system (This allows you to roll in and "save" them)
Collapses the shipping system (Preventing food and supplies from being shipped)
Causes power, water, phone, and internet interruptions
Divides the citizenry
Makes the government appear weak and ineffective.
Disrupts trade as ships and planes are quarentined (this also leads to a couple of "death ships" out there on the water for later fun)
You spread rumors that the military and political leaders as well as the rich have been given access to a vaccine, mainly to cause civil unrest.
You deliberately enable some of the asymptomatic who are close to communicable to slip cordons and reach other nations in order to force those nations to close the border to the target country and other allies to close airline travel. No allied troops will want to enter the area to avoid sickness.
You want the disease to last a week to two weeks during the symptomatic phase, putting a further drain on the medical system but ALSO you want it to be able to be treated at home by staying home, getting rest, and plenty of fluids, thus confining the citizenry to their homes willingly, unwilling to trust a collapsing medical system.
You want a slow mutation rate, since viruses (the successful ones) DON'T kill their hosts, and over time the disease gets less and less lethal until it's treated as just another "Winter flu" bug.
So, tell me again how this is a shitty bioweapon, unless you mean the full blown "BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY!" versions.
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