I have to say that this description of the method Wuflu uses to attack the body really sounds like what you’d build to create a germ warfare weapon.
Maybe, but if so, not that effective, at least in killing large numbers of healthy people. It has, however, been quite effective at damaging the economy.
A limited objective of damaging the economy is preferable to nuclear war. However given that it generally kills the infirmed and the aged, it isn’t all that grat, a weapon as you say.
However even if it is a weapon in germ warfare it may not have been purposefully applied, in this case.
It simply may have been one of many germ warfare possibilities that got loose.
And I don’t preclude the possibility that it was created by nature. But, man, that’s a quite a set of effects….
Or if I were to develop a decapitation bioweapon, this one comes close. What’s the average age of Senators, Generals and senior members of the Executive? Truth be told, it’d make a more effective weapon against another aging totalitarian regime which shall go unnamed but has had a history with China.
As a strategic weapon designed to wreak terror on people and havoc to economies, I’d say this one has done rather well. And of course, possibly by accident, we’ve seen what an effective deployment mechanism is. Sub-launched Tomahawks delivering cluster munitions to airport runways would be one future response.
I believe the evidence suggests that COVID-19 might be a very early stage in the development of a chilling new bioweapon known as a targeted pathogen. The concept is to genetically modify a highly-contagious virus so that it is largely asymptomatic for 99.999% of the population, but is highly lethal to individuals that match the specifically encoded genetic target map. As long as you are able to obtain a genetic sample of your target, you can launch an attack against him by releasing a tiny sample of the virus into an urban population anywhere in the world, and within a few months, it could spread to nearly the entire human race, and almost certainly kill your target, whether he is the President of a superpower, or an extremely well hidden arch-terrorist, along with a few hundred or a few thousand sick old people. Eh, collateral damage, what can you do?
In 2012, John Ringo wrote the following in a well-researched essay:
A few years ago, at a bio conference in London, a researcher proudly stood up and showed that his lab had proven they could create an infection that would infect a vast swath of population (choose species, genus, phylum or family) but only kill ONE INDIVIDUAL based upon that individual’s DNA.
When he asked for questions one member of the audience stood up and proclaimed:
“We’ve known that in (university research center) for the last five years but we were never STUPID enough to speak about it in PUBLIC!”
I believe that the virology center in Wuhan was working on this, using a pathogen loosely based on SARS. They were planning on testing it on groups of death-row inmates. For example: take 20 prisoners and confine them in a level-4 biocontainment facility, although they are permitted to mingle with each other. Select three of the inmates as biotargets, and program 3 separate strains of the virus with their individual genetic signature. Expose a single member (not the target) the group to each strain, separating the exposure times by a month or so to insure that an exposure to a strain of the virus that targets patient A will not grant immunity to carrying the virus which targets Patients B or C. After the three tests have completed, all remaining test subjects would be killed and carefully autopsied to check for subtle effects from being virus carriers.
The intended effect on non-target humans would probably be what we see when Covid-19 infects children. Asymptomatic to about half of the population, with 99.99% of the rest experiencing mild-to-moderate cold symptoms.
The deployment mechanism isn’t novel either. Having been described extensively in Robert Preston’s book in the early nineties. In the context of his book it wasn’t mentioned that any attempt to mitigate the spread would be viewed as xenophobic. Hopefully having gone through the process once now for real, rather than theoretically, we are all a little wiser.
Correction: Richard Preston: The Hot Zone.
I’m not ready to go full Baen books on this one. But there are some serious questions to be answered. The ability of this bug to trigger immune system responses that effect both respiratory and cardiovascular systems is rather unique. But may also be a feature if SARS in general. It’s just that the first outbreak wasn’t wide enough for this to be generally known. It is becoming that way now. The second issue is point of origin and patient zero. There has been a lot of CYA there. Enough to remove most of my doubts. Genetically Engineered? I doubt it. OTOH I’ve been looking to see if CRISPR techniques leave behind any signature markers. So far I haven’t seen any literature that says it does. So I would assume the only way to tell is if you have the DNA of the base natural virus to compare to. Maybe that came from horseshoe bats from southern China. Could this virus have been naturally amplified? That seems possible, perhaps even likely as a means to better study it. There could have even been altruistic reasons for doing so, in order to develop a more effective vaccine say for SARS for example. The problem with vaccine development is that you can’t get a clean baby without dirty bath water. The dark side of the equation. Same is true for development of bioweapons. The path taken can be circuitous. The bottom line is that there is no substitute for transparency in any lab.
I was just reading about plague (Yersina pestis)’s attack mechanisms — which also appear just about diabolical in their apparent cleverness and effectiveness in overpowering the body’s defenses. I recall thinking much the same about HIV and how it insinuates itself into the human genome. Evolution — which may be regarded as a kind of utterly non-human intelligence (despite its presence in potential in every cell of our bodies) — is quite capable (and always has been) of producing “enemy” agents which can appear hauntingly like human enemies in their seemingly diabolical effectiveness.
For a bio-weapon to be effective it has to be directed and controlled. So far, the Chinese haven’t managed to avoid fairly large costs. If they had some sort of counter measure, they have not deployed it on a wide basis. A regime that has killed many millions of their people over the years probably doesn’t see a few hundred thousand deaths as unacceptable provided they have the ability to protect those in power. Such a targeted use would be hard to spot, especially when the underlying disease is fairly mild. If the mortality rate were much higher, it would be hard to miss a group of people that seemed immune.
Like the CCP Politburo? Or the two star Red Army general now in charge at the Institute of Virology? Nope nothing to see here…
They didn’t say what the possible treatments the computer recommended but isn’t hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and erythromycin supposed to combat COVID by impacting the ACE2 receptors?
I read the article, but I didn’t notice any explanation as to why Covid19 is almost always asymtomatic for children.
I have to say that this description of the method Wuflu uses to attack the body really sounds like what you’d build to create a germ warfare weapon.
Maybe, but if so, not that effective, at least in killing large numbers of healthy people. It has, however, been quite effective at damaging the economy.
A limited objective of damaging the economy is preferable to nuclear war. However given that it generally kills the infirmed and the aged, it isn’t all that grat, a weapon as you say.
However even if it is a weapon in germ warfare it may not have been purposefully applied, in this case.
It simply may have been one of many germ warfare possibilities that got loose.
And I don’t preclude the possibility that it was created by nature. But, man, that’s a quite a set of effects….
Or if I were to develop a decapitation bioweapon, this one comes close. What’s the average age of Senators, Generals and senior members of the Executive? Truth be told, it’d make a more effective weapon against another aging totalitarian regime which shall go unnamed but has had a history with China.
As a strategic weapon designed to wreak terror on people and havoc to economies, I’d say this one has done rather well. And of course, possibly by accident, we’ve seen what an effective deployment mechanism is. Sub-launched Tomahawks delivering cluster munitions to airport runways would be one future response.
I believe the evidence suggests that COVID-19 might be a very early stage in the development of a chilling new bioweapon known as a targeted pathogen. The concept is to genetically modify a highly-contagious virus so that it is largely asymptomatic for 99.999% of the population, but is highly lethal to individuals that match the specifically encoded genetic target map. As long as you are able to obtain a genetic sample of your target, you can launch an attack against him by releasing a tiny sample of the virus into an urban population anywhere in the world, and within a few months, it could spread to nearly the entire human race, and almost certainly kill your target, whether he is the President of a superpower, or an extremely well hidden arch-terrorist, along with a few hundred or a few thousand sick old people. Eh, collateral damage, what can you do?
In 2012, John Ringo wrote the following in a well-researched essay:
A few years ago, at a bio conference in London, a researcher proudly stood up and showed that his lab had proven they could create an infection that would infect a vast swath of population (choose species, genus, phylum or family) but only kill ONE INDIVIDUAL based upon that individual’s DNA.
When he asked for questions one member of the audience stood up and proclaimed:
“We’ve known that in (university research center) for the last five years but we were never STUPID enough to speak about it in PUBLIC!”
I believe that the virology center in Wuhan was working on this, using a pathogen loosely based on SARS. They were planning on testing it on groups of death-row inmates. For example: take 20 prisoners and confine them in a level-4 biocontainment facility, although they are permitted to mingle with each other. Select three of the inmates as biotargets, and program 3 separate strains of the virus with their individual genetic signature. Expose a single member (not the target) the group to each strain, separating the exposure times by a month or so to insure that an exposure to a strain of the virus that targets patient A will not grant immunity to carrying the virus which targets Patients B or C. After the three tests have completed, all remaining test subjects would be killed and carefully autopsied to check for subtle effects from being virus carriers.
The intended effect on non-target humans would probably be what we see when Covid-19 infects children. Asymptomatic to about half of the population, with 99.99% of the rest experiencing mild-to-moderate cold symptoms.
The deployment mechanism isn’t novel either. Having been described extensively in Robert Preston’s book in the early nineties. In the context of his book it wasn’t mentioned that any attempt to mitigate the spread would be viewed as xenophobic. Hopefully having gone through the process once now for real, rather than theoretically, we are all a little wiser.
Correction: Richard Preston: The Hot Zone.
I’m not ready to go full Baen books on this one. But there are some serious questions to be answered. The ability of this bug to trigger immune system responses that effect both respiratory and cardiovascular systems is rather unique. But may also be a feature if SARS in general. It’s just that the first outbreak wasn’t wide enough for this to be generally known. It is becoming that way now. The second issue is point of origin and patient zero. There has been a lot of CYA there. Enough to remove most of my doubts. Genetically Engineered? I doubt it. OTOH I’ve been looking to see if CRISPR techniques leave behind any signature markers. So far I haven’t seen any literature that says it does. So I would assume the only way to tell is if you have the DNA of the base natural virus to compare to. Maybe that came from horseshoe bats from southern China. Could this virus have been naturally amplified? That seems possible, perhaps even likely as a means to better study it. There could have even been altruistic reasons for doing so, in order to develop a more effective vaccine say for SARS for example. The problem with vaccine development is that you can’t get a clean baby without dirty bath water. The dark side of the equation. Same is true for development of bioweapons. The path taken can be circuitous. The bottom line is that there is no substitute for transparency in any lab.
I was just reading about plague (Yersina pestis)’s attack mechanisms — which also appear just about diabolical in their apparent cleverness and effectiveness in overpowering the body’s defenses. I recall thinking much the same about HIV and how it insinuates itself into the human genome. Evolution — which may be regarded as a kind of utterly non-human intelligence (despite its presence in potential in every cell of our bodies) — is quite capable (and always has been) of producing “enemy” agents which can appear hauntingly like human enemies in their seemingly diabolical effectiveness.
For a bio-weapon to be effective it has to be directed and controlled. So far, the Chinese haven’t managed to avoid fairly large costs. If they had some sort of counter measure, they have not deployed it on a wide basis. A regime that has killed many millions of their people over the years probably doesn’t see a few hundred thousand deaths as unacceptable provided they have the ability to protect those in power. Such a targeted use would be hard to spot, especially when the underlying disease is fairly mild. If the mortality rate were much higher, it would be hard to miss a group of people that seemed immune.
Like the CCP Politburo? Or the two star Red Army general now in charge at the Institute of Virology? Nope nothing to see here…
They didn’t say what the possible treatments the computer recommended but isn’t hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and erythromycin supposed to combat COVID by impacting the ACE2 receptors?
I read the article, but I didn’t notice any explanation as to why Covid19 is almost always asymtomatic for children.