UPDATED: How Likely Is It That Covid 19 Is A Bioweapon?

The short answer: Quite likely. I've suspected this for a long time based on government reactions--both from the Chinese government and other governments. Russia, for example, has basically banned Chinese from entering Russia. That drastic step suggests that Russia knows something.

And the likelihood that Covid 19 is an escaped bioweapon comes across very clearly in an article by China expert Steven Mosher in the NYPost: Don’t buy China’s story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab. The article is fairly long, but here are the telltale signs:

At an emergency meeting in Beijing held last Friday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke about the need to contain the coronavirus and set up a system to prevent similar epidemics in the future. 

A national system to control biosecurity risks must be put in place “to protect the people’s health,” Xi said, because lab safety is a “national security” issue. 

Mosher admits, that's not an actual admission, but it's pretty darn close. What are people supposed to make of a statement like that in the circumstances? And Xi's statement was followed up with a lab safety directive the very next day:

Xi didn’t actually admit that the coronavirus now devastating large swathes of China had escaped from one of the country’s bioresearch labs. But the very next day, evidence emerged suggesting that this is exactly what happened, as the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive entitled: “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.” 

Since in all of China there's only one microbiology lab that handles "advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus”, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that means that that directive on lab safety was directed explicitly at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Moreover:

... the People’s Liberation Army’s top expert in biological warfare, a Maj. Gen. Chen Wei, was dispatched to Wuhan at the end of January to help with the effort to contain the outbreak. 

According to the PLA Daily, Gen. Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003, as well as Ebola and anthrax. This would not be her first trip to the Wuhan Institute of Virology either, since it is one of only two bioweapons research labs in all of China.

If Covid 19 were a purely natural phenomenon, you wouldn't expect a Major General in bio-warfare to be dispatched to Wuhan.

Yikes!

This could explain why Covid 19 seems to be behaving differently than most viruses. Which leads to the question: If it behaves differently, will it--like other viruses--be suppressed when warmer weather arrives, or will it continue to spread?

UPDATE: I saw this report this morning: Trump furious Americans infected with coronavirus flew back to US without his permission: report. Excerpt:

President Trump was furious that 14 Americans infected with the coronavirus returned to the United States without his permission rather than remain in quarantine overseas, according to a new report. 

Trump had been briefed that the healthy U.S. passengers who spent weeks quarantined aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan would be allowed to fly home on two chartered planes -- while those who were sick or infected would stay in Japan to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. 

The president became "furious" with senior advisers after learning the 14 Americans who tested positive had been put on a plane with healthy passengers, according to The Washington Post. One official told the paper that the failure to inform Trump of the decision in advance of the plane's departure was a “big operational mistake.”

Trump, of course, is a noted germophobe. On the other hand, it's possible he has received briefings on Covid 19 that aren't being made public.