No, respiratory viruses aren't suitable for bioweapons. The CIA already wrote that off last Spring.
Respiratory viruses aren't stable for drops in the air. They break apart unless they are attached to some airborne human emissions.
Unless you spray the virus in a area where the subjects are kept in close, confined quarters such as done with chickens and pigs, they don't spread easily. This was tried by the CIA with swine flu in Cuba during the 70's. It has a 95% fatality rate, which brings one to the next point.
The fatality rate for Covid is extremely low. The virus mainly has severe effects for the elderly, not those of military and working ages.
Subjects exposed to the coronavirus won't feel any symptoms or have sickness for 1-2 weeks. It's totally unsuitable for trying to disarm an army. The fatality rate for those in the US military who've been infected is 1 in 10,000.
If one is looking for a bioweapon, hemmhoragic fevers like ebola have the qualities you want.
If one is to play conspiracy theories, then covid might be useful as a political weapon by forcing the Chinese to shut down their economy, blaming them for the spread of the virus, and withholding the vaccine and its ingredients from other countries in political blackmail.
The virus is similar to SARS, and officials expected it to probably quickly fizzle out after China. That's why the Trump administration was so lax.
The distrust of the CIA which gave them warnings for three months was a major problem. Trump and the Republicans thought Covid was being exaggerated in order to win the election. The FBI, CIA, and media had been on constant attack against the administration for four years with false conspiracy theories on Trump and Russia. On top of that, the public has been intentionally divided into two camps which makes collaboration in a crisis more difficult. |
