Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, people predisposed to believe in conspiracies posited the idea that the coronavirus was a Chinese bioweapon manufactured in a Wuhan laboratory. This was always far-fetched. It seemed and still seems far more likely that the virus leaked accidentally from the lab, where safety procedures were known to be sloppy.
But one counterargument made against the weapon theory, that the virus was not lethal enough, always seemed unpersuasive. Surely, a smart bioweapon made by a hostile power wanting to supplant America as world leader would not kill tens or hundreds of millions of people. It would infect and kill only so many as to guarantee panic and shut down and ruin the enemy’s economy while giving the perpetrator plausible deniability.
