Is this the era of Biological Warfare?

It has been four to five months since the outbreak of fearful coronavirus disease (COVID-19) form the Wuhan city of China. Being highly contagious, the disease that was first reported among locals living near seafood market of Wuhan soon turned into an epidemic and it didn’t stop there; rather the current statistics report worldwide pandemic affecting 204 countries with more than Million cases and more than 60,000 death counts.

There is one similar question that arises in everyone’s mind these days and that is the origin of this lethal coronavirus. The most common conspiracy theory circulating in media is that this pathogen was deliberately created or manipulated in the Wuhan’s Institute of Virology which either accidently and unintentionally leaked from there and created a global emergency. This theory seems quite plausible in today’s era as the incidences of biological warfare are neither new nor out of question in this advanced era of biotechnological progress. Ever since this hypothesis came forward, many intelligence and scientific agencies sped up their investigations to validate this possibility. Now with several months of research, majority of the scientific community has come to the conclusion that novel coronavirus (nCoV) is not a biological weapon which means that it did not escape from any scientific laboratory. Rather, majority of the community now accepts that the virus is originated from animals and transferred to humans via an intermediate host.

There are several reasons as to why nCoV may or may not be a biological weapon. The most logical explanation that comes in mind is that a shrewd nation like that of China cannot act so foolishly by doing a suicide attack on the rest of the world since we all know that China itself suffered a lot in this whole situation. Though, we can say that without doubt that all super powers must have well-planned biological weapon research programs which they could use upon will, the possibility of nCoV being a tool of bioterrorism seems little mainly because there already have been several viruses that have been used as bioweapons in the past with far more severe repercussions as seen today. Also, the use of bioweapon is carried out strategically with detailed statistical estimation of its aftermath. Mostly, it is aimed towards a specific region unlike the way nCoV has spread around the globe which seems quite random and accidental.  Still, even if we assume that nCoV is a genetically-engineered made in China product, then the scientists working on such a contagious virus must have been prepared beforehand to control its accidental outbreak with some sort of vaccine or treatment, which was not the case here. China faced a dramatic economic collapse because of this outrageous disease and the vaccines and plasma based treatments are recently being tested for the first time to cure COVID-19 patients.

In-fact this debate will continue for a long time now but there can be other serious consequences of this global pandemic. Though there is little chance that nCoV itself is an engineered bioweapon, there remains a strong fear that it may be used as a prospective bioweapon in future if this problem is not tackled right now by stringent regulations taken under Biological Weapon Convention, a treaty that prohibits the production and use of bacteriological and toxic weapons. This matter of biosafety should be deliberated at international level on a very serious note. Just imagine, if the virus with death rate around 2% has created such havoc at global level, what exactly would happen if a more lethal bioweapon with 10% mortality rate spreads into the world at this pace?

 

By: Noor ul Ain 

Tags: the era of Biological Warfare

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