But let’s try to think this through.
If they (China) were researching it, then it is possible that this could’ve accidentally escaped the lab. Although that is some serious professional incompetence. And if they are intelligent and skilled enough to work with dangerous diseases, then I’m sure they have proper containment and stringent decontamination processes in place.
However, if this was a bioweapon, then a few arguments fall apart.
(1) If they engineered it, then they should’ve had the genome already. Instead, they had to capture the strain, and sequence its genome, and it took them three weeks to complete the sequencing. And then, they shared it with the world, the CDC, the WHO, in order to help foreign countries contain it.
For comparison, the CDC took over 2 months to sequence the Ebola virus. The Chinese sequenced this virus in 3 weeks. Granted, technology and techniques improved in the intervening years.
So that begs the question: If this was a bioweapon, then why would they quickly share its genome with the world? Why not just keep it for themselves, while they work out some cure, and let the rest of the world flounder and die off?
Their strength comes from their economic engine, and their exports to the world. They can’t make things for foreign markets, if those other countries are dying from some bioweapon that was unleashed on the world.
(2) If this was a bioweapon, and then they ‘accidentally’ released it on themselves, which makes no sense, then what is the goal? Because the economic fallout from this thing will cause billions in economic damages. As well as potentially causing social instability, for a country that prizes stability over all else. And the political fallout will be even higher.
(3) The Chinese are not suicidal. They were attacked with biological and chemical warfare by the Japanese in the 1930s. They were threatened with nuclear annihilation by MacArthur (to drop 50 atomic bombs) during the Korean War in the 1950s, and were also likely subjected to biological warfare too. The rest of the Western world prefers to ignore this, but they can never forget, because their people actually died from biological warfare.
So given all that, they have first hand experience of what biological warfare will do. So if they are researching bioweapons, then I’m pretty certain that they will have stringent procedures in place to contain it.
(4) And then there is the most logical argument, that this is a very poor bioweapon.
The goal of a bioweapon is to maximize immediate casualties, while minimizing uncontrollable transmissions to others. Basically, there is no point in using a weapon, if it ends up killing yourself.