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Message: [QUOTE="pj, post: 3478971, member: 2524"] I think: (1) This germ cannot maintain itself or cause disease in animals so far as we know, [URL="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/quarantine-cat-disinfect-dog-latest-advice-about-coronavirus-and-your-pets"]Quarantine the cat? Disinfect the dog? The latest advice about the coronavirus and your pets[/URL], the existing evidence is that it only infects humans, so the animal-to-human pathway is impossible and as Sherlock Holmes said, when you've ruled out all other possibilities, the last one standing must be the truth. (2) It's pure speculation how it got out, but China's only BSL-4 infectious disease laboratory is in Wuhan (Wuhan Institute of Virology), a mile from the fish market, and it probably would have originated there; most likely via some kind of accidental release, because nobody would intentionally release this in a major city (or I hope no one would). It would be pure speculation how an accident would happen, but if I had to guess, I would say, if you want a bioweapon you need a vaccine to protect your own population, so the next step after engineering a pathogen is to develop a vaccine, and you need to test the vaccine, so you need to expose vaccinated people to the germ. They may have tried that, and made a mistake. [/QUOTE]