This coronavirus panic has Doomsday Preppers written all over it.
The new virus, Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) with its genesis in Wuhan, China, has hit 90,0000 people in China, and sporadic cases are appearing in the United States in places like Washington, New York, and Florida with 53 confirmed cases and 11 reported deaths here at home as of March 2020.
Quarantined passengers trapped on the Diamond Princess cruise ship off the coast of Japan found themselves with 10 passengers infected with COVID-19. When the one month quarantine period was lifted. More than 700 of the 3,700 on board had become infected. The quarantine became an incubation for the disease to spread to others aboard the ship, and for these passengers to return home with that virus.
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On Capitol Hill, the source for the juiciest of conspiracy theories, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) suggested that “coronavirus could have been created in a laboratory in China.” Was it? Yes, absolutely. Is Cotton peddling panic? No. is it a man made bioweapon? Man made, yes. Bioweapon, no, though it does seem to function like one.
One variant in the family called coronavirus is patented as ”Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus,” which means it is a man made virus. According to the Bethesda, Maryland-based U.S. National Library of Medicine, SARS coronavirus was patented as US2006257852 on April 9, 2004. The patent owner was Emeryville, California-based Chiron Corporation.
