Yup. Beyond that, even. While it might cause some trivial reputational discomfort for the CCP who is already engaged in ethnic cleansing, but they'd also real

Yup. Beyond that, even. While it might cause some trivial reputational discomfort for the CCP who is already engaged in ethnic cleansing, but they'd also realize (if they haven't already) that they have a direct path to winning a bio-war without even losing credibility, because their authoritarian control gives them a huge advantage. They showed that they can implement a hard lock-down to reduce R0 to <1, whilst the western democracies tie themselves up in knots over masks, lockdowns, and 'muh freedums'. A new version that had R0 of maybe 4 (vs 2.7 for SARS-COV-2) and mortality in the 15% range (vs 2-6%), introduced into animal populations... One can hope that they aren't that unethical, but the fate of many tens of millions under the rule of that party says otherwise...