No. Weaponization was the process of doing gain-of-function engineering on the virus. Not only with respect to the ability to infect human cells, but also, I suspect, as to lethality of the resulting infection.
But Chinese quality control being what is it, they only accomplished a half-assed job before their equally incompetent safety protocols let the virus escape into the local population.
Gain of function research, splicing together a bat coronavirus and SARS, was done in a lab in the US (North Carolina) in 2014, and published about, in the journal
Nature in 2015. Two of the researchers on the team were from the Wuhan Institute.
It was just a contagion-enabled pathogen until the MEDIA made it into a weapon.
It was the media induced widespread FEAR of a virus with over 97% survival rate that made it a weapon.
It was media suppression of treatment regimens which could have saved tens of thousands, if not millions, and countless lost days to illness, lost businesses to lockdowns, etc., but instead fully promoted the panic level fear of the virus.
Mass hysteria promoted and perpetuated by Media turned what would have been a nasty bug for those with comorbidities into a country wrecking, election theft enabling weapon.
I'll give a solid assist on that goal to the Democrat politicians and members of the Medical Establishment who contributed to the body count through politically inspired sh*tty science and dogmatic opposition to off label treatment that has proven effective elsewhere.
But as for making a weapon? Meh. without the fanfare, censorship, and damning edicts, it would have a nasty bug, with a 98.25% survival rate of
known cases in the USA. Survivors who did not seek medical attention, self treated and survived, or remained asymptomatic will acquire immunity but will not be counted in the survivor list unless they got tested while active.
By contrast, Anthrax (
Bacillus Anthracis) has a case fatality rate of 56%, by comparison, and there are others, most notably Clostridium botulinum (botulism), Francisella tularensis subsp. Tularensis (valley fever), and Yersinia pestis (the plague), which would also yield much higher body counts.
