The practical realities involved in recognizing and mitigating the risks are independent of how it originated. And it's my guess that, due to the current chaotic "fog of war" conditions, we won't have any good answers for quite a while (if ever). China certainly isn't known for information transparency and I don't see how speculation does anything but feed prurient interest.

Viruses like this have developed in China in the past as a result of normal mutations. What evidence is there that this time is different?
I wouldn't put anything beyond the Chinks but this is a stretch. Somebody ask GaGa.

1) No way that's accurate. They're already super good at herding their population like cattle, and the idea that there have been confirmed cases outside of china would imply global cooperation, which isn't happening.

 
2) In terms of a bio-weapon, this virus is pretty shit. It's kill rate is way lower than SARS or any of the other super-flu's that have been around, and it's not that contagious. The only bio-weapon like attribute is that you can spread it before you show symptoms for about 8 hours. That's small time in terms of bio weapons though. The real stuff can go a week before you know you have it, and by that point it's too late because you've spread it to everyone you've come in contact with.
So all that to say, it's unlikely that this is a weapon at all.

Real talk though, China's public health system is abysmal, and overall city hygiene is really bad. The food's dirty and safety standards are non-existent, the water is dirty, the air's dirty, it's a veritable breeding ground for illness. The exceptions are the tourist areas like beijing and shenzhen, which are kept much nicer and well regulated, the rest of China though, well, not so much. That's not to say any of the above is dangerous, it's not. I've been to poe-dunk China and eaten the mystery meat and drank the local hooch, no big deal at all. It's just the standards that these things are served with *can* lead to illness like we're seeing now.  

 
Give it a few months and flights to China will be cheap and it'll be safe as ever.

Wow.

The discovery of the Wuhan virus, dubbed 2019-nCoV, in the fecal material of the 35-year-old man treated at the Providence Regional Medical Center Everett in Washington is “interesting," said Scott Lindquist, the state epidemiologist for infectious disease at Washington’s Department of Health.

“That adds to the knowledge about this," he told reporters on a conference call Friday. “It’s not only excreted in your respiratory secretions, it’s also secreted in your stool."

Interesting, what do you all think about this ?