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It became known as Occam's razor and a very effective philosophical tool it was too. Which brings us to the coronavirus. We have two options: First that a snake carrying a virus was eaten by a bat which then mutated the virus before being made into bat soup. The bat soup was eaten by a Chinese bloke at Wuhan fish market and, by some as yet unexplained magic, a super-mutated, super-deadly virus, now with an almost unprecedented four changed amino acids, made and inter-species jump into humans.

Or option two: A bloke at Wuhan's super-high security Institute of Virology, which routinely re-engineers deadly viruses, dropped a petri dish. Occam's razor would strongly indicate the latter. Just for clarity, I think it unlikely the Earth is flat. Or hollow for that matter. I think the Americans landed on the Moon rather than faked it in a Hollywood studio. I don't think Jim Morrison is living on a desert island with Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Tupac and the bloke from the Manic Street Preachers. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But I do think the coronavirus was almost certainly created in a Chinese laboratory. So yes, call me a conspiracy theorist on this one if you will but I simply don't buy that COVID-19, currently seemingly threatening all life on planet Earth, emerged because a Chinese bloke ate some bat soup. Call me a whack-job if you must, but nothing about the emergence of this deadly mutated virus rings true. And the way the Chinese responded so rapidly and so ruthlessly suggests someone, somewhere knew this was more than a sniffle which simply required a Lemsip and an early night.

The new coronavirus originated in China

Disinfection work and stacked-good cleaning of Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market started on Tuesday

This is China remember – home of those great flus we've come to know and love down the years. Who could forget the chicken-related Avian Flu of 2006? 2013? and 2017? And who couldn't feel twinge of nostalgia for the SARS virus which also happily made its home in China back in 2003? What I'm saying is China is no slouch when it comes to creating potentially rampant killer pandemics. The difference this time is the speed of Beijing's response – the very un-Chinese palpable sense of panic. Consider this. SARS emerged in Guangdong province (wherever that is) in November 2002. A team of Chinese health officials finally rocked-up to take a look what at was going on at the end of January 2003 and, after having a shufty around, filed a report which was so top-secret no-one who could have actually done anything constructive about it ever got to read it. The Beijing government took a 'move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here' approach and not until the end of February (three months later) did the Chinese come clean. The outbreak of SARS infected more than 5,300 people and killed 349 nationwide.

A lab worker tries to isolate the presence of Coronavirus during a swab test process

Now, compare that to how the Chinese authorities responded to the coronavirus we now know as COVID-19. The same AFTERNOON Beijing broke the news of the coronavirus seven Chinese cities, home to 70 million Chinese people, were militarily locked down. Anyone attempting to leave would have found themselves on the wrong end of a People's Army QBZ assault rifle. No-one was allowed in or out under pain of death. The same day Hazmat-suited soldiers were using industrial cleaning gear to try and disinfect those cities' streets. They were trying to bleach entire cities. That sound like a government worried about a sniffly cold? Now, call me a paranoid nut-job if you must, but there's also the small matter of the previously mentioned Wuhan Institute of Virology. DON'T MISS Coronavirus panic: UK medical expert delivers harrowing prediction [VIDEO]

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We are told the epicentre of the coronavirus is Wuhan fish market where somehow one strain of a benign virus mutated into another incredibly deadly strain and, by some as yet unexplained magic, passed to humans... apparently because someone ate bat soup. Now, call me a deluded fruit-loop if you will, but about five minutes walk from the fish market is the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Institute of Virology is China's first and only biosafety level 4 laboratory. And that my friends is the highest biosafety level there is on the planet. If ET ever lands (and no, I really don't think he has) he'll be taken to a BS-4 lab. BS-4 labs are officially used for “diagnostic work and research on easily transmitted pathogens which can cause fatal disease” and Wuhan's BS-4 lab in particular is authorised to deal with, among others, the super-deadly pathogens Marburg virus, Ebola virus, Lassa virus, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever... and now COVID-19. Seriously, if the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ever rock up this will where they will go to replenish their armoury.