I apologize in advance for the length of this post but I needed to get this out, anyone curious about what I have to say please give me the benefit of the doubt and read the whole post . I’d really like to get some hopefully positive feedback.

I dont really have any evidence to back this up just speculating but i think the scientific explanation is more likely and i think the religious and voodoo like aspects from the tattoos are more an inspiration for inks actions. i think that ink is a bio-chemist with a fixation on voodooism and various religions having to do with aspects of rebirth, fate, and the renewal of mankind, and this religious fixation and scientific background drove him to find a way to recreate mankind to create a more perfect world. i believe through human experimentation he found a way to alter humans to a similar state as the "zombies" using aspects of modern science and homeopathic medicine, tying with his science background and voodooism beliefs, but he needed a way to spread his gospel and sought the help of the american military or a private pharmaceuticals company by using their funding for his work while working projects for them, maybe even Radon Labs located in L.A. I agree that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons seem like a likely biological carrier due to their mutagenic and teratogenic properties and i think the tattoos may indicate that the virus is based one of those PAHs and because they are most commonly found in oil like substances such as soil, crude oil, and tar it may be possible that Ink during the course of his work found veins of tar and soil underneath inglewood maybe connected to the La Brea Tar Pits or just happenstance and he used those veins along with the highly concentrated PAHs to create a massive aerosolized release of his virus.
This second part may be a big leap but i think it would explain the seemingly simultaneous release of this virus and that is that i think Ink had co-conspirators who helped him to find multiple locations globally and to prepare and to coordinate the release of his virus, he did it on his own, or im just completely wrong.
Another point you made was that maybe tonya didnt find anything in the blood was because the virus didnt actually add something to the body but it actually recoded DNA that was present in human genetics but dormant and this could explain the rapid rate at which people turn because the virus is using the body’s nature to maintain equilibrium and once the DNAs recoded the body mutates itself and it could account for the varying rates of turning because each persons genetic profile and compatibility with the virus would vary, it could really explain a lot if its true.
This could also explain the special variants because it means that Ink likely used his understanding of his virus to first infect himself with a strain of the virus that allowed him to in large part retain his intelligence and simultaneously gain the attributes he needed to take power in his new world, and using this retained intelligence and understanding of the virus he began experimenting once he gained control. Along with his experimenting i believe the virus is highly mutative and varying neurological, physiological, and genetic factors influenced some of the biters to become runners, some to be smarter, some to be more violent or aggressive, and it would explain why the jumpers disappeared so quickly because they were a failed mutation. This experimenting would also better explain the arena it wasn’t just a hive it was a proving ground of sorts that was used to find the promising candidates for his experimentation and as a way to train his "people" for the inevitable conflicts that would occur with humans. the idea of experimentation would also explain two things that have been bothering me why was there blood, body parts, and corpses all over that ward in the hospital and why haven’t there been any indications of juvenile zombies. Even assuming that the viruses initial stage had a high mortality over infection rate which it would have to or else L.A. would have been overrun with millions of the infected and I think there were tens of thousands at best, that still means that there should be infected children and if there had been im sure that someone by now would have been shocked by it. So I think that Ink is using all of the infected children he can find as test subjects to create his soldier inklings hoping to take advantage of a child’s physical and neurological adaptability to improve his success rate, but I think he had a high failure rate before he was successful which would explain the blood, fingernails, and broken syringes on the beds ands and the blood streaks, body parts, and corpses that were strewn throughout the ward. Ink continued to experiment with his Inklings even after he’d created 12 of them which would account for the rapid growth and the continued and seemingly controlled adaptations and mutations.