Really scary thought...

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My brain was just churning as usual, I was reflecting on the situation with Covid when it hit me - wouldn't it be terrifying if Covid turned out to have knock-on reproductive effects?

The even scarier thought - if we get ourselves into synthetic biology in the next few decades and more countries start working with bioweapons... could you imagine what would happen, or just how strong the incentive structures might be, to send out an engineered virus that has as few symptoms as possible, at worst just mimics a cold or normal flu, which then permanently sterilizes the person who catches it? Thinking of this like computer viruses like crypto the goal is to get as wide of spread as possible before anyone discovers its there and the fewer symptoms the better.

Any country willing to play that game and at least insulate it's elites from said virus could have global domination within a few generations as much of the rest of the world grew old and vanished.

Is it going to happen? Who knows, just that the incentives for doing such a thing seem like they'd almost make it inevitable for someone to try.

I am under the impression that labelling COVID19 as the 'china virus' is exactly the sort of Streisand effect that could doom humanity to a new era of bioweapons engineering and bioterrorism.

Key point: Trump continues ceaselessly to peddle claims that the virus is a forgery of a Wuhan lab.

Such a prospect not only isn't supported by empirical evidence, but could open a floodgate of ideas for individuals and bodies who seek a repeat of this year's crisis and have the capacity to do so. Look at COVID19! Let us bioengineer a virus of our own. Trump may indeed, unwittingly be contributing to the ultimate downfall of humanity. Incidentally, Trump may not even know that. Actually.... it is likely he never even thought about it.

Here's the catch though - there are other narratives that aren't either deliberate bioweapon or fluke good luck of a novel virus. Bret Weinstein was considering, maybe even as early as April or May, that from where some of the sites are on the virus and seem to have been grafted in there's high likelihood that this could have been gain-of-function research, for the purpose of making vaccines rather than as an act of economic sabotage. That's part of the problem though - if you're mixing dangerous enough things together and it gets out it doesn't need to have been malicious.

The more I think about it, the scenario I mentioned above, I'm thinking we're getting to a place with CRISPR where, if anything, said hypothetical world-sterilizing virus would just start an immediate arms race on genetic augmentation and technologies for fixing that kind of damage, and with that much focused attention on a single issue the odds are it would probably just cause one generation to maybe dip 30-40% in size. Still, considering, it's just one more area where there's some urgency to get humans living in a wider variety of places than earth if we can reach out and touch each other this easily and even this covertly across one planet.

loads of countries already have completed biowarfare experiments and have fully operational weapons at their disposal.
Russia in particular are well known to have developed such weapons.

Apparently some of the bioweapons are so powerful that a canister the size of a coke can is big enough to kill all life of a modern major city such as London or New York. Anthrax is one example of a such a terrible terrifying weapon.

Being sterile would be awesome. I like this future.