Viruses are an extinction-level weapon. CRISPR? Not so much. (And neither are likely to result in an extinction-level accident; you'd have to deliberately deploy potent bioweapons in multiple places to extinct us.)
As I understand it (and hopefully I'm not way off base here) there is a technique that creates a "gene drive" which is kinda like an SDK that is inserted into the patients genome which improves the efficacy of CRISPR.
This code finds its way into the gametes which is then passed on to children. The children did not ask for this SDK, but now they have it and it potentially becomes immortal in human DNA.
On the one hand, cool: the SDK is there and possibly makes it even easier to alter DNA>
On the other hand, holy shit: there's a ticking timebomb in the populations DNA now.
It's called CRISPR-cas9:
https://wyss.harvard.edu/media-post/crispr-cas9-gene-drives/
https://scicomm2020.wordpress.com/2020/02/24/controversial-g...
There are things to worry about with cheap gene engineering, but that particular possibility won’t affect us.