The whole gain of function boost was created to prevent a 2nd SARS and was shifted to china, as funding dried up, the further the event wandered into the "distant" past.

Covid is neither a bioweapon nor a step-ladder for totalitarians worldwide. Its simply necessary un-bribeable politics and change, despite systemic dysfunction.

That massive turn-around in society we need, we always demand and secretly fear, its upon us now and no lobbyist can put that djinn permanently back into the bottle.

One variant and we are back into our walls, condemned to bread and games and the realization, that infinite growth is unnecessary.

So compared to the massive disaster ahead, with billions of dead, this is quite a gentle steering maneuver. Sure those who are mentally not agile enough to travel to this different world currently born, well they will stay behind and swept away with the refugee crisis yet to come.

The rest of us - we will stay peaceful, although loosing it all, with just a cellphone to dream and play on in some tattered tent.

And this is the best outcome, and if you weight the future billions against the current million dead, even a moral one.

Now downvote, the advocate of benevolent diabolo.