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A lot of fantasy in this thread. No wonder ridiculous stories about "gain of function covid" is so popular on this website. Biology is a lot more complicated than you can ever imagine. A grad student will not make a species ending virus because organisms have been exposed to them since the dawn of time.

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We’ve evolved to deal with the natural rate of pathogen evolution. Not a guided one. Some species have already lost to the natural ones.

This is like saying social media isn’t impactful because we can carve thoughts into stone.

Though I mostly agree with the ridiculousness of the concept "species ending virus", I do think this, combined with advances in medical technology and manufacturing can be a significant threat to the status quo of our highly-connected, just-in-time, centralised-production civilisation. Enough of a threat that I think our species won't breach 10 billion for a considerable amount of time.

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