This Atlantic article is about a grant proposal to artificially create something very close to Covid-19 in a laboratory. Not to worry, it was not funded and it does not prove or disprove the “lab leak hypothesis”. Wait a minute, regardless of the lab leak hypothesis, what is chilling here is that the technology exists to create a Covid-like bioweapon or something even worse in a laboratory right now. This does not particularly surprise me, but it is scary. Even if we assume scientists in leading countries like the U.S. and China are relatively well regulated and have relatively high ethical standards, somewhere in the world there will be experts who are not as ethical and people willing to fund them. And over time, the technology will become more accessible to more people. And garage biotechnology will be harder to monitor and control than nuclear technology.

If I were spinning conspiracy theories here, I would say isn’t it an interesting coincidence that U.S. laboratories are set up to genetically engineer a Covid-19 if they want to, and U.S. laboratories also happened to have the vaccine for Covid-19 pretty much developed and ready to commercialize when needed. Hmm…I have no evidence of this and am not saying it is likely, I am just saying it is a story that would not be inconsistent with reality.