Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/8224710
China has reportedly embarked on a controversial path of experimenting with a new Covid-like virus, characterized by a 100% fatality rate in mice. The unfolding scenario raises concerns about the potential risks associated with such experiments, especially the prospect of the virus spilling over into the human population.
Even then, a 100% fatality rate likely has very poor transmission.
Also, this is China, so claims of effectiveness should be taken with a grain of salt.
The main issue here is that it’s the evolution we’re talking about. Even if China is exaggerating, it’s not a stretch to think that the virus could become infectious or even transmissible among humans. And remember that covid19 has an asymptomatic high transmission phase. Again, it’s not a stretch to think that a lower fatality rate or a longer incubation period could lead to a high transmission rate. To put it simply, it’s not favorable for even the most incompetent people to play with bioweapons - the resilience of evolutionary biology more than makes up for it.
Yes but ultimately covid 19 had a relatively low fatality rate. It’s still high compared to things like cold and flu, but low compared to many other diseases. Before the vaccines, young people generally didn’t die, it primarily affected the old and vulnerable.
While it absolutely is a concern - in particular that China is developing these things with apparent malicious intent - there is likely going to be some sort of engineering trade off between fatality and transmitability.
Flu type viruses have three phases: incubation, infection, fatality.
It’s imaginable that a virus with very short incubation and infection phases, could be delivered to a target population either via the water supply, or by directly spraying it over them.
A virus with long incubation, but short infection and quick fatality phases. Could be risked to be let go freely, and still reasonably expect to be able to contain the target population.
If the virus also took into account additional markers to control the duration and severity of each phase, then theoretically.you could design a virus that gave a mild flu to everyone, but at the same time quickly killed some target population, or even a single individual with a 100% fatality rate (for the intended target).