“highly resistant if not immune to human-targeted biological threats,”

This seems a tall claim. I would have liked to see details on this.

"At least 20 of those [BSL4] labs have been built in the last decade, and more than 75 percent are located in urban centers where a lab escape could quickly spread."

This seems so stupid to me. Perhaps the designers' hubris plays a role? Frankly, if I were designing it I would want as much defense in depth as I could get in case the design or procedures failed. Placing it in a large urban area seems like a common sense no-no. Put it in the damn desert, where there are few potential hosts and the environment is inhospitable to many of the pathogens.

Kind of like a drug dealer offering a discount, no one wants it.

Same thing, can't admit that lab leaks are real when playing with BSL-4 pathogens, therefore doesn't matter where they are built.

if a killer virus (or other pathogen) can be designed and made, it will be designed and made.

It’s how life on the planet will end.

In computer terms, once the user is able to corrupt the operating system, it’s lights out.

We have tens of thousands of people on this planet actively designing pathogens… it’s no different than telling your grandma how to access ‘RegEdit’ on windows; it’s only a matter of time before she crashes the entire system.

I mean, ever since I've learned how ... not impossible all of this is, this has been a fun thought experiment to ponder.

All it'd take is one reasonably clever insane person, and the range of things that are possible is immense.

Insanity isn’t necessary. Just sloppiness.

I think we’re all worried about that, especially since Bill Gates started investing billions of dollars in vaccine production facilities.

uh we've already been in one for 2 years lmao

I find it funny that things like this are still controversial. And people keep censoring each other on the internet in _every_ place. It's like it's illegal to be wrong because you could influence others to be wrong too and that is dangerous.

What better way to make paranoid people more paranoid than to censor what they say? It sure worked for flat earthers but at least they could test their theories at home.

Except no one censored flat earthers. Just the opposite, attention was brought to those views and they were ridiculed. Go search YouTube for “flat earth proven” to see how censored they are. Note how many results and how many appear on each side of the debate pro vs against. Now search for an actual censored topic, “covid vaccine graphene oxide” and compare the differences. Note how few results and how many fact checks appear.

The general consensus in the conspiracy community is that Flat Earth is a silly idea which most members have debunked personally. The only reason it is brought up at all is to attempt to be linked to that group and make conspiracy theorists seem crazy/stupid/unhinged. Example: “Oh you believe the lab leak theory? I bet you believe flat earth too! yuk yuk”. Another similar example is QAnon. QAnon believers are more ridiculed in conspiracy circles than they are in the general public.

The earth's surface is over 70% water. That water is mostly uncarbonated.

That makes the earth flat.

Dad joke for the day.

Yeah, I guess you are right, my example was bad, I should probably mention some sensitive conspiracy thing like pizza gate or something equally odd.