> In a free society, preventing and undoing a bioweapon attack or a pandemic is much harder than committing it.

Is it? The hypothetical technology that allows someone to create an execute a bio weapon must have an understanding of molecular machinery that can also be uses to create a treatment.

I would say...not necessarily. The technology that lets someone create a gun does not give the ability to make bulletproof armor or the ability to treat life-threatening gunshot wounds. Or take nerve gases, as another example. It's entirely possible that we can learn how to make horrible pathogens without an equivalent means of curing them.

Yes, there is probably some overlap in our understanding of biology for disease and cure, but it is a mistake to assume that they will balance each other out.

Doomerism was quite common throughout mankind’s history but all dire predictions invariably failed, from the “population bomb” to “grey goo” and “igniting the atmosphere” with a nuke. Populists however, were always quite eager to “protect us” - if only we’d give them the power.

But in reality you can’t protect from all the possible dangers and, worse, fear-mongering usually ends up doing more bad than good, like when it stopped our switch to nuclear power and kept us burning hydrocarbons thus bringing about Climate Change, another civilization-ending danger.

Living your life cowering in fear is something an individual may elect to do, but a society cannot - our survival as a species is at stake and our chances are slim with the defaults not in our favor. The risk that we’ll miss a game-changing discovery because we’re too afraid of the potential side effects is unacceptable. We owe it to the future and our future generations.

doomerism at the society level which overrides individual freedoms definitely occurs: covid lockdowns, takeover of private business to fund/supply the world wars, gov mandates around "man made" climate change.