Biosecurity & Pandemics
The Next Pandemic May Be Man-Made
COVID-19 killed millions and cost trillions, and biologists warn the next engineered pathogen could be deadlier and closer than most people think.
Excess deaths from COVID-19, 2020-2021
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Estimated so far this year.
The evidence
A Coin Flip This Decade
Disease forecasters put the odds of another COVID-scale pandemic at roughly 27.5% by 2033, while separate modeling puts the annual chance of a COVID-level event at 2-3 percent (Airfinity, 2023; Marani et al., PNAS, 2021).
Engineered Pathogens Are the Sharper Threat
Philosopher Toby Ord estimates a 1-in-30 chance this century that an engineered pandemic triggers an existential catastrophe for humanity, roughly ten times higher than his estimate for a naturally arising pandemic (Toby Ord, The Precipice, 2020).
The Screening System Already Failed a Test
In an FBI-backed red-team test, 36 of 38 commercial DNA synthesis providers, including 12 of 13 members of the industry's own safety consortium, shipped fragments of the 1918 flu virus genome without flagging the order (International Gene Synthesis Consortium).
No Country Is Actually Ready
The 2021 Global Health Security Index, which scored 195 countries on pandemic preparedness, found an average score of just 38.9 out of 100, and not a single country scored above 76 (Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, NTI, Economist Impact, 2021).
The Treaty Banning Bioweapons Has No Teeth
The Biological Weapons Convention, the only global treaty banning biological weapons, has no verification regime and is administered by a 4-person team on a budget of roughly $2.1 million a year (Nuclear Threat Initiative).
Dozens of Labs Handle the Deadliest Pathogens
Roughly 59 maximum-containment (BSL-4) labs are operating, under construction, or planned worldwide, yet an independent audit found only about a quarter of labs handling the world's deadliest pathogens scored well on biosafety (King's College London analysis, 2021).
What we can do
Phase 1: make screening of DNA synthesis orders mandatory and universal rather than voluntary. Phase 2: give the Biological Weapons Convention real verification powers and funding, and require independent biosafety audits for every BSL-3 and BSL-4 lab. Phase 3: fund the metagenomic early-warning systems and 100-day vaccine platforms that experts identify as the highest-leverage tools for stopping the next pandemic before it spreads.
Sources: World Health Organization, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Global Health Security Index, Open Philanthropy, Toby Ord (The Precipice), Airfinity, International Gene Synthesis Consortium
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