We have already seen what a runaway virus can do to our overcrowded and highly interconnected planet. Some 166 million people have been infected in just 18 months.
Officially, the death toll from covid-19 is 3.4 million, although the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the true figure is probably 8 million or even more.
The United States has just announced that it is reviewing the origins of the virus and is not ruling out the possibility that it may have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, despite the WHO saying earlier this year that this theory was “extremely unlikely.”
But we’ve always known about the risk of something like this happening with a deadly pathogen.
Now, a leading biological warfare expert has asked the leaders of major industrialized nations, grouped in the G7, to consider imposing tighter restrictions, warning that poorly regulated labs are a gateway for terrorists.