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wasoxygen · 1521 days ago · link · · parent · post: A bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event within a six month period starting no later than Dec 31, 2020.
My guess would have been 5% or less, but I don't know anything about it other than from a few rumors so I am not very confident. We have seen plenty of previous pandemics that presumably did not require any human intervention to get started, but now thousands—even millions—of people have access to biotech tools and information. The Washington Post says it's doubtful that the virus came from a lab, but the evidence provided suggests that we don't know where it originated. The expressed concern about terrorists and weirdos made me exclude well-intentioned researchers who accidentally release a virus, but that's just what Rees meant by "bioerror." Pinker seems to have accepted this bet without a definition of that term.