Most virologists don’t think COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory, but they all understand a pandemic caused by a lab leak is a credible scenario. There have been at least a dozen lab-leaked outbreaks of lethal pathogens over the years, one of which, the 1976 strain of swine flu—luckily a mild strain—spread around the world. It was partly in response to worries from biosecurity experts in 2012 that the U.S. government imposed a moratorium on “gain of function” experiments, where scientists tinker with viruses to explore what makes them more deadly or more transmissible. (The ban was lifted in 2016.)
But alongside the discussion about tightening biosecurity, there’s also a growing awareness among experts that there may be a deeper problem at work—that the entire system that’s been set up for seeking out and neutralizing viral threats may itself be the problem. The danger isn’t just that individual accidents will inevitably occur; it’s that the overall strategy of a forever war with disease agents is fundamentally unsound because it involves escalating a confrontation we cannot realistically expect to win.
Physicians and public health experts tend to use the “war on disease” metaphor casually, thinking of it as an innocuous figure of speech. It seems natural to think we are “at war” with COVID-19. Immunologists speak of the body’s “defense” against invading pathogens. We celebrate doctors and nurses as “front-line heroes.” The book by influential public health expert Michael Osterholm and writer Mark Olshaker is titled Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs.
