ARGUMENT: PathogensPathogens Have the World’s Attention

Published 2 April 2021

The novel coronavirus has demonstrated just how devastating a transmissible pathogen can be—and just how difficult to contain. Nathan Levine and Chris Li write that “the sobering truth is that, as deadly diseases go, the world got lucky. The global case fatality rate of COVID-19 is around 2 percent. One need only compare this to SARS (10 percent), smallpox (30 percent), pulmonary anthrax (80 percent), or Ebola (90 percent) to consider that the coronavirus could easily have been much, much worse.”

The novel coronavirus has demonstrated just how devastating a transmissible pathogen can be—and just how difficult to contain. Nathan Levine and Chris Li write in Foreign Affairs that “the sobering truth is that, as deadly diseases go, the world got lucky. The global case fatality rate of COVID-19 is around 2 percent. One need only compare this to SARS (10 percent), smallpox (30 percent), pulmonary anthrax (80 percent), or Ebola (90 percent) to consider that the coronavirus could easily have been much, much worse.”

Moreover, they note, “these are all natural pathogens. The toll from a virus genetically engineered to increase transmissibility and lethality as a bioweapon could be almost inconceivable.”

They write:

There can be little doubt as to the destructive capacity of bioweapons. Indeed, the release of one, whether intentional or unintentional, could have an effect wholly comparable to that of a nuclear weapon. And a weaponized pathogen is nowhere near as difficult to produce as even the crudest nuclear device: the World Health Organization concluded in 2015 that the virus responsible for smallpox could be re-created in three months through synthetic biology, using publicly available genomes, in a process most lab technicians or undergraduate students could manage.

U.S. President Richard Nixon recognized this catastrophic potential in 1969 when he ordered the termination of the United States’ offensive biological weapons program that year, declaring that “mankind already carries in its own hands too many of the seeds of its own destruction.” His decision paved the way for the signing in 1972 of the landmark Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which bans the development, production, or stockpiling of biological agents that have no peaceful use. Today, a total of 183 countries (all but ten UN member states) are signatories.

They add that the release of a bioweapon could have an effect wholly comparable to that of a nuclear weapon, but that, nonetheless, after the Cold War, attention to the issue languished.

Now, however, the American public—and the entire world—is acutely aware of humankind’s deep, interconnected vulnerability to biological threats. As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates, viruses carry no passports and respect no borders. Pathogens that emerge from any corner of the world can impose severe costs on the rest of the globe. Thus the present moment provides an opportunity for extraordinary unity behind a new round of multilateral negotiations on biosecurity. Indeed, publics are likely to demand this from their governments.