Nature throws on average four or so pendemics at us per century. If someone deliberately causes a pandemic, if the list has eight viruses, they could make and release all eight at once. The idea of facing eight different covids, none of them with vaccines or even tests, all at the same time just boggles my mind. That's just such a horrifying thought, given how hard it was to deal with this one. And it's worse than that, i'm afraid. Because lot of people see our best hope is being vaccines, because obviously that’s what got us out of this one,.
In this episode of the podcast, Rob Reid and Kevin Esvelt discuss USAID’s new “Deep VZN” program, which aims to discover new pandemic-grade viruses and publish their genomes to the world. Esvelt estimates that there are currently around 30,000 people who could then easily build them.
If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.
Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.