Unintended Consequences of Defending Your American Covid-19 Freedom and Constitutional Rights

Our world has been kept safe from nuclear destruction since 1945 mainly because the risk is symmetrical.  You launch your warheads and we will launch ours.  We will be mutually destroyed.  So let's not do that.

Symmetric risk means stability on the world stage.

Asymmetric risk, on the other hand, is much more dangerous and destabilizing.  That's when one nation acquires the ability to inflict death and destruction on a country that cannot fully retaliate on the same scale as the instigating nation.

And, currently, there is a brand new asymmetric risk right in front of our noses:

• We have recently demonstrated, visibly, to the world, that America is fundamentally unable to respond effectively to a highly contagious respiratory virus.  This is due to the preponderance of people that will defend 'constitutional rights' to choose not to follow medical directives (such as wearing masks).  Further, many Americans are suspicious of expert advice and are unlikely to fully comply with lockdown instructions.

• Many other countries (including China) have now demonstrated to the world that they can quickly and effectively mobilize their citizens to respond to a highly contagious respiratory virus now or whenever one occurs in the future.  People in these nations have shown that they will readily follow any necessary medical directive or expert advice, which will quickly expunge any viral epidemics that take place in their country.

This situation gives America an asymmetric risk to any new deadly world-wide virus pandemic occurring in the future.

It is as if we only have the capability to launch two or three nuclear missiles and China has thousands ready to go.  Sure, they'll launch a war with us: At most, they will only lose three cities, we will be wiped off the map.  No more mutually assured destruction.

Note that it is much easier to design a destructive virus than it is to design an atomic weapon.  

Reagents can be ordered on line which enables anybody with a lab bench and little bit of knowledge to do genetic editing.  This virus can be tailor-made for transmission and infection.  Replace the lipid bi-layer with a protein capsid (allows for completely airborne transmission).   Reengineer the Spike Protein so that it has affinity for Nectin-4 instead of ACE-2 (will make it target the same cells as the measles which has a R(0) of 18 instead of 2.5). Splice in a few more genes that target and disable the human innate immune response early in the infection.  And so forth.

Covid-19 has 5X the infection fatality rate of the flu. This bespoke "Covid-21" can be engineered to be orders of magnitude more fatal.

Release this virus into the world - we already know how the Americans will respond.  We'll jump on our hogs and ride out to Sturgis so we can be with 200,000 of our closest friends.  

Many other countries (including the instigating regime) will respond appropriately and likely be just fine, with a small fraction of population loss as the US is likely to incur.

Creating such a virus will be child's play for the folks working in the Biosafety Level 4 lab in Wuhan.  Also note that rogue nations or terrorist organizations are completely capable of doing this kind of work.

So if you think you are being patriotic by defending your right to ignore experts, not wear a mask and advocate unproven drugs, you might want to think again.  America now has a highly visible Achilles' Heel thanks to this idea of 'patriotism, constitutional rights and freedom.'

Let's hope we come to our senses soon or our grandkids might be taught about Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution instead of the American Revolution.