[mlsu]

Covid, ahem, could have been designed in a lab to be an "ideal" bioweapon. As far as viruses go it approximated just about the best bioweapon we could have made with current technology.

- very deadly

- asymptomatic spreading for a couple days

- spreads easy

- no tests/vaccine (early on)

It did kill a lot of people, that's for sure, and caused a huge disruption. But was far less disruptive, imo, than e.g. a nuke in multiple big cities would have been, even if the death toll was similar.

[drnick1]

> very deadly

Covid wasn't "very deadly" at all.

[laughing_man]

The base variant killed millions of people. It wasn't the Black Death, exactly, but it was pretty dangrous.

Now, if you want something that will keep you up at night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npf-B5Av7aQ

[thfuran]

It was too contagious and not nearly virulent enough to be an ideal bioweapon.

[eszed]

GP put "ideal" in inverted commas, and qualified with "best we could make with current technology". I doubt they disagree with you.

[femto]

This paper puts some numbers around that, looking at death rates before a vaccine was available.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S120197122...

Without a vaccination, it killed 12.9% of people who were infected, killing mostly older people and people who had multiple pathologies (eg. hypertension).

[thfuran]

That’s 12.9% of hospital inpatients. All estimates I’ve seen for infection fatality rate — that is, mortality rate among all those infected — place it around 1–2%

[cthalupa]

Something that contagious that kills ~13% of people infected is something I would argue is quite deadly.

Especially when half of adults in america are hypertensive.

[thfuran]

It doesn’t kill 13% of people infected, only about 1%. Just look at the number of cases reported compared to the number of deaths. That paper was reporting 13% mortality rate among those admitted to the hospital, not among all those infected.