RISKY BUSINESS

COVID-19 may have made a future pandemic more likely. Is Biden making the right moves to protect us? What experts say about lab leaks, bioterror—and politics

- FRED GUTERL

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN?

Did the COVID-19 pandemic stem from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? The verdict is still out and may never be rendered decisively, but the possibility makes it imperative that we plan for future incidents, scientists say. Here, a worker at the lab in pre-pandemic days.

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC MAY HAVE made a future pandemic more likely. In a terrible irony, nations eager to get a handle on the virus and its variants are building high-containment laboratories at a brisk pace, ensuring that more scientists continue to experiment on dangerous pathogens even after the current threat fades—increasing the likelihood of future lab accidents that could release dangerous pathogens. Regardless of whether the current pandemic got its start in a laboratory in Wuhan or in animals—a mystery that may never be resolved—the mere fact that it’s possible is reason enough to take precautions against any future occurrence, biosecurity experts say.

“Without a doubt, COVID-19 has changed the threat landscape,” says Peggy Hamburg, former FDA commissioner and now vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonpartisan think tank on global security.

Yet despite the rising risk of a new, future pandemic caused by a slab leak—or one that emerges from a bioterrorist attack or even natural causes, for that matter—the U.S. government, under the leadership of Joe Biden and Congress, seems on course to repeat the mistake made by nearly every one of its predecessors for the past several decades: failing to take all possible steps to strengthen America’s response to a future pandemic or prevent one from happening in the first place.