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The part about vaccines was very interesting.

Your statement "We’d do well to abandon the mirage of predicting the next pandemic." makes perfect sense but runs into the problem of 'Politicians's Logic' (from the BBC's "Yes, Prime Minister"):

1: We must do something

2. This is something

3. Therefore, we must do this.

And the field of "emerging" diseases seems to be thriving, with every hordes of new viruses characterized as "having the potential of zoonotic spillover",

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Thank you for these insightful essays, Professor Wain-Hobson. There's more than enough hubris to go around in the denials of dangers of technologies for which disasters would be (or have been) largely inadvertent. But alongside this are deliberate attempts, or proposed ones, for improving the human species using similar putatively problem-free methods. Please see: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/children-from-gamete-like-cells-dishing-up-a-eugenic-future/

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The race has changed. We are living in a world where microbes & viruses exist with scientists that tinker around trying to create human transfer, but what has changed is the vast data storage of understanding of human dna & genetic variable. As they say data is king & knowledge is power. Unfortunately both aren’t always used for the benefit of humanity.

As to the C19 “vaccines”, please show some humility & compassion towards those who are injured or have lost loved ones to these rushed injectable drugs. Scientists may look at them as collateral damage in a quest for finding a solution, their not, their people who don’t deserve the damage done to them & death of their loved ones.

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