This "pandemic" make me wish I had a private island because eventually something REALLY bad will be "discovered."

If I were bent on world domination and destruction and I wanted to do it with a deadly virus …

I would engineer 1 or 2 relatively benign variants, release them and then track their spread. If I could "engineer" panic then I could test the speed of compliance to whatever draconian measures I wanted - the more oppressive the better, actually.

Then I would have a fantastic roadmap to predict how my extinction-level virus might propagate, especially if it used the same receptor classes as my test strains.

I could probably even generate a vaccine if I had access to enough test subjects - their willingness would be irrelevant because I would use a "friendly" nation to supply them.

Then it would merely be a matter of "when" and "where" to release it. My closest friends and family would be pre-vaccinated to protect us from the disease. And we would evacuate to EXTREMELY secure areas to sit it out the inevitable social unrest.

If I were bent on world domination and destruction and I wanted to do it with a deadly virus …

I would engineer 1 or 2 relatively benign variants, release them and then track their spread. If I could "engineer" panic then I could test the speed of compliance to whatever draconian measures I wanted - the more oppressive the better, actually.

Then I would have a fantastic roadmap to predict how my extinction-level virus might propagate, especially if it used the same receptor classes as my test strains.

I could probably even generate a vaccine if I had access to enough test subjects - their willingness would be irrelevant because I would use a "friendly" nation to supply them.

Then it would merely be a matter of "when" and "where" to release it. My closest friends and family would be pre-vaccinated to protect us from the disease. And we would evacuate to EXTREMELY secure areas to sit it out the inevitable social unrest.