It is not impossible that a technically proficient Unabomber style individual could produce a pandemic capable virus. It would just be extremely expensive and t

It is not impossible that a technically proficient Unabomber style individual could produce a pandemic capable virus. It would just be extremely expensive and take a very, very long time. The other problem is keeping it secret. The chance of making a global catastrophe virus without any population testing and iteration is currently extremely, extremely small. It has now become quite easy to sequence DNA, so if a few people got seriously sick from a weird virus (perhaps a failed test version), the CDC or whoever would be able to sequence the viral genome whereupon it would probably be quite obvious that someone was making a designer virus. The final point to make is that the kind of rationality, dedication, dilligence and technical skill required to engineer viruses doesn’t overlap much with the desire to destroy humanity.