Certainly, I will grant that it is possible to blindly shoot in the dark and get lucky creating something that we don't understand, but is nevertheless deadly.

Certainly, I will grant that it is possible to blindly shoot in the dark and get lucky creating something that we don't understand, but is nevertheless deadly. Absolutely that could happen, and another commenter upthread gives some very plausible scenarios for this that I had not considered. But we've had the technology for blindly shooting in the dark in the lab for probably 20 years at least. But that's not the point I think Sam was making. I read the article as discussing a purposeful designing of a virus with specific properties. My contention is that the knowledge required to engineer something that can evade the immune system, spread easily, and cause high mortality is very likely the same mechanistic knowledge that would help you to defeat such a virus.