How to make your own SARS-CoV-2 variants

This is interesting, and the blob post is well written.

However, to play devil's advocate... If it's true that "an undergrad would have a good chance of success" at this procedure, then perhaps writing a blog post about it and helping publicize it is doing more harm than good?

On the contrary it's an interesting information because it gives credit to the various lab hypothesis, including one that was suppressed at the beginning of the pandemic.

Author here. I think there needs to be more discussion about publication of dangerous biological protocols, and this one isn't particularly bad actually. (Truly evil people would want something worse than SARS-CoV-2.)

Perhaps we will get less ransomware as they change over to this.

The good old knowledge = dangerous

Of course a lot of knowledge is dangerous (how to make xray, nuclear, etc ). Do we really want to filter it because of bad actors?

Yes.

Is it better to restrict knowledge to an elite off the fear of a lower class bad actor having it easier? Seems like a very regressive view to me.

This technique is nothing new and commonly used in influenza.

Good luck producing viable virus though. Many mutations are deleterious to organism.