Both during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple theorists and pundits have postulated that COVID-19 was being developed as a bioweapon, and was mistakenly (or purposely) released from a containment lab, purportedly in China. Other researchers say no. But, either way, the effects upon our country, our society, our health care delivery (with emergency departments and hospitals overwhelmed, while many clinics were forced to shut down), our economy, and our political system were all profound, critically disruptive, and still being felt to this day.

The response and fallout

Response to the COVID-19 threat by our scientific and medical defense infrastructures was, in this instance, profoundly rapid, and many therapies, some novel, emerged in record time, many from seemingly unrelated research pathways such as cancer therapies, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and others. Some observers say this ultra-rapid ability to respond, take apart and interrogate this new virus, and then with incredible speed develop and deploy new targeted therapies to COVID-19, may have saved up to many millions of lives.

Others disagree (sometimes vehemently), and voice significant reservations and objections to methodologies, mandates, deployment, policies, legalities, and other factors related to these efforts. These disagreements have become and remain highly polarizing, and have led to major fractures among our political and health care leaders, and within our society. These fractures highlight how profoundly the disruptive and divisive effects from this pandemic continue to divide our country, our politics, society, and economy, even years after its passing.

What about preparedness today?

Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK) assumed Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership, some critical infrastructures of multiple organizations, such as the NIH and CDC, have been dismantled. Many scientists have been dismissed, demoted, and removed from various research pathways, and many promising research pathways such as cancer cures, autoimmune disease interventions, and Parkinson’s disease have been delayed, diverted, or canceled.

But these gutted organizations also represent some of our salient first response defense systems for biothreats, and they are now weakened. Certainly there are other centers that do this type of work, but all are critical buttresses in our system of defense, that has now been hobbled. If a threat emerged, it would now take many months if not years to reassemble and rejuvenate these disabled rapid response systems (and related research infrastructures) and bring them back up to speed again.

These actions, resulting in the crippling of critical pieces of our defense and related infrastructures, send a message of opportunity to nation states, factions, and other bad actors who are not our friends, could wish us harm, and have the technology to do so. In fact, we recently (August 2025) saw a summit of over 20 countries and organizations, China, Russia, North Korea, along with many other players such as India and Iran, agreeing to new levels of cooperation and in building a new global order to replace the U.S.

Results

With the world witnessing the conflagration and disruption this one pandemic event has caused to our American society, our leaderships, our health care, economic, and political systems, and the still ongoing and expanding discord and distrust among increasingly polarized segments of our country, have RFK’s policies and actions, leading to the decimating of some of our first-response biothreat agencies, now, in essence, issued an open invitation to high-tech countries or other agents that would want to do us harm, to develop and utilize similar biotechnology (or other system-disruptive pathways) in exactly the manner that some feared the COVID-19 pandemic was? Have RFK’s actions now inadvertently opened the door and encouraged the targeting of our country at a time when our defenses have been internally lessened?

Unleashing a bioweapon has profound consequences extending far beyond the initial target population, and most aggressors will want an antidote available, especially if such a weapon has potential for pandemic spread. But, with the witnessed mass disruption, divisions, and polarization that COVID-19 inflicted on the U.S. as a country and a society, and now with weakened response ability, and with U.S. actions now deepening divides and resentment among multiple other countries, factions, organizations, or cartels, are these intersecting conditions a temptation and opportunity too great to ignore by those who increasingly wish us harm? Under the old legal rubric of motive, means, opportunity, have we now created a situation where all three conditions prevail, and is this too great an invitation to turn down?

What will come of this open-door invitation? Only time will tell.

The opinions expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions or positions of the author’s employers or affiliates.

Harry Severance is an emergency physician.