The scenario might seem far-fetched today, but what if biotech made the same kind of progress over the next 50 years as computer technology has over the last 50? A human-engineered super virus might seem as unlikely to a virologist today as an iPhone would seem to Alan Turing.
I address this in my second paragraph. You can't assume the advances all happen on the negative side (the ability to perfectly engineer a deadly virus) without corresponding advances on the positive side (enough understanding of biology to combat new viruses).
I think you have a mistaken assumption, though, namely that advances in CREATING dangerous things will be paralleled by advances in the ability to prevent bad things.
Nuclear weapons have been around for over 50 yeras. We do not yet have __in place__ any ability (other than treaties and fear) to prevent a nuclear holocaust. Missile shields, "Star Wars" -- all of those are of questionable capability, and none of them are deployed.
Given that our only way of preventing nuclear winter is to agree not to launch (and go to war to prevent Bad Guys from getting them?), an option which is not available when dealing with a disease, I'm not optimistic about our future ability to prevent a superbug from wiping out humans.
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.
The ballistic technology that can deliver a warhead to a target 12,000 miles away can also deliver a constellation of remote sensing satellites into orbit.
Remote sensing is what held off nuclear holocaust during the Cold War. The ability to reliably and quickly detect and respond to nuclear first strike creates the "mutually assured destruction" strategic framework aka deterrence.
I think the analogy is broken. In case of nuclear armrace it's a different technology that destroys (bombs), and a different that saves (missile protection?). In case of genetics it's one and the same - engineering organisms.
The thing that defeats viruses is evolutionary pressure, not "engineering organisms".
At this point in time I'd still say that we only have the ability to reintroduce old disappeared pathogens. We do not actually have the ability to design new effective viruses.
for example, in a test case scientists have gone from flu sequence to midscale production (i.e. enough for first responders) of flu vaccine within something like 4 days. The backstory is great - the lead researcher arranged for FedEx to pick up the finished DNA sequences at his home at midnight (I don't remember why it couldn't be picked up at the lab but there was a reason) and he was worried that his neighbors would think that he was a drug dealer.. This means one could go to large scale production (enough for a population) within weeks to months.
Unlike the seasonal flu shot, this vaccine is tailored to the emergent strain.
Frank Herbert wrote this story 30 years ago (White Plague -- 1982). I'd be surprised if he were the first to worry about it. So we may be well along in the 50-year progression is all.
