In its September 2019 report, shortly before the COVID-19 outbreak, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board — a joint arm of the World Health Organization and the World Bank — warned that technological advances “allow for disease-creating micro-organisms to be engineered or recreated in laboratories,” and that the release of such organisms could cause greater devastation than a natural outbreak. 

According to the board, accidental release of such manmade organisms could actually be far more devastating than a natural outbreak. “Accidental or deliberate events caused by high-impact respiratory pathogens pose global catastrophic biological risks,” the board stated in its September 2019 report, titled “A World At Risk.” 

In passing, the report also mentioned the need to control the flow of information: “A deliberate release would complicate outbreak response; in addition to the need to decide how to counter the pathogen, security measures would come into play limiting information-sharing and fomenting social divisions.” 

Learn More: How Fauci, Other Scientists Muzzled the COVID Lab-Leak Theory