You overlooked the fact that they did made the Omicron strain more deadly. Omicron is MUCH more contagious than the original strain, but also less deadly. By combining super contagious Omicron strain with the deadly original strain, the combined chimeric strain has the worst of both worlds: high contagion and high mortality rate. It would potentially kill more people than any strain we have encountered so far.

Total deaths = Contagion rate * mortality rate * population (rough math)

• Original strain: Low contagion * high mortality rate.
• Omicron strain: High contagion * low mortality rate.
• Boston U chimeric strain: High contagion * high mortality rate (worse than both individual strains).

The new strain would cause more deaths than either of the original strains would have caused. We benefit nothing by creating the worst possible strain of Covid in a lab, and risk everything.

Appreciate the additional source, but they objectively created the most contagious and deadly strain of Covid by chimerically combining a strain that was highly contagious with another one that had a high death rate. We already know that Covid strains could mutate to become be even worse than what we’ve seen, so this experiment does nothing except risk another pandemic and millions of deaths. It should never have been done and shouldn’t be defended.