What difference?
Well, while it could be endlessly funny to the aliens that happen upon us afterwards, dying of a plague made by some geneticist who drew inspiration from his favorite saying of “go **** yourself” would be embarrassing on top of everything else.
If libs get ahold of a gene drive, the first thing they will do is program our DNA to eliminate the penis and weaken the wrist bones of males. Women will be given bulldog faces and extra large canines.
Man will be remade in the image of the new creators.
Furries
Seriously … what’s to stop fashion gene splicing?
Imagine San Francisco when the residents have an excuse for crapping on the sidewalk?
Silliness aside though, the ways to use such a technology/weapon should be obvious:
The most far reaching use would be to install a gene in a population meant to survive and then exterminate everyone without the gene. Call this the Reptillian Protocol after the supposed alien race.
A similar approach would be to identify a specific gene variation limited to a target group and kill everyone with it … but this would be less controllable because humans have widely interbred. Still: call this the Kill All (Insert Here) People Protocol.
Then there’s the transhumanists pipe dream of immortality … for some, call it the Forever Douchebag Protocol.
FDP may be combined with RP … but I think they’d want slaves. No one wants to live forever as flesh and blood doing a crap jobs.
There’s the old Soviet fave: Gorilla-Man Army Protocol.
And the Dr Who episode of disposable bodies to control to do hazardous work comes to mind … along with Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans … even arguably the Time Lords themselves as a variation on FDP.