zlacker

>>delbar+(OP)
Whenever this topic comes up, the discussion seems to consist largely of _extremely_ strong opinions against the perfectly plausible hypothesis (don't forget, the evidence of zoonotic origin is equally thin on the ground).

My question is, why? What does it matter whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market - it isn't any more dangerous if it came from a lab, nor does knowing the origin really help dealing with this crisis at all.

It is certainly interesting to know where it did originate, and that knowledge could inform a debate on the future of (respectively) wet markets and animal husbandry practices, or BSL facilities, but these don't strike me as particularly emotionally charged topics, and in any case the posts I'm referring to don't mention these debates...

Anybody care to explain why you would respond so strongly to claims of lab origin?

>>bearbi+d7
A very calm response to this

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246

> Why do these distinctions matter? If we find more concrete evidence of a “spill-over” event with SARS-CoV-2 passing directly from bat to human, then efforts to understand and manage the bat–human interface need to be significantly strengthened. But if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again.

>>rcpt+ks
Does it still matter that much once we have a series of effective vaccines ?

It seems the crux of the argument is to better react in the short term, but it looks to my untrained eyes that we already passed that level of investigation if we have effective means to prevent infection.

I also guess we’d still need to explore all other tracks anyway (we can’t just focus on lab spills for instance, if that was the root cause, and stop to care about the bat/human interface, nor should it be assumed that any other path will be less important in the future)

>>hrktb+7v
I would say it matters for future considerations. Gain of function research is happening in many places. Leaks can happen. An unrelated virus could cause another pandemic if there are flaws that go unaddressed. The probability of a pandemic occurring doesn't decrease because this one has occurred, as they are independent events. For all we know, another pandemic could be brewing and we're so occupied with COVID19 that we're not observing it.