Why the Wuhan lab leak theory shouldn't be dismissed

Should we care a lot about the safety and security of places where dangerous infectious diseases are studied? sure!

I think we should care A LOT MORE about our [apparent total lack of] ability to quickly deploy effective public health responses to new infectious diseases (regardless of their source).

Maybe it was an accident at a sloppy lab, ok, so labs on the other side of the planet in sovereign countries we do not control might make mistakes. We should get better at responding fast to save lives.

Maybe it was a sinister bio-terrorism plot. We should get better at responding fast to save lives. Bio-terror/warfare plan looks a whole lot like a good public health plan IMO.

Maybe gasp it really was from bats or something. We should get better at responding fast to save lives. This stuff DOES happen.

Maybe s/.*/I don't care where it came from/g. We should get better at responding fast and saving lives (my opinion).

>>hospad+aK1
This ^^^ so very much. Think of it like infosec angle: Yes, it's interesting to identify and neutralize hostile actors, but the 100% more effective solution is to have defense-in-depth and system resilience in place - because you control that, but you can't control the external actors unless you have a god-complex.

>>r00fus+7P1
What sort of defence in depth can work against a virus that's been engineered to infect humans very easily, and which can only be stopped by shutting down the world economy and waiting months or years for vaccination? I think the last year has proven comprehensively that we simply cannot implement any sort of defence in depth and need to try very hard to eliminate these problems at source. Just like we do with chemical and nuclear weapons. We don't wait to clean up the damage afterward, because the damage is so horrendous.

>>esja+6R1
How about reasonable health insurance without employment requirement?

The defense is NOT to stop the virus (unrealistic defense solution) - it's to make sure we can withstand/resist it so things like vaccines can be put into place so we can go back to some sort of normal (e.g. New Zealand)

The USA (only major western country without healthcare) was unique in how many deaths we had. 90% of those were unnecessary.

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