zlacker

>>datafl+(OP)
I don't really think it matters a whole lot whether it jumped species or was created in a lab. I think the issue is that there are nearly 8 billion people on the planet and that fact has somehow fundamentally changed how disease spreads and mutates.

We need to be figuring out how to deal with that. Wondering where it came from is mostly neither here nor there.

We aren't going to magically stop doing lab experiments if we can know for certain that it started in a lab. If we can determine for certain that this jumped species, welp, it isn't the first time and it won't be the last.

>>Doreen+Fy
The issue with COVID is the precedent of attempts of trying to identify the origin of this new disease being sabotaged for seemingly political reasons (and with no obvious repercussions).

It seems intuitive that knowing the origin of the virus (sample escaping a lab or pure nature) could help prevent similar cases in the future or deal with them more efficiently. Is my intuition wrong here?

>>strogo+xz
Even if it's a natural sample that escaped a lab, cleaning up the lab doesn't necessarily help anything because it's not the actual reservoir of the virus.

>>astran+Hz
it helps avoid the issue in the future...

It would mean countries that have labs would either be forced to allow constant audits and reasonable regulations (such as don't have labs in cities) or face isolation.

It would also mean quite a heavy political response towards china if it indeed escaped a lab (which is why they're sabotaging everything even if it didn't...)