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
This sort of reasoning seems very ideologically and politically motivated. It's sad that we live in political climate where millions of people died and almost every single person's life in the planet has been affected and it's absolutely okay to make a statement that "no investigation is necessary".

>>johnce+xQ
Other than in your comment where it's apparently a fabricated quote, I don't see anyone saying that no investigation is necessary.

My assertion is that where it started is unlikely to yield real solutions because I don't think that's what caused it to turn into a giant and ongoing global crisis. I would like more focus on solutions and I don't think finding someone to pin the blame on is likely to move that needle at all.

My life experience suggests that finding a scapegoat tends to do the opposite: After someone's head is on a pike and calls for "justice" have been thereby nominally satisfied, the problem will rage on. Meanwhile, people may make less effort to solve it because they got some sense of satisfaction out of watching heads roll and justice get loudly declared.

Putting heads on a pike won't stop the spread of the virus. It's what many people want because millions have died.

It's not what I want and it has nothing to do with politics. I want people to live and be healthy and I simply don't think this is how that is most likely to be achieved.