zlacker

It’s probably important to point out that a “lab leak” is a result of human-clumsiness or similar, and not the sci-fi movie bad guys engineering a virus. A lot of the non-HN crowd don’t get the difference.

>>nickt+(OP)
I get what you're saying, but it seems slightly more nuanced. From my understanding WIV did do gain of function research. e.g. purposefully make virus' more deadly or infectious to study them.

Definitely not a super villain at least I hope/highly doubt the intention was a weapon (you could surely create a better weapon?).

I'm not judging the value of that research, it does sound valuable but maybe not more so than the (small?) risk of an accident.

There is also reporting WIV was doing top secret research for CCP military.

So bad guys depends on your worldview.

https://www.newsweek.com/controversial-wuhan-lab-experiments...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...

>>nickt+(OP)
Yeah, but the effect of this “human-clumsiness” is millions dead... it’s not a simple matter to excuse such clumsiness if this is in fact a lab leak.

>>nickt+(OP)
That would certainly be the most likely kind of lab-based hypothesis. Especially considering the overt flouting of rules people engage in for other kinds of animal research, in the rush to compete for results and publications.

But it would still result in heads rolling and a constant stream of embarrassing revelations. Consider the Fukushima investigation. Every revelation of bad process and ignored warnings is another news cycle with everyone outraged at them. "Bad luck" is something you are not forgiven for if there's any negligence to point at.

>>dillon+Z1
Every BSL-certified lab should be doing gain of function research.

If leaks are a problem, then certifications should be better enforced.

Burying our head in the sand and waiting for nature to kill us is a losing move.

>>ethbr0+Jl
"Should" is a pretty strong statement. GoF studies, like social media-based disease surveillance, are one of those things that has a compelling "Just So" story justifying its existence, but has yet to show that it actually does what it's supposed to do.

Also, the alternative is not burying our head in the sand. It's monitoring and studying nature, instead of forcing the issue in a lab, and investing in infrastructure and capacity that work against a broad range of pathogen threats.

>>ethbr0+Jl
I don't know enough to say if GOF has provided enough 'value' but I do know that there is no way china, the US military, etc would allow a 3rd party to inspect their labs lol.

The article of this post talks a lot about how we do have inspections in the US, and that the inspectors are often the same department as the lab!

To be better it seems like we need some damn strong consequences & a regulatory power that can't be overruled.

>>ethbr0+Jl
>Every BSL-certified lab should be doing gain of function research.

Its far from settled that the benefits of gain of function research outweigh the benefits. This is a debate that has raged among the scientific community for years (a debate which would over if it was discovered that COVID came from a lab involved in gain of function research).

>>Fomite+kz
What can be done, will be done.

Eventually, computational biological modeling is going to be good enough for mutation exploration purposes. From the papers I've seen during this pandemic, it largely already is.

At that point, it becomes straightforward (not easy, but not unknown) to share and realize those modeled organisms.

But at some point, we don't know what we don't know. And putting strains into biological models is important.

Investing in infrastructure and capability against a broad range of threats is important too. mRNA-based rapid vaccine platforms (and especially lipid encapsulation) will probably win a Nobel in a few years, and thank god we've spent the last 30+ years working on them.