zlacker

You think we should wait one-two more years to figure out the biggest pandemic in 100 years?

>>nbardy+(OP)
I don't think it matters much how long we take, because it's not figuring out the pandemic - that we're already failing to do, even without an origin story - but instead figuring out the origin.

The origin, truth be told, is basically irrelevant, just like the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. We live in the world today, and while the story of how we got here might be somewhat academically or historically interesting, it's about a million items down the list of things that are actually important right now.

>>sneak+f1
if you don't figure out the origin it's doomed to happen again.

if it did leak from a lab, we should shut these labs down.

>>throwa+L2
The origin is interesting but hardly conclusive in stopping the next pandemic, which is only a matter of time anyway.

Instead, the significant economic and health costs could have been significantly mitigated by the response of governments. That’s going to be more important for preventing harm in the next pandemic. Even if it was a lab escape, how does shutting down the labs help for the future? They are also a defence against the next pandemic

>>robbie+Kb
You don't have to shut down the labs. Understanding how it happened in the first place can inform effective policies to prevent future lab leaks. The Obama administration temporarily suspended Gain of Function research in the US in 2014 to investigate and mitigate lab leak risks. They did not dismiss lab leak concerns and characterize them as xenophobic attacks on the country.

Frankly, any solution that does not in some way involve "how can we prevent or reduce the incidence of this kind of problem happening" is political nonsense to me. Even with the most effective defensive protocols, a pandemic-grade virus costs a staggering amount of resources to deal with.