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?
This strikes me as just the latest stage of that process (or the latest chapter in that story).
If it turns out to have walked out of a lab, then perhaps it points to a need to harden containment. You can’t cancel virology, because we still need to deal with pathogens from nature.
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...)
The threat of such a response to me is part of the problem. This incentivises an insecure player to act counter to the common goal by concealing the facts in order to avoid a scenario of being attacked by other players.
In the end we’re all human and mistakes happen. Regulations, audits, this can be implemented transparently for everyone; if that was the end of it and there was no perceived potential of repercussions, perhaps we wouldn’t have this problem.
(Not to say this somehow justifies the obstruction of the investigation, but IMO it’s something to keep in mind.)
Communist party rule will be in big danger if chinese people start blaming it for this clusterfuck.
Externally, its not controllable, US invaded 2 countries after 9/11, it would be easy to think that politicians will do something or someone more radical will get elected.
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.
There are no good and no bad guys, of course, but the topic is a very specific event and concrete facts, so shades and “what about X?” can go elsewhere as far as I’m concerned.