zlacker

[deleted]

>>endisn+(OP)
> Why can't we just assume the worst and take action based on that?

Because they might require vastly different actions?

>>endisn+(OP)
1. We can do two things at a time. Investigation of origins does not block anyone from making and following policies to stop the spread.

2. I don't know about you but I have lost more than 1.5 years of my life to this. World around me has changed fundamentally in many ways. Just for closures sake I would like to know why this happened to me.

>>endisn+(OP)
you mean figuring out what caused a global pandemic, deaths of millions of people and trillions dollars of economic damage is of no consequence?

>>endisn+(OP)
Here's four reasons:

- Only with accountability can there be some deterrence. Especially if there were actors outside of China that were involved.

- The details of the post-mortem will give us valuable insights that we can't get by simply imagining up a worst case from our armchair. If a plane crashes, we want to figure out why it crashed and make specific improvements, rather than just assuming what happened and acting based on a loose and inaccurate mental model.

- If it did leak, there needs to be a cultural reckoning and introspection as to how this was allowed to be so taboo for so long.

- If it did leak, public knowledge of that may be what causes there to be sufficient political will to get regulatory safeguards implemented

>>newswa+F
2. It has more to do with your country’s government than the source of the virus, hence my comment

Even if you knew would anything change? I’m not advocating for ignorance, rather that it’s impossible to know conclusively without full cooperation and it’s in the interest of all parties to deflect

>>sayona+T
if we figure out, what then? Are they to blame for all the death?

>>endisn+62
well how about establishing safety procedures, research guidelines and international regulation body governing dangerous GoF research so that such outbreak doesn't happen again.

>>sayona+V2
Can’t we do that either way?

>>endisn+Q1
> Even if you knew would anything change?

Yes. Closure. I know it's a vague human need, but it is a need at least I have. It will definitely be good for my mental health. And why do you want people to cease just because something is hard? All criminal cases are hard. Some are solved. Let's try to solve this one.

>>endisn+62
Yes absolutely. If someone engineered something so deadly in a lab, in a non war political climate, and can be so irresponsible as to leak it and cause all this death then yes. They are absolutely responsible.

>>endisn+Q1
Why put a murderer in jail? It won't bring the victim back.

>>endisn+h4
you've gotta know the details, kind of like those 19th and 20th century epidemiologists who went to the ground zero of say cholera outbreak* and investigated how it started and what was its source, and how exactly it originated and spread, and such investigations were helpful to bring about vaccines and preventive measures (and more recently see Ebola response for example).

Now while we do have effective Covid vaccines (at least for some variants of the virus), knowing the exact origin of a major pandemic, either it came from a natural source or a lab, is of major importance for science, medicine and public health.

Arguably we're lucky COVID was not as deadly as some other viral pandemics of the past** and we have to gather as much info as possible on its origin and distribution in order to prevent something like this (or worse) happening in the future.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldemar_Haffkine

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death