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The conflict over the investigation is justifiable. It's necessary to understand how the virus got started. If it's lab-grown we will want to be very careful

The conflict over the investigation is justifiable. It's necessary to understand how the virus got started. If it's lab-grown we will want to be very careful to scrutinize each other's labs. If it's natural we will want to be very careful to scrutinize wild game. The implications of any scenario are broad and complex, but clearly we don't want a repeat of 2020 if we can avoid it. Another point: just because there's some uncomfortable conflict over the investigation doesn't mean we should abandon and investigation, in fact it probably means we should investigate more vigorously.

endisneigh 6y ago
Thank you for your comment, but your comment is precisely the kind of comment I disagree with. What difference does it make? Let's say that it's both lab-grown and wild game. OK, so that means we should scrutinize both. OK, then. Now what? No amount of scrutiny can prevent an accident from occurring. It's not as if this pandemic happens every year. We're talking about a once in a century event. Not to mention some countries prevented the virus from spreading within their own countries very effectively, and others, well, did not.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  We're not talking about a once a century event. This is the third novel coronavirus outbreak in the past 2 decades, and it seems clear that SARS at least could have been pandemic if we hadn't gotten lucky.
  - endisneigh 6y ago
    Sure, but ultimately what's relevant here are the number of deaths. The other two killed orders of magnitude fewer people worldwide given the amount of time, no?
- engineer_22 6y ago
  Here's an example: one of your local health department's jobs is to scrutinize private businesses sanitation practices so you don't get sick from contaminated food. Ditto the water systems, so you don't get sick from contaminated water. The idea is to prevent complacency. Prior to that, people did get sick, and public investigations were mounted to pinpoint the problem. Nobody wanted to admit to themselves that they were to blame, that they had hurt or killed someone, but the society benefited from the momentary discomfort and those hard truths.
  - endisneigh 6y ago
    I don't think your example is relevant nor is it a good analogy. The situation is more like you're McDonalds and everyone at your store and your competitors stores are getting food poisoning. Instead of properly understanding why contaminated food is arriving at your store and stopping the poisoning within your store, you're researching whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King. It's not bad to research whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King, but regardless knowing that isn't going to stop the food poisoning from spreading within your store. I like this analogy because there are already food safety laws just like how there are safety standards for working within a lab. Regardless, accidents happen, and people get poisoned. Kind of like the Chipotle outbreaks.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - engineer_22 6y ago
      Yes! Exactly like the Chipotle outbreaks! If you buy tacos from Chipotle and they sell you a tainted taco on accident. You get sick. Hopefully you survive. In any case you will want Chipotle to do a thorough investigation to prevent it from happening again.
      - endisneigh 6y ago
        Yes, I completely agree. Now would you want McDonalds to research Chipotle or stop outbreaks in their own stores? Seems pretty obvious to me. Perhaps I'm missing something? Ultimately Chipotle is already incentivized to figure it out themselves, unless the argument is Chipotle is intentionally infecting their own customers? Going back to the original point - what the USA should do for its own citizens won't change regardless of whether COVID was an accident, from wild game, etc.
      - engineer_22 6y ago
        Good, I'm glad we agree that investigation matters :)
- ckw 6y ago
  If the virus was a product of gain of function research, the primary purpose of which is to reduce the risk of pandemics, then the research becomes much more difficult to justify. The argument I guess becomes then, yeah, periodically we’ll cause a pandemic, and millions of people will die, but we’ll be so much better at dealing with diseases that arise naturally, as SARS and MERS did, that on balance it will be worth the extra pandemics... Whatever you think about this, it seems unbelievably foolish to locate these labs in the middle of metropolises.
  - endisneigh 6y ago
    OK, so what. What can we do to make China stop doing this research if they want to? Are we going to go to war over this? No. Are we going to have an embargo with China? No? So effectively this becomes a situation of "oh yeah they should've not had that accident, oh well." In the USA we've had the same problem ourselves (lab accidents with pathogens), and we banned gain of function research and ended up removing the ban a few years later. The entire exercise is meaningless. Note - I'm not even saying we shouldn't research the origins of COVID, what I'm saying is, the result doesn't really matter.
    - troyvit 6y ago
      Why does it have to be a "we" vs "China" discussion at all? Why don't we think non-politically about it for a minute and recognize that as a global species we have a chance to learn as much as we can from a pandemic that affected us globally so that we can try to do better when the next one inevitably comes along? And yeah, maybe China doesn't wanna think that way, but let's find out first, and second find out why. On the other hand there are some great ways to think about this politically. If by "we" you mean the U.S. we don't really have a leg to stand on as far as respect from the international community right now anyway, so any fight we bring to China is basically one on one. Other countries besides the U.S. would be able to wring significant concessions from China if they chose to a) believe collectively that it was China's malfeasance that caused the pandemic, and b) stood together to demand a response.
      - 6y ago

endisneigh 6y ago

Thank you for your comment, but your comment is precisely the kind of comment I disagree with. What difference does it make? Let's say that it's both lab-grown and wild game. OK, so that means we should scrutinize both. OK, then. Now what? No amount of scrutiny can prevent an accident from occurring. It's not as if this pandemic happens every year. We're talking about a once in a century event. Not to mention some countries prevented the virus from spreading within their own countries very effectively, and others, well, did not.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
We're not talking about a once a century event. This is the third novel coronavirus outbreak in the past 2 decades, and it seems clear that SARS at least could have been pandemic if we hadn't gotten lucky.
- endisneigh 6y ago
  Sure, but ultimately what's relevant here are the number of deaths. The other two killed orders of magnitude fewer people worldwide given the amount of time, no?
engineer_22 6y ago
Here's an example: one of your local health department's jobs is to scrutinize private businesses sanitation practices so you don't get sick from contaminated food. Ditto the water systems, so you don't get sick from contaminated water. The idea is to prevent complacency. Prior to that, people did get sick, and public investigations were mounted to pinpoint the problem. Nobody wanted to admit to themselves that they were to blame, that they had hurt or killed someone, but the society benefited from the momentary discomfort and those hard truths.
- endisneigh 6y ago
  I don't think your example is relevant nor is it a good analogy. The situation is more like you're McDonalds and everyone at your store and your competitors stores are getting food poisoning. Instead of properly understanding why contaminated food is arriving at your store and stopping the poisoning within your store, you're researching whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King. It's not bad to research whether or not the contaminated food originated at Burger King, but regardless knowing that isn't going to stop the food poisoning from spreading within your store. I like this analogy because there are already food safety laws just like how there are safety standards for working within a lab. Regardless, accidents happen, and people get poisoned. Kind of like the Chipotle outbreaks.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - engineer_22 6y ago
    Yes! Exactly like the Chipotle outbreaks! If you buy tacos from Chipotle and they sell you a tainted taco on accident. You get sick. Hopefully you survive. In any case you will want Chipotle to do a thorough investigation to prevent it from happening again.
    - endisneigh 6y ago
      Yes, I completely agree. Now would you want McDonalds to research Chipotle or stop outbreaks in their own stores? Seems pretty obvious to me. Perhaps I'm missing something? Ultimately Chipotle is already incentivized to figure it out themselves, unless the argument is Chipotle is intentionally infecting their own customers? Going back to the original point - what the USA should do for its own citizens won't change regardless of whether COVID was an accident, from wild game, etc.
    - engineer_22 6y ago
      Good, I'm glad we agree that investigation matters :)
ckw 6y ago
If the virus was a product of gain of function research, the primary purpose of which is to reduce the risk of pandemics, then the research becomes much more difficult to justify. The argument I guess becomes then, yeah, periodically we’ll cause a pandemic, and millions of people will die, but we’ll be so much better at dealing with diseases that arise naturally, as SARS and MERS did, that on balance it will be worth the extra pandemics... Whatever you think about this, it seems unbelievably foolish to locate these labs in the middle of metropolises.
- endisneigh 6y ago
  OK, so what. What can we do to make China stop doing this research if they want to? Are we going to go to war over this? No. Are we going to have an embargo with China? No? So effectively this becomes a situation of "oh yeah they should've not had that accident, oh well." In the USA we've had the same problem ourselves (lab accidents with pathogens), and we banned gain of function research and ended up removing the ban a few years later. The entire exercise is meaningless. Note - I'm not even saying we shouldn't research the origins of COVID, what I'm saying is, the result doesn't really matter.
  - troyvit 6y ago
    Why does it have to be a "we" vs "China" discussion at all? Why don't we think non-politically about it for a minute and recognize that as a global species we have a chance to learn as much as we can from a pandemic that affected us globally so that we can try to do better when the next one inevitably comes along? And yeah, maybe China doesn't wanna think that way, but let's find out first, and second find out why. On the other hand there are some great ways to think about this politically. If by "we" you mean the U.S. we don't really have a leg to stand on as far as respect from the international community right now anyway, so any fight we bring to China is basically one on one. Other countries besides the U.S. would be able to wring significant concessions from China if they chose to a) believe collectively that it was China's malfeasance that caused the pandemic, and b) stood together to demand a response.
    - 6y ago