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> ...because surely nobody would be stupid enough to make new SARS virus strains on purpose. They’re worthless as biological weapons, and the risks are insane.

> ...because surely nobody would be stupid enough to make new SARS virus strains on purpose. They’re worthless as biological weapons, and the risks are insane. If we wait until the next pandemic hits, we will be months or years behind the curve, trying to understand it and develop treatments. Millions more people will die because we'll have been caught on our back foot. Lucky for the human race, viruses are statistically more likely to mutate, over time, in particular ways. So it's possible to make pretty good guesses about where future would mutations might occur. So if we deliberately create those mutants in a laboratory, we can study which strains look particularly virulent and/or dangerous. Yes, there ARE risks to this strategy, in terms of lab leaks. But the vast majority of virologists and epidemiologists have known for decades that deadly worldwide pandemics of novel Coronaviruses are an inevitably in the 21st century... It's just a matter of time. We will definitely see several more pandemics, at least as damaging as COVID-19, befor the century is out. So even without a lab leak, we would only save ourselves a couple more years before nature did the job, itself... And it will keep happening, over and over with new Coronaviruses, for the foreseeable future. The human race can do very little to slow it, let alone stop it.

jiggawatts 4y ago
This kind of logic seems sane until you stop and think about it for a while. First off -- and this should be enough by itself -- the research the Wuhan lab did hasn't appeared to have helped in a material way to fight the COVID pandemic. So they gambled, lost, and there is nothing to show for it. But that's not the insane bit. The truly insane bit is that over 20 million people died for this little "experiment" of theirs. I'll try to come up with an analogy of how truly bonkers this is: Imagine one day, a nuke unexpectedly blows up New York, and millions upon millions of people die. It's an ICBM of some sort, but not launched from an expected enemy launch site. Everyone assumes it must be a terrorist attack, which is then "confirmed" when rocket booster fragments are found near the launch site -- in the United States -- discovered to be two different models of rockets jury-rigged together. Clearly terrorists got their hand on a bomb and did whatever they could do to launch it! Problem solved. ... and then it turns out that the DHS has a program where they would build random combinations of boosters and upper stages together with mis-matched warheads, and launch them for "testing" to so that they could "learn what terrorists might do". Clearly it wasn't terrorists, one of the DHS experiments went horribly wrong. ... and then instead of being horrified, people would justify this by saying: "If the DHS hadn't done these kinds of experiments, then we wouldn't be prepared for when terrorists launched a makeshift rocket! How would we know how to shoot one down? We need to learn these things before we are attacked!" Meanwhile, millions are dead from the experiment -- not the terrorists. The DHS experiments of course did not lead to better missile defence. The rocket wasn't shot down. Not to mention that that's not what terrorists generally do. Or they may not even be able to do this kind of thing anyway. But this is precisely the type of thing Wuhan was doing. They were playing with the biological equivalent of global nuclear armageddon, and they weren't even doing it in a BSL 4 lab! It's the equivalent of the DHS rocket experiments building nuclear-tipped rockets out in the open with random local contractors in the same way SpaceX is building their star ship. They were doing experiments to combine SARS and flu-like viruses in ways that might never happen in the wild. They weren't just accelerating natural processes to find out what might happen, they were doing entirely novel things that's only possible in a lab.
- kaitaincps 4y ago
  Precisely so.
- SkittyDog 4y ago
  > First off -- and this should be enough by itself -- the research the Wuhan lab did hasn't appeared to have helped in a material way to fight the COVID pandemic. So they gambled, lost, and there is nothing to show for it. You can't possibly claim that without being a qualified expert in the field. I'm not, but I have asked friends who are--and they're quite firm that this type of experimental research (1) did help speed up our COVID-19 response, and save lives, and (2) is critical to prevent future outbreaks from becoming much, much worse. I'm not asking for journal cites or anything, but I am curious: What's the source of your conclusion that gain-of-function research didn't help prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from becoming even worse?
  - tripletao 4y ago
    Advocates of such high-risk research have reached to find some minor alleged benefits in this pandemic, like in: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02903-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02903-x But if you look at the actual examples they provide, they're incredibly weak. Remdesivir wasn't discovered due to GoF research, and wasn't tested in humans solely due to any result from GoF research; but GoF research did provide some of the early evidence that prompted the first human trials. Unfortunately remdesivir also shows little evidence of efficacy in humans: https://www.science.org/content/article/very-very-bad-look-remdesivir-first-fda-approved-covid-19-drug https://www.science.org/content/article/very-very-bad-look-r... https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-recommends-against-use-of-gilead-covid-19-drug-remdesivir-11605831037 https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-recommends-against-use-of-g... They also cite minor contributions to some novel vaccine candidates that as far as I can tell haven't progressed to humans. And these examples are from Ralph Baric's lab; while he may have been reckless, his research was less controversial than the WIV's, working at higher BSL and with fewer novel pathogens. The WIV took significantly greater risks, and so far has literally zero practical benefit to show for it. Virology in aggregate has clearly provided a benefit to humanity, in this pandemic and elsewhere. That's not the question, though. The deliberate search for enhanced potential human pandemic pathogens--including both laboratory gain-of-function on such pathogens, and sampling missions to remote sites to find new natural pathogens in areas that no other humans routinely visited, and thus that presented no obvious risk of natural spillover--is a tiny subset of virology. We could ban that tiny subset, and we'd still have all our same vaccines, same anti-viral drugs, same tests, etc. If anyone tells you otherwise, then ask them for the evidence.

jiggawatts 4y ago

This kind of logic seems sane until you stop and think about it for a while. First off -- and this should be enough by itself -- the research the Wuhan lab did hasn't appeared to have helped in a material way to fight the COVID pandemic. So they gambled, lost, and there is nothing to show for it. But that's not the insane bit. The truly insane bit is that over 20 million people died for this little "experiment" of theirs. I'll try to come up with an analogy of how truly bonkers this is: Imagine one day, a nuke unexpectedly blows up New York, and millions upon millions of people die. It's an ICBM of some sort, but not launched from an expected enemy launch site. Everyone assumes it must be a terrorist attack, which is then "confirmed" when rocket booster fragments are found near the launch site -- in the United States -- discovered to be two different models of rockets jury-rigged together. Clearly terrorists got their hand on a bomb and did whatever they could do to launch it! Problem solved. ... and then it turns out that the DHS has a program where they would build random combinations of boosters and upper stages together with mis-matched warheads, and launch them for "testing" to so that they could "learn what terrorists might do". Clearly it wasn't terrorists, one of the DHS experiments went horribly wrong. ... and then instead of being horrified, people would justify this by saying: "If the DHS hadn't done these kinds of experiments, then we wouldn't be prepared for when terrorists launched a makeshift rocket! How would we know how to shoot one down? We need to learn these things before we are attacked!" Meanwhile, millions are dead from the experiment -- not the terrorists. The DHS experiments of course did not lead to better missile defence. The rocket wasn't shot down. Not to mention that that's not what terrorists generally do. Or they may not even be able to do this kind of thing anyway. But this is precisely the type of thing Wuhan was doing. They were playing with the biological equivalent of global nuclear armageddon, and they weren't even doing it in a BSL 4 lab! It's the equivalent of the DHS rocket experiments building nuclear-tipped rockets out in the open with random local contractors in the same way SpaceX is building their star ship. They were doing experiments to combine SARS and flu-like viruses in ways that might never happen in the wild. They weren't just accelerating natural processes to find out what might happen, they were doing entirely novel things that's only possible in a lab.

kaitaincps 4y ago
Precisely so.
SkittyDog 4y ago
> First off -- and this should be enough by itself -- the research the Wuhan lab did hasn't appeared to have helped in a material way to fight the COVID pandemic. So they gambled, lost, and there is nothing to show for it. You can't possibly claim that without being a qualified expert in the field. I'm not, but I have asked friends who are--and they're quite firm that this type of experimental research (1) did help speed up our COVID-19 response, and save lives, and (2) is critical to prevent future outbreaks from becoming much, much worse. I'm not asking for journal cites or anything, but I am curious: What's the source of your conclusion that gain-of-function research didn't help prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from becoming even worse?
- tripletao 4y ago
  Advocates of such high-risk research have reached to find some minor alleged benefits in this pandemic, like in: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02903-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02903-x But if you look at the actual examples they provide, they're incredibly weak. Remdesivir wasn't discovered due to GoF research, and wasn't tested in humans solely due to any result from GoF research; but GoF research did provide some of the early evidence that prompted the first human trials. Unfortunately remdesivir also shows little evidence of efficacy in humans: https://www.science.org/content/article/very-very-bad-look-remdesivir-first-fda-approved-covid-19-drug https://www.science.org/content/article/very-very-bad-look-r... https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-recommends-against-use-of-gilead-covid-19-drug-remdesivir-11605831037 https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-recommends-against-use-of-g... They also cite minor contributions to some novel vaccine candidates that as far as I can tell haven't progressed to humans. And these examples are from Ralph Baric's lab; while he may have been reckless, his research was less controversial than the WIV's, working at higher BSL and with fewer novel pathogens. The WIV took significantly greater risks, and so far has literally zero practical benefit to show for it. Virology in aggregate has clearly provided a benefit to humanity, in this pandemic and elsewhere. That's not the question, though. The deliberate search for enhanced potential human pandemic pathogens--including both laboratory gain-of-function on such pathogens, and sampling missions to remote sites to find new natural pathogens in areas that no other humans routinely visited, and thus that presented no obvious risk of natural spillover--is a tiny subset of virology. We could ban that tiny subset, and we'd still have all our same vaccines, same anti-viral drugs, same tests, etc. If anyone tells you otherwise, then ask them for the evidence.