3 ms·

jaybrendansmith made a good response. I would say more broadly, COVID happened, and could happen again. We need to understand how. If it was natural in origin,

jaybrendansmith made a good response. I would say more broadly, COVID happened, and could happen again. We need to understand how. If it was natural in origin, we need to identify risk factors that we can minimize going forward. And if it was lab-bourne somehow... Well ditto! Maybe we shut down this kind of research. Maybe we need better safety protocols. I don't know. I know people are dead and won't undie if we understand this. But it seems to me to be totally against the essence of science to say, let's not investigate because it doesn't matter. It massively does. Just as understanding of the origin of the Universe, or our Solar System matters, or the human evolution, even though there too, at face value, such information has no use.

D13Fd 3y ago
Yes but we know it was one or the other, and I think we need to follow both paths regardless. We are unlikely to ever know definitively which one it was. And all of the effort debating lab leak or not just distracts time and attention from actual efforts to prevent it from happening again.
- rich_sasha 3y ago
  > we know it was one or the other Well we don't really, and to me that's part of the problem. Until we know, we don't know. > And all of the effort debating lab leak or not just distracts time and attention from actual efforts to prevent it from happening again. In America perhaps, and other polarized polities. As a scientist, again, I cannot comprehend how anyone can see this as a waste of time. We will surely learn a lot from tracking it through time. I see that the polarising labels got stuck to this issue, and it's unfortunate, but it is in no way inherent to the question.