> If you ask a gain-of-function proponent, they will say that by creating viruses that might emerge in nature, you get to understand zoonotic jumps from animals to humans better and possibly prevent them. Specifically, you get a head-start on developing vaccines for them. This possibility of curing future diseases might be true in some cases. But Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine was developed in a few hours back in January 2020.

I've been wondering about this for the last few months, I feel like this "better prepare for future viruses" argument is substantially weaker now — coronaviruses were a well-known group of viruses, there was already research directed at gain-of-function work for this family of viruses, and yet as far as I'm aware the mRNA vaccines that were developed derived no benefit from any of that research. So whether or not the virus came from a lab, why should we fund this kind of work since it seems not to be very useful?