I think you have a reasonable point here.

I saw Marc Lipsitch give a talk with a back-of-napkin "Expected mortality from gain of function research" estimate in...I want to say 2013.

We know there's zoonotic spillover events of a number of scary pathogens, including the last two epidemic coronaviruses.

In a global sense of preventing future pandemics, an either/or framing is immensely flawed.

Good point. Arguing about who or what to point the finger at for SARS-CoV-2 seems more like politics than epidemiology. The evidence of a laboratory source is unclear enough, and the chance of a natural source plausible enough, that I'm not sure how the cost/benefit is supposed to work out here.

Not to mention if your goal is just to point out the ethical lapses of the Chinese government, you don't really need any extra ammunition.

Epidemiology doesn't work without taking into account politics.

You can't have go unpunished specialists conspiring (or at best, just unconsciously covering their ass) when they're the ones that are supposed to be on the front lines preventing and fighting epidemics !

P.S.: Wow, I just remembered... this lampooning hits quite differently now !

https://youtu.be/9WfZuNceFDM?t=504

I think the way in which we prevent lab made viruses to break free is fundamentally different from how prevention of a spill over would need to be done. Because it causes problems at the exact opposite ends of the chain of events. The first couldn't be more detached and isolated from nature, while the other happens if hygience and mixing of species is sloppily disregarded. This is a challenge if both sites are right next to each other of course.

> happens if hygience and mixing of species is sloppily disregarded

Evidence of lab negligence should not become a reason to neglect or defund research and prevention about animal spillover risks. Unfortunately, the two problem classes are synergic rather than mutually exclusive.

Yes, this is true.

If we knew that this pandemic came from a lab, that would have massive implications for how tightly we control this type of lab research - both in terms of whether we do the gof research, and also in how we run and regulate the labs. Surely you can imagine the reaction if, hypothetically, the world knew that this coronavirus was made in a lab and then escaped?

I'm amazed that you think otherwise - it's one of the nice things about hn that I occasionally encounter views that are so different from my own.

Regardless of whether this particular virus came from the lab or the nature, we still need to take action to minimize chances of another similar (or worse) pandemic coming from either a lab or the nature. For this particular virus, it's way too late for its source to actually matter. It would still hit the headlines though, of course.

> I don't know that I believe that the answer to which one happened in the case of covid-19, is all that important

It is when literally this week a version with an 80% kill rate but with the spread of the most transmissible was made in a lab for no good reason.

How many would die if that leaked out and the only reason it’s been made is just so some academic can get their name in a paper and earn some grant presumably.

The idea of we just have to trust that these labs are secure and competent enough when the fact they’re even making something so deadly raises questions about their competence. We need to start judging the people making these things with the potential to kill millions the same as we would anyone else building something that had the potential to kill millions.

I don’t see why playing with Weapons of Mass Destruction in a random lab is just considered fine when the weapon is invisible and can live inside your body or a mouse. At least Fat Man and Little Body couldn’t be carried off base by a single person.

It could be a random lab in Cambodia, run by a professor with dreams and ambitions for fame and fortune. The point is you can't really regulate gain of function research. Pandemic preparation has to keep that in mind. That includes isolating countries immediately after a disease of unknown origin is found.

Then those countries will just not tell anyone.

You can, in the same way as we regulate murder.

It will not be 100% efficient, but reduction can be achieved.

These kinds of experiments are going to be done either way - for example gain-of-function research on animal smallpox (which usually doesn't kill and can't infect humans) to make it lethal.

Experts on the matter (I read a book recounting smallpox research, not a domain expert myself [0]) were concerned more about the publishing of that research than about the research being done, since proliferation is deemed very easy in the field. You don't need resources as with nuclear weapons to reproduce research like that.

(Edit: typo)

[0] The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston

it can't be that easy, there's plenty of groups that would routinely use something like that for terrorism etc. It hasn't happened yet, so it must be more difficult than it looks?

I'm only citing experts on the matter (to paraphrase a quote: "all that is needed is access to a modern university's biology lab") but I think the reason we're not seeing attacks like that is that you cannot control a bioweapon - and everyone who is able to make one knows that.

Stopping public funding of that would reduce risk.

> a version with an 80% kill rate

An 80% kill rate of mice that are genetically engineered to express human ACE genes. For comparison, the original SARS-CoV-2 strain killed 100% of those humanised mice. Those rates aren't the same among human populations.

> It is when literally this week a version with an 80% kill rate but with the spread of the most transmissible was made in a lab for no good reason.

It was a modified version bringing the kill rate down from 100% to 80% in lab mice specifically bread to be weak to this virus.

I don't know whether the research should have been done, but it wasn't done for no reason, and information it obtained seems quite useful. The hope, and general assumption, has been the same mutations that led omicron to be so transmissible also reduced its lethality. This research suggests otherwise (that it was happy coincidence). That would be very concerning (and makes me want to get the omicron variant vax)

This is a case of cognitive biases, and an unfortunate reflection on peoples inability to reason about risk.

Obviously if it is possible that COVID came from a lab then we should act as though it did - the best case is these labs are catastrophes still waiting to happen. And I suspect so is the web of international travel we've built up over the last few decades.

But at a population level, the human race can't process the implications of that. People are profoundly evidence based - we won't see action until there is evidence that a risk is manifesting. Which is possibly why people care about whether COVID originated in a lab or outside one.

If it is true that it made its rounds in a lab, we might want to consider putting a moratorium on such research out of security concerns. Or at least put such labs under more scrutiny. Also in regard to funding and people involved, have some be responsible for the safety.