I agree but also disagree. There are too many conflicting interests and I don't think you will ever get a straight answer. People also can't look at the lab leak with a critical eye because they think it makes them look like trump lovers. I standby my original assertion that a country in grief will collectively go through the stages of grief of which denial is the first. Similar to 9/11 when we convinced ourselves that our foreign policy had nothing to do with terrorist attacks and 2008 when we convinced ourselves bailing out failing industries was a good idea. 20 and 10 years later and we changed our tunes on those things. In 2033 we will finally accept that a lab-leak was most likely but only after the other 6 stages...

In 2008 we had to bail out the banks, otherwise everything would have gone under. Indeed, I believe that a defining moment of the GW Bush presidency was when he told the head of the Federal Reserve (I think?) to do whatever was necessary, with GWB providing political cover, and thus 'saved the world'. Where we screwed up was in not bringing to account (i.e. prison) many of the people responsible for letting things get as far as they did. We also used monetary policy too much when fiscal policy (i.e. bailing out Main Street) would have been better.

My understanding is that it took a while before the (natural) emergence of SARS and MERS was understood, and so for COVID most probably.

> My understanding is that it took a while before the (natural) emergence of SARS and MERS was understood, and so for COVID most probably.

The proximal host is the animal that transmitted the virus to humans. That host was identified for SARS-1 (civet cats) and MERS (camels) within about a year. For example, here's an article from 2003:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1140695/

The reservoir host is the animal in which most of the virus's genome evolved. That host (bats for both) took much longer to identify, through Dr. Shi's work at the WIV.

Since SARS-CoV-2 is very similar to SARS-1, we knew its reservoir host (bats) as soon as it was sequenced. We still don't know its proximal host. The proximal host is the critical question in establishing natural zoonotic origin--no one disputes that SARS-CoV-2 evolved mostly in bats, just whether its path into humans involved a research accident.

What? Why would anyone be punished for an unintentional lab leak? Scientists are also humans that can make mistakes.

But was it negligence? This is the difference between "a mistake" and "manslaughter".

Without knowing, and a proper investigation, we can't decide. If it was negligence, punishment is used for a variety of reasons. Often, it is the only way to get people to push back against employers.

And fines, are often the only way to get companies to care.

Its not about punishment, its about the 'just world' fallacy where bad things happen because of 'bad' people (whether through malice or incompetence). It allows us to hide from uncomfortable truths - in this case that pathogen spillovers are inevitable, and that our response has been typically woeful.

You can unintentionally harm someone and still be liable for that harm.

If a practicing engineer is ultimatrly responsible for a catastrophic outcome of a design they signed off on, I can see a case for shoddy virologists with bad lab practices being held ultimately responsible for what they ultimately leak.

When what you make has the potential to impact billions; no offense, but I expect you to be a bit more hardcore about your adherence to safe practices of your trade.

If this means the only people who end up becoming virologists and doing work that conceivably leads to the creation of pandemic pathogens are the most hardcore mf'ers with a boner for safety, perfectionism , and preserving their own skin; ...I'm actually okay with that.

I'll even sweeten the pot. Lets extend that to Software Engineers and get a PE program for that sorted.

Consistency after all.

Long story short: "Oopsie" as an excuse stops applying when your body count becomes non-zero.

> practicing engineer

That sounds like a call for professional licensure and personal financial penalties for failures. Ensuring financial ruin for GoF cowgirls and cowboys and their families would be a good start.

Scientists can definitely make mistakes. What circles around lab leak that's most interesting was the rampant indictments that discussing it made you a conspiracy theorist, which prevented it being discussed or investigated for over a year after the pandemic started. Around that time, the only thing that was acceptable to discuss was zoonotic origins.

The original Lancet article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

The retraction: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> And this is (one reason) why so many are keen to believe Lab Leak - because then it was done by 'bad humans' and so can be fixed, instead of being (another) consequence of our encroachment on the natural world and indeed something that often just happens.

In my experience it's rather that "lab leak" means "bad foreigners we're already hating did this to everyone, why won't we nuke them already or something", when the alternative would be to actually think about failing healthcare, vulnerable supply chains, lack of trust in institutions, etc.

"Lab leak" is a cop-out. It should lead to improving procedures in biolabs, but people there are already doing it anyway, because they're smart enough to think about possibilities ("oh, even if it was a wet market issue this time, the next one might be someone here fucking up; let's review the procedures to make that less likely to happen"). For general population, the media and political sphere, it's just a permission to dismiss and ignore any potential fixes ("You say spending more on X would reduce the spread of the virus? It's not like the last one was because of problem with X - it came from a foreign lab, nothing X can do about it!").

"Encroachment on the natural world" is mostly orthogonal to that. We are going to keep encroaching on it anyway, and the way to do it safely is to do those fixes that "lab leak" gives an excuse for not doing.