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Comment by toolz | Hacker News Reader

The title is a bit misleading, I still don't know why we need to know the origin. Will that somehow help prevent future pandemics? I'd love to understand the origins out of scientific curiosity, but sadly I'm afraid too many people will pretend this is somebodies fault. I'm american and I know 2/3 CDC labs producing covid tests contaminated PCR tests during an early review. I'm quite certain we'll blame a Chinese lab leaks for covid while sweeping our own mistakes under the rug quite readily.

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Was it a natural origin? We need to understand how bats came into contact with an intermediary species, how that came into contact with humans, how to minimize risks in the future.

Was it a lab leak? We need to know if safety protocols were followed and to develop better protocols if needed.

By your logic, we would never investigate any accident. Why look into the cause of a fire, it won't help bring back the victims or restore the damage. We should only look into how the response of the firefighters could've been better? No. We should look into both.

We even investigate every single airplane incident even if there were no victims and develop new safety protocols around them.

We should probably just assume that both of the potential causes are likely to happen in future and work on reducing their probability regardless of which one caused COVID-19.

>By your logic, we would never investigate any accident.

Where would you pull this from? You seem needlessly pointed in your reply here. I'm simply of the opinion that understanding the origin isn't all that useful.

Do you really think wuhan labs haven't revisited their safety protocols after being suspected of cv19 leaks? You seem to be of the impression that only if we prove the origin would any of those precautions be taken and that's simply not true, those precautions and revisiting procedures happened a long time ago.

Do you trust Boeing to revise their airplane safety systems after a crash? They surely will do an internal review and make changes.

Or do you appoint an independent investigator that issues mandatory changes and evaluates how they're implemented?

I do not trust China to revise their safety systems OR to follow the mandatory changes recommended by an independent investigator, making this entire conversation a wholly moot point.

Except the safety protocols would apply to similar labs worldwide. It's just a coincidence this started in China, a leak could happen anywhere.

You can’t make improvements if you don’t know what needs improving. Shining the light under the rug should be presented as important because we’re doomed to repeat mistakes unless we go through the unattractive process of discovering what we did wrong.

I am not sure how you can make a reasonable case that not knowing is better than knowing. You know we are talking about Science here...

"We" need to know the origin in order to put regulations in place to reduce the likelihood of future pandemics. Many existing health regulations are in place simply to reduce the spread of infectious disease, may that be to protect producers or to protect consumers. For example: it is a big part of the reason why live markets are scarce, if not non-existent, in many nations. It is why we hear of herds of livestock being destroyed when there is a single infection on farms. It is why laboratories that infect these diseases are very much restricted in what and how they conduct their research.

I stuck "we" in quotes since I too am concerned that people may interpret this is a blame game. It is far more important to have regulations in place to reduce the likelihood of this happening again than it is to hold anyone accountable. We, the public, don't need to know the actual source in this context. On the other hand, regulators probably do.

You need to know what happened to prevent the same thing happening again. The purpose is betterment, not blame. You are basically arguing that information has no bearing on learning.

> Will that somehow help prevent future pandemics?

Yes.

Maybe we shouldn't build bsl4 labs in big cities

What if it is somebody's fault? Wouldn't you want to know their error or action in order to prevent it in the future?

Yes. We confuse blameless postmortem with sweeping things under the rug and helping everyone involved in the mishap to save face at our own peril, they are not the same idea!

Don't forget the numerous times in the past the CDC has fucked up, including 75 CDC employees potentially exposed to anthrax in 2014 because they shipped live instead of dead samples of the lethal strain.

But at least you know, or at least someone can try to find out ... that we can’t is not an excuse to say we should not. The whole debate is crazy in the sense we can talk talk talk. But you can have a country that is likely the source of the virus not investigated. And running vaccination that is not helping the countries that use it (chile ...).

It is all fine. Human race who care.

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