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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Globally, we're better off if China is doing novel disease research than if they're not. It's also likely that China should be more careful when doing this research. The US has had some pretty egregious virus leaks while doing their research so the latter statement doesn't say anything bad about China, just that they haven't learned as many hard lessons as the US has.

Given the first two statements, does it really matter much whether COVID escaped from a Chinese lab or was of natural origin? The same actions should be taken either way.

The big difference is that the knowledge enables a Chinese witch hunt.

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No, the big difference is, that if it leaked from their lab _they_ are responsible. That's not a witch hunt. If I crash my car into your car today, it does not matter that you crashed your car into someone else two years ago.

> Globally, we're better off if China is doing novel disease research than if they're not.

That's a big fucking upside you see to China's research.

You can make these statements when you are still talking about hypothetical risk. But we already have one outcome, i.e. the current pandemic and its costs. So what you are saying here is: The cost benefit of China doing novel disease research is at least as valuable as all the costs of COVID-19 so far.

I'm not falsifying your conclusion, but you will need to back up the first statement with something at least.

I am curious, what exactly do we get from researching these diseases? It wasn't apparent to me at all that the vaccines have come from people who study those diseases, but people who study those medical approaches. Maybe that's naive of me.

Experts of vaccine design and productions rely on the findings on experts of virus physiology and chemistry to know what their vaccine should do (specifically, what virus components, among many equally easy to hack ones, promise to be more disruptive). It's a complementary relationship, like Product Development and Sales or aerial reconnaissance and bombardment.

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