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Comment by corty | Hacker News Reader

1. An unsafe lab is one, where pathogens can possibly get out with a non-negligible probability. And where those pathogens are infectious and deadly enough to be of concern.

2. Microsoft products don't carry biological viruses, because most of them are software. Microsoft hardware comes out of China I'd guess. Apple also doesn't produce most hardware in the US. Besides, computer hardware can be sterilized. Biological matter, like food and drink are more of a concern. And there is already a lot of regulation around those, e.g. you cannot get imported German sausage or French cheese in the US, and you cannot get US chicken in the EU for those reasons. You also cannot travel anywhere from an Ebola-affected region for example.

I am very serious. But I'm really not sure what you are getting at.

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Thanks for answering. Let's address point 1), now that we have a definition:

1. Unsafe labs:

a) Since 1903, the vast majority of known bio-lab incidents have been in the USA and then the next largest group is their western allies;[1] so any solution must address this, no?

b) this 2105 USA Today article describes just 10 recent bio-lab incidents, including this gem:

"In November 2013, a University of Wisconsin researcher in an ABSL-3 punctured skin with a needle loaded with H5N1 avian influenza. The researcher was quarantined for seven days in an empty home."

or this:

"Between April 2013 and September 2014, eight individual mouse escapes were reported at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill."

or this:

"Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inspectors and University of Michigan officials found materials labeled as Brucella, a select agent, outside the BSL-3 containment area in April 2012."

And as a finale [3]:

"Scientists inadvertently switched samples designated for live Ebola virus studies with samples intended for studies with inactivated material. As a result, the samples with viable Ebola virus, instead of the samples with inactivated Ebola virus, were transferred out of a BSL-4 laboratory to a laboratory with a lower safety level for additional analysis."

There are (literally) hundreds more examples.

So having established that unsafe labs abound in the USA (per your definition), let's move to point 2 in your suggestion: "diplomatic pressure and travel and trade restrictions "

What possible restrictions of any kind do you possibly see any ally of the USA enforcing in any future "world-wide, no-execptions-to-the-rule agreement" scenario, given that they already tolerate all this incompetence?

And that's just the Western allies. Do you see any third-world, dollar-dependent, tourist economy placing any restrictions on American tourists because a rate escaped from a lab?

So, for the sake of brevity, did you really mean: "the USA and its allies must put diplomatic, travel, and trade restrictions on China?"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/05/29/some-recent-u...

[3] [https://thebulletin.org/2019/02/human-error-in-high-bioconta...

Well, obviously China is suspected of having let Covid-19 escape, so of course this is first and foremost about restrictions that affect China..

What are you getting at?

Also, of course there are accidents in any lab, most of them just reportable incidents. Why are there almost no reportable incidents from Chinese labs? Usually because either they are not using those labs (unlikely) or because they don't do incident analysis and reporting. That the list contains almost no incidents from China means quite the opposite of what you are suggesting: It means that China regularly covers up even very small mishaps such as a mislabeled sample of something relatively harmless. Just stuff that cannot be covered up will be reported (such as the few thousand people infected with Brucella somewhere...)

Does that mean that all other labs are safe? Certainly not, and I'd suggest you read my other comments about improving safety. But quarantining a researcher after a needle puncture is the right thing to do. Recognizing and reporting the escape of lab animals is a sign of there being at least some amount of oversight. China quite obviously doesn't have that, because noone in their right mind will believe that a lab never has a reportable incident.

So yes, I'd suggest starting at the most unsafe labs, where quite probably Covid-19 originated, and improving those, e.g. by closing them. And rebuilding them somewhere safer, to a far higher standard. Same for the rest of the world's labs, of course, but priority is on those having started global pandemics in the past...

It’s just whataboutism. The person you’re responding to has a long post history defending China and shitting on the US.

Also the research mentioned in the article was commissioned and funded by the US, and covered up by US bodies until they were forced by a court to release documents. Any action against dangerous research needs to be global really.

>So having established that unsafe labs abound in the USA (per your definition), let's move to point 2 in your suggestion: "diplomatic pressure and travel and trade restrictions "

There's a key difference going on there, and you're sort of making the poster's point. The United States is genuinely transparent about as evidenced by your ability to actually find write-ups, and that processes are sufficiently audited to improve on process with. China hasn't done that and has actively stonewalled international cooperation by destroying or otherwise covering up any information vital to characterizing the nature of the early days of the pandemic.

So you're creating a false dilemma. Yes. Unsafe labs happen. How seriously is the issue taken, and with what level of transparency and scrutiny and preventive due diligence are these inherently unsafe ventures undertaken with?

That's more what I think the poster is getting at. Not a simple binary yes/no unsafe labs, but track record of safely and transparently handling lab escapes.

I upvoted you for this reply. There is definitely some quantitative difference between how the US handles its laboratories which was absent from my comment.

Thank you, your phrasing is far better and clearer than mine.

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