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Comment by 99_00 | Hacker News Reader

COVID-19 continues to impact us. Has there been any progress on determining the origin of the virus and how to prevent a future outbreak?

Are efforts underway? I don't see any, but maybe the media isn't highlighting them.

Seems like an important thing to look into. SARS outbreak was in 2003. SARS 2 20019. Given the increase in travel and environmental encroachment is there any reason to believe the next one will be in fewer than 15 years?

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There has been no substantial progress on determining the origin of the virus. It could have been a natural zoonotic transmission, or could have originated in a lab. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report in 2021 and it remains accurate as far as we know

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...

And that's fine. Assume both are true and come up with a plan to mitigate the next pandemic.

Here's my bad idea: If China doesn't allow international monitoring of it's wet markets every person entering your country from China must quarantine for 14 days.

Any person traveling form a country that doesn't follow the above policy must quarantine for 14 days.

That's just pointless and unrealistic. While China should be encouraged to improve food hygiene practices, and end trade in endangered wildlife species, most zoonotic viral transmission events never had anything to do with Chinese wet markets. While we'll never know for sure, there is some circumstantial evidence that the 1918 influenza pandemic might have started in a US pig farm. And quarantine policies are ineffective without secure borders. Human trafficking gangs bring people from China to Mexico, then smuggle them over the US land border. All it takes is one index case to start spreading a virus in a new area.

You're saying that because most zoonotic viral transmission don't come from wet markets, fixing wet markets should not be done.

And that because some people cross the boarder illegally, boarder controls that keep out the vast majority of people should not be implemented.

The problem with your reasoning is that it doesn't acknowledge that preventing some zoonotic viral transmission is better than preventing none.

And reducing the number or rate of infected people entering an uninfected population is better than no reduction.

LOL @ the media doing anything besides repeating "safe and effective! safe and effective!" in regards to vaccines any time their string is pulled

Rememeber they won't just come out and say "this was made in a lab, duh". You'll have to DYOR. Here's a good starting point:

https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/sars-cov-2-was-lab-made-un...

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