Except it's not a simulation, it is causing it to "really happen". The only difference hinges on the ability of human institutions to keep it contained, which at the very least we have reason to be concerned about.
Another comment in this thread suggested building these labs in a desert or some other extreme environment where scientists can be isolated for months at a time. This seems like an obviously necessary mitigation against the unknown risk of introducing synthetic pathogens that haven't been created in billions of years of evolution. And yet, the secretive groups funding and regulating this research instead choose to build their labs in urban centers. Why?
> This seems like an obviously necessary mitigation against the unknown risk of introducing synthetic pathogens that haven't been created in billions of years of evolution.
I'd wager that it's likely that the COVID variant that was made in a lab was also created through evolution at some point. Every infected person with the virus has billions of viral replications taking place in their body, and each virus itself will have its own mutations. There's a high chance such mutations already took place, somewhere and in someone/something, but those mutants never created their own worldwide outbreaks.
I think it's worthwhile to understand how mutations can affect a virus at the heart of a pandemic. Finding such mutations in the wild is a roll of the dice, and the chances of encountering something like it rise the longer and more widespread the epidemic is.
That's why isolating the researchers is not necessary. Also you underestimate the number of such labs and the amount and variety of work that such labs are doing. "Synthetic Pathogens" are not a thing. Synthetic viruses are hardly pathogenic at all.
If research is sufficiently dangerous to necessitate a BSL-3+ lab, then it should have to meet a correspondingly high bar for demonstrating its potential reward. It's not clear to me that gain of function research could ever make such a justification.
In an ideal world, we could do this research with remote controlled robots in an orbiting space capsule. If we can't do that yet, then we could at least do it in a desert. Otherwise, shouldn't we be asking the local population to approve each research proposal that could lead to a local outbreak of a dangerous virus?
Even one lab leak isn't enough. The Virus would most likely die out on its own, if not it would get outcompeted by naturally developing variants. The risk of a lab leaking a variant in a way that it would outcompete natural strains is so miniscule compared to natural variants arising and doing the same, it's not worth mentioning.
Climate change is a perfect example: 99% of people who study climate likely agree that a) the Earth is getting warmer on average, b) the warming is substantially exacerbated by human-derived emissions, and c) the medium- and long-term destabilization due to that warming has meaningful potential to have catastrophic effects any biomes, including those inhabited by humans. They likely disagree amongst themselves on a) how much warmer and over what timeline, b) how much of the warming is caused by humans, and c) what the specifics and timeline of the catastrophic effects are likely to be.
In situations like the above, attempts to paint disagreement over magnitude as disagreement over direction are misleading at best and disingenuous at worst.
For example you have made some very specific claims about the climate change consensus. But people often simply say X% of scientists agree on climate change, without defining what they mean about climate change.
All of this is also done to support a given course of action. Those courses of action only make sense with a very specific model of climate change. Often a model that is not totally accurate or agreed upon. Then they often incorrectly quote the scientist. Such as Al Gore's famous prediction “Some of the models suggest to Dr Maslowski that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.” When Dr Maslawski was not predicting anything as dramatic. In the other camp you have appeals to Freeman Dyson. But he does agree that man has altered the climate. He simply doesn't think drastic action is required, and that we will be able to counter its impact. Not surprising from the guy that came up with the ideas to harvest the entire energy output of the sun.
The details matter and the appeal to authority that all the scientists agree with me is not as good as an argument on the facts.
Seriously. If you don't want to believe what 99% of the experts say, and don't know shit about the actual science - which takes years to understand - it's a pretty good bet you're wrong. Lot's of things can't be broken down to a level non-experts can understand.
And lab leaks happen All The Time. SARS-1 escaped labs on six separate occasions.