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Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

We don't know if the virus came from a market either, so why would that be the default position? Especially since that position requires accepting a hell of a coincidence that the virus just happened to emerge near a lab working on gain of function research for that type of virus. China's lack of openness to investigating this should also skew us against giving them the benefit of the doubt, rather than the opposite.

Given that lab escapes have happened multiple times and might have caused a global pandemic, the burden of proof should be on showing that the research is worth the significant risk it carries.

Defaulting to assuming that the risks are negligible and everyone concerned is scared for no reason is an absurd and dangerous take.

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It's not a court case. There's not a burden of proof.

What there is, is a risk analysis, which means you have to consider the risks of any particular action as well as in NOT taking the action. I've seen literally no discussion about the risks of NOT taking the action.

I'm reminded of self-driving cars, because we're worried they might lead to the deaths of thousands of people each year. Meanwhile, over a million people die each year in car accidents. Conclusion: best to let those million people die each year.

Well we spent over a decade and millions of dollars studying SARS coronaviruses and yet none of that work was of any help in fighting the pandemic. For example Ecohealth which was publicly funded with our tax dollars has still to this day refused to share it's research/samples/data despite being legally obligated to. The most charitable interpretation for refusing to share this information while millions of people are dying is that it is simply useless.

So why continue to fund such dangerous research if the research will be hidden when we actually need it?

> Well we spent over a decade and millions of dollars studying SARS coronaviruses and yet none of that work was of any help in fighting the pandemic.

Wow. Just wow.

It's statements like this that make me think we should indeed halt all virology research, and really all medical research and development entirely. We deserve what we get.

All government funded work maybe, yeah? It wouldn't make much difference. The consumers of that sort of research are ultimately just pharma companies and they don't use it much because so little replicates to begin with.

You honestly believe that government funded work didn't "make much difference" with dealing with COVID?

Beyond them creating it in the first place you mean?

I spent a long time investigating the effectiveness of everything governments did during COVID. None of it worked and a lot of it backfired badly, lockdowns being only one of the most prominent examples. Even the vaccine programme was a disaster: the data claiming otherwise turns out to have all been juked in various ways. We'd have been better off without governments doing anything at all.

Every pandemic ever has been caused by a natural source. Most pandemics happened before virology was a field. The default assumption from the start was animal source until there's proof it was something else.

>Every pandemic ever has been caused by a natural source.

That's an awfully bold claim, unless you have proof that covid-19 occurred naturally. Defaulting to your preferred reality and ignoring the potential risks is not a responsible way to guide research policy.

I'm saying every other pandemic in human (or really non-human) history.

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