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Comment by halfmatthalfcat | Hacker News Reader

What does it matter, beyond natural curiosity, whether it was released from a lab or not? It is of no real consequence because:

(1) if it *was* released from a lab, its highly suspect that it was intentional due to it infecting China's own citizens; if it was some kind of "attack" you would think they would plant it somewhere else.

(2) this is somewhat of the price we (as a society) pay for experimentation on diseases and viruses. It suffers from it-could-happen-here-ism where COVID or a COVID-like disease could be released by any other country and we'd still be in the exact same situation.

So, in my mind, the only definitive issue is whether it was released maliciously or by accident. If it was malicious, that's a completely different, crimes against humanity, type problem. If it was not, then I don't think it matters really how COVID happened.

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Because it calls into question the whole value proposition of gain-of-function research. If this was released from a virology lab, it calls into question whether we should be funding this kind of research at all. Further, the unwillingness of many virologists to even consider non-wild origins brings a lot of ethical questions to the forefront: these folks used their authority and bully pulpit to influence public opinion, and it’s important to determine the implicit and explicit conflicts of interests that are influencing their decision making.

If it was by accident, then it calls into question the quality controls over labs. It isn't "equally likely to happen anywhere" if the quality and safety standards vary by location. Operating a lab with poor safety standards is not "bad luck".

The problem is: what is anyone going to do about it? China will never admit it, even if it is true (I have no position one way or the other).

> China will never admit it, even if it is true.

China has ways to stop this class of research internally. It's very likely to happen. That's the entire point.

China does not need to admit, discuss, have referendums, or partake in any other self-harming activities.

Other countries could insist on oversight of China’s labs, and if they aren’t given that they could put economic screws to them.

It's quite surprising that so far I've never read your first point, not once, in any article. Another point is that if some other actor was planning to release this virus in China, they'd definitely do it in Wuhan.

In the end, this discussion doesn't even matter. The fact is that we, the non-specialists with no access to hard evidence, will probably never know what happened, and in fact it does not matter at all.

The origin of the virus is completely irrelevant to its consequences and the potential for accidental or purposeful releases of new viruses, engineered or not, is still there regardless. We're lucky(?) we got ample warning of what biological threats can do, and we got it with a low mortality and morbidity virus.

After all, trying to infer the origin of the virus by it's mutations and features is a bit like trying to infer if a computer virus is made in Russian by the inclusion of Cyrillic variable names or something, anyone can put them in there, so it's basically not even evidence.

It matters because I don't want this to happen again in 2025, and neither does anyone else. If COVID-19 was released from a BSL-2 lab, or even if it would have been studied in one under current biosafety practices, then perhaps such research should be conducted in BSL-3 facilities or above. Above all else we need to avoid shutting down the entire globe for another two years.

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