> Ban gain of function research because it killed 20 million people?
And how do you plan on enforcing this on China? Or on Russia?
I'm still waiting for all the armchair geniuses to explain this one to me.
You can be ready for when some idiot does this research or not. Those are your options unless you've got some magic way to go to war with nuclear powers that I am unaware of.
All banning gain of function research does is leave you unprepared when it happens.
Unless you've got a way to enforce this on China, this is unactionable. It's simply propaganda to rile people up.
1) If it was an accident, what are you going to do? If there is anyone sane in the leadership of the lab with knowledge of how this occurred, procedures have already changed. What more do you want them to do? You're NOT going to get a gain-of-function ban without some form of strong coercion. What will it be?
2) If it was intentional (and I see no gain for China if it were), what do you plan to do? You will have to somehow do something to cause actual harm to Chinese leadership. What? China is already guilty of genocide, and all the West does is shrug.
Hell, it would almost be better if this were an intentional release if not for all the dead. The emergence of Omicron would demonstrate to the idiots worldwide who thought they could control a virus that the idea is laughable and that the virus will quickly evade whatever you think are your protection measures.
And all this ASSUMES that it actually was a lab leak, which the current hypothesis about jumping from mice back to humans decreases the Bayesian prior on dramatically. If Covid can jump that quickly from humans to mice and back, gain of function is suddenly frighteningly common. And the research into gain of function, rather than being banned, needs to be ramped up hard.