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Comment by yyyk | Hacker News Reader

Leaving aside the question of where and how the virus emerged, it's interesting to note that the lab was nigh useless during the pandemic, despite its main specialty was investigating Coronaviruses! It looks like a lot of dangerous research went on, and even if nothing bad happened because of that research, nothing was gained. A lot of risk for nothing.

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Yes, the whole virus hunting grift that Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance and PREDICT tout has been exposed as ineffective. Now they are doubling down with further funding and blanket denials that it could have come from a lab accident. They never mention the nearest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 are found in Yunnan and Laos. And that happens to be where WIV sampled.

"nothing was gained"

I see the irony (gain of function)

Gain of risk

Don’t forget gain of funding

Yep. Top notch research.

Are you implying the lab shouldn't have existed at all? And/or future coronavirus labs shouldn't exist either?

They're not implying anything. They're nearly making the observation that the supposed reason this lab existed was to research dangeours viruses like covid, and yet the lab itself did nothing to help during the pandemic.

> yet the lab itself did nothing to help during the pandemic.

Which people in this thread are somehow believing as truth instead of the bald-faced propaganda it is.

Do you actually think a virus research lab in the epicentre of an outbreak would not be put to use?

From Wikipedia:

> As the virus spread worldwide, the institute continued its investigation. In February 2020, a team led by Shi Zhengli at the institute were the first to identify, analyze and name the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), upload it to public databases for scientists around the world to understand,[28][29][30] and publish papers in Nature.[31] On 19 February 2020, the lab released a letter on its website describing how they successfully obtained the whole virus genome.[32]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

Gene sequencing is table stakes with modern tech, and many countries did that during the pandemic. We don't need a BSL-4 level lab in the middle of a large city to do a gene sequence. It happened that they published early what many other labs would have done (and did do). On the other hand, the vaccines and effective cures had nothing to do with their work. The benefit/risk ratio seems very poor here.

So you're not going to admit you were ignorant or just lying?

What was gained that would not have been gained without the existence of the lab?

You really missed the whole point of their post didn't you? If we are going to allow a BSL-4 lab to exist and introduce the risk of possible leaks or other problems, we need to get something in return. That "something" needs to be more than what other lower security labs can already do. It is fascinating that a lab which was supposedly researching coronavirsuses for so long (and which may have led to the outbreak, but regardless) was unable to do anything that other labs could not.

Afaik they weren't even applying BSL4 security to their coronavirus research. On top of that, before the outbreak, the Pasteur institute, who was incidentally supposed to be a research partner but was kept at arms' length, raised an alarm on their apparent general lack of safety compliance.

That and the fact that the Chinese dicatorship blocking any inquiry into the matter are enough to put the blame on that lab until proven otherwise.

> It looks like a lot of dangerous research went on, and even if nothing bad happened because of that research, nothing was gained. A lot of risk for nothing.

Your previous comment is clearly incorrect as shown by the parent, something is a lot more than nothing.

They shouldn't perform gain of function research because the risk/reward is comically high

I'd like for high risk biological research to be done under the same security arrangements as nuclear weapons research. Covid and influenza have together killed several orders of magnitude more humans in the last 150 years than nuclear weapons/accidents have. Thus GoF research presents a potential human cost much higher than nuclear weapons, and should be treated as such.

If that makes it "too expensive and slow" then so be it. Perhaps there are some things humans should not be doing.

Well, historically, you know, nuclear weapons research involved a lot of cavalier scientists doing dangerous things with limited knowledge, and of course in the early days, there was plenty of above-ground range testing; is that something you want included as well?

If my information is correct, I believe that nearly all nuclear testing these days is 100% simulation on supercomputers, which is as safe as safe can be, as long as you can trust supercomputer simulations to render the correct answer to those trusting researchers.

Not only that, the US is missing 6 nuclear weapons.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-military-missing...

To add to your point, regardless of safeguards and protocols, accidents happen.

Heaven forbid we hold people accountable and/or learn from our mistakes as a species.

That seems reasonable, yes.

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