Comment by vikramkr

Retrospectively you can justify anything. But the coronavirus outbreak happening now is not proof of the idea that the optimal thing to do in 2010 was to invest in coronavirus research- that could have still been the correct decision based off the probabilities of an outbreak. Just about every virus has a virologist convinced it's the next big one. In recent times next big ones have been the flu (kind of expected), HIV (basically out of nowhere), COVID (we could have done better, but if you'd asked me to bet I'd have bet on avian influenza/H5N1 since that's already dangerously close to becoming an outbreak and has been on radars for a while). Ig a super virulent hantavirus emerged, are those that studied those viruses noe "vindicates" as to pandemic threat? They infect humans and cause small outbreaks too.