Covid has killed something like 20 million people (taken from Wikipedia, estimated based on excess deaths). It's plausible that it came from a lab leak. How bloody fucking valuable do you have to think "making viruses more deadly and studying them" is for this to be worthwhile?
Oh, actually you can calculate this, assuming you're utilitarian and think risking innocent lives is OK as long as it saves that many lives in expectation. If you think there's a 10% chance that Covid came from a lab leak, then the "making viruses more deadly" research that we've done so far ought to have saved more than 10% * 20 million = 2 million people. Did it? From what I've heard it's done fuck-all.
I stand by my pissed off voice here. I think it's appropriate to be pissed off about risking millions of lives for hypothetical benefits.
(To be clear, I'm only talking about research that studies deadly extinct viruses and deadly lab-created viruses. We should absolutely continue to study viruses in general.)
Oh, actually you can calculate this, assuming you're utilitarian and think risking innocent lives is OK as long as it saves that many lives in expectation. If you think there's a 10% chance that Covid came from a lab leak, then the "making viruses more deadly" research that we've done so far ought to have saved more than 10% * 20 million = 2 million people. Did it? From what I've heard it's done fuck-all.
I stand by my pissed off voice here. I think it's appropriate to be pissed off about risking millions of lives for hypothetical benefits.
(To be clear, I'm only talking about research that studies deadly extinct viruses and deadly lab-created viruses. We should absolutely continue to study viruses in general.)