If we found evidence of release from a lab, we might start by instituting an international ban on virus gain-of-function research, or much stronger oversight, because this would show the cost has probably outweighed the possible benefit. Much like the agreements we have for research on genetic modification of human embryos, chemical and biological weapons, etc.
ETA–I don’t want to misrepresent you mally, and you were asking what it would change about our response right now, and said it might change policy going forward. I agree with you that we are past the point where knowing this would have much of an effect. Had we known the exact source a year ago or 16 months ago, it might have been a different story.
There is not usually a smoking gun, and it can take years to find the link from animal to humans. For the other famous novel bat linked virus of this century SARS, we got as far as bats → dromedaries → humans, and don’t really know the story. For highly infectious (in humans) viruses, it could take exactly one instance of animal to human transmission that started everything off. If it were a rare bat species, or a highly bat-lethal virus to a small strain of bats, it may take a while to find. If it were bat to pangolin to human, again, too many unknowns. If it were bat to unknown critter, to unknown critter to human, we’d have no clue. As noted, bats migrate and fly for miles when well. We have a limited understanding of where they live and how they move about. We don’t know if a virus is going to change their flight path. Saying we don’t know how it happened in nature, therefore lab spill, is a huge unsubstantiated jump. We could just as easily say, well, it’s not been seen in nature, so, Aliens (insert I’m not saying it could be Aliens guy gif). ETA: Wade should have emphasized this more, but one out of every five mammal species is a bat. And they fly, for as long as hundreds of miles in a year. Viruses jump from similar species to each other more easily. How many dead birds have you seen in your life? How many dead bats? If your town had a bat die-off (and we’re in the middle of many bat die-offs in the US), how many would you expect to see? We noticed the bird die off from West Nile because a whole bunch of crows started dropping dead, but if it happened in an obscure species of bat, how would we find it?
I think most serious people are only considering the possibility of an accidental, not intentional release.
As for the “what would it change” question? Plenty. If it was shown to be an accidental release then it would be the deadliest industrial accident in human history. The closest runner-up would be the Bhopal disaster where a chemical leak killed somewhere between 3787 and 16,000 people in India. I think that there would be worldwide implications for lab safety and the kids of virology research that gets approved and funded.
The only part that puzzles me is the apparent involvement of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as one of the (many) places the article was published.
Granted that a careless lab release is exactly the kind of thing that they warn about, but why go with an article from that “race science” shlub?
Ziiiing!!! But I doubt he understands the logic. Believe it or not, I used to get this response from Republicans back in the day, but now we are in the upside-down sabotage world of Donald Trump.
My guess is because too many people think of DNA manipulation as something that happens only in labs. When you clear cut forests, when you convert forests to suburbs or cities you impose harsh stresses that will foster mutations. When we introduce toxins into the air and water, we are running huge DNA manipulation events. We are running history’s biggest uncontrolled DNA manipulation experiment at the moment, what happens when you raise the temperature of the entire planet a few degrees more in a shorter time than ever before, and at the same time, increase the CO2 level drastically. What’s that going to do to all life on earth? Remember, all animal and plant life has DNA. How do the changes, specifically, effect zoonotic viruses? What are all the potential biological consequences? ETA: I don’t mean to bash the physicists involved, but they are physicists. And many molecular biologists don’t look at critters bigger than a cell. So I think they’ve lost the big picture view. ETA: I know “toxins” is an overused term in spurious medicine, please substitute “mutagenic pollutants and conditions” (such as polyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, increased UV, etc)
Doocy’s an ass, and there are a lot of people like him making disingenuous arguments to support their own agendas, but it’s not accurate to say that there’s no circumstantial evidence whatsoever.
Per the Politifact article on the lab leak hypothesis:
For the “created in the lab” hypothesis to work out we would have to suppose that the coronaviruses that are present in bats and pangolins and fit the same properties were also created in a lab. Did the labs somehow let the virus escape into bat caves?
Indoors in unventilated caves, in colonies that may number in hundreds of thousands. And they have to “sing” to get around by sonar. Don’t get me started on the sanitation issues.
That’s a misunderstanding of the main lab leak theory. It’s an undisputed fact that the lab in Wuhan collected wild coronaviruses from bats and bred and manipulated them in laboratory conditions to study. The idea that some of what they were studying could have escaped due to poor safety protocols is not the same thing as claiming that they engineered a virus from scratch that just happens to closely resemble wild viruses.
The point is that the “circumstantial evidence” that they are citing is that the properties of SARS-CoV-2 are such that they indicate development in a lab. If that were true, then we would not expect to see such properties in nature that were not developed in a lab. Considering that SARS-CoV-2 has “gain of function” mutations by itself in the wild really means that the threshold for evidence that the virus was developed in a lab has to be very high.
The threshold of evidence to say that it only could have originated from a lab? Sure, we’d want good evidence in order to be confident of that. But this issue is important enough that it certainly meets the threshold to be worthy of careful investigation. You don’t need to be a crazy conspiracy-minded person to understand that a lab that specializes in investigating potentially dangerous bat corona viruses that was in close proximity to the outbreak is something we should look into carefully before dismissing it out of hand.
If the 1918 flu happened today, we’d see similar accusations. It would have clearly had to have been specifically engineered to be more lethal to young healthy people, it’s possible origin in China (suspicious!) and a Kansas Army base (also very convenient), would be strong “evidence” Fauci was behind it all.
If the question is “Should virology labs have strong safety protocols?” then I agree with you that the answer is obviously yes. If the question is “Do we need to investigate this to see whether China is responsible for this mess?” it seems closer to asking whether you should investigate the neighbor you don’t like for causing the damage to your house when the entire neighborhood was hit by a tornado.
This is a bad faith exercise in xenophobic blame shifting thinly disguised as a root cause analysis. There should be a quiet, measured, and professional examination into what went wrong and what we can do better.
And let’s be absolutely clear, even if we are not certain where the fire that burned down the neighborhood started, this in no way absolves an absentee fire chief who actively obstructed the fire department from fighting said fire and repeatedly lied to the public that it was just a little smoke.
The subtext about it “originating in a lab” is the reich-wing desire for revenge against China, and the simple-minded idea that it’s a bio weapon. A.k.a. “China did this on purpose to ruin Trump!”
There is a slight possibility it escaped from a research lab, but the genetic evidence is that it’s a naturally occurring virus, not a weapon (and what a lousy excuse for a weapon as well.)
There are biological research labs everywhere, and it’s not wrong to want them to be secure and safe, but “life finds a way” so don’t assume that our own labs are perfect. The last person to die from smallpox was infected by accident from a lab one floor below her in a university in 1978.
