[justinlink]

If it does turn out to be a lab leak, the simpleton answer would be to just blame China and that would be extremely dangerous. They are not alone in the world of virus studies and lab leaks.

As for what difference would it make, I would hope in a rational world, it would change the culture that allows these lab leaks to happen throughout the world. We need to take this more seriously and better question the purpose of some of these studies and allow rigorous international monitoring.

If we can accept a combined human guilt and take steps to never allow it to happen again, we might be able to eliminate lab leaks.

Unfortunately, the world will probably just blame China and there will be fallout.

[pasabagi]

In a rational world, the takeaway would be that western countries were unprepared for a pandemic. If the whole world reacted like East Asia, coronavirus would have been last year's niche issue.

Even if it does turn out to have come from a lab leak, diseases like this come from natural reservoirs every decade or so. We need to take public health and government preparedness more seriously, otherwise no matter what, we will be in this situation again, sooner rather than later.