[ALittleLight]

If it was a lab leak that's a strong signal that humanity in general and China in particular is not doing enough to keep labs safe. I think it would be entirely reasonable for the international community to pressure China to document their disease research, problems, and expand safety protocols.

If this has a zoonotic origin then we don't really have the evidence that our current methods are as terribly insufficient. We do have a record of occasional lab leaks, but nothing disastrous as a result.

If it wasn't a lab leak then we should be asking questions along the lines of how to reduce future zoonotic transfer. Should we be pressuring China and others to curtail "wet markets"?

Either way, it's interesting as a scientific question. To look at the origins of one of the most impactful global events of the last year and just shrug strikes me as strangely incurious.

Of course, in reality I don't expect the US government will do anything productive and even if we knew the origins of the virus conclusively I doubt they'd do anything.

[boomboomsubban]

>I think it would be entirely reasonable for the international community to pressure China to document their disease research, problems, and expand safety protocols.

And then the next time the source is India. There's plenty of examples worldwide of biological research being handled poorly, if China was responsible for the worst result it doesn't mean they were less responsible.

>Should we be pressuring China and others to curtail "wet markets"?

Should we stop eating pigs? As swine flu had the potential to be comparatively catastrophic.

Your entire post is filled with "blame China" when everything involved is an international issue. This is exactly why I don't care about where it came from, too many people will push for that information to be used to "punish those responsible" rather than actually try to limit future outbreaks.

[ALittleLight]

It seems like you're saying we shouldn't "punish those responsible" which is odd.

Obviously, if we have evidence that we need better safety protocols in labs then we should expect India, as well as every other country on Earth, to follow them. What coronavirus may mean though is that China is demonstrably dangerously lacking and cannot be trusted to implement sufficient safety protocols. We have no such evidence about India or other countries.

Why shouldn't hold accountable the people responsible for killing millions with dangerous research and substandard safety protocols? (Assuming the truth of the lab leak hypothesis)

[boomboomsubban]

>Obviously, if we have evidence that we need better safety protocols in labs then we should expect India, as well as every other country on Earth, to follow them

From another post, the US had 1100 reported incidents in a four year period involving biologically risky agents. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/17/report... I don't assume the US is particularly bad about this, so I expect other countries have similar rates, I only picked India to escape claims of "whataboutism."

Dangerous research with a sketchy safety record happens worldwide. That the worst outcome potentially came from a Chinese incident does not mean they're the only ones at fault, and punishing them does little to prevent future outbreaks.