[mellavora]

> If it happens naturally and randomly, there's nothing we can do.

Some people say the main progress of civilization is the ability to do things about forces which were previously seen as natural and random.

> If it was a lab leak, maybe some special precautions should be taken,

Do you mean like making sure the labs follow certain biohazard handling standards and procedures? Which they currently have to do to maintain their certifications/ratings?

We don't have to prove that covid was a lab leak to review the procedures. Likewise, we don't have to prove that covid was natural and random (I am glad you separated those two, by the way) before reviewing how we handle food safety and animal transportation measures.

[Closi]

Nontheless, noting and acknowledging that a worldwide pandemic was actually caused from a lab leak would certinaly drive stricter regulation and higher adherence to procedures.

Conversely, a strong belief that it wasn't a lab leak would, of course, reduce the pressure to implement changes to safety protocols.

In theory everyone would react in a way which optimally reduces risk, but in practice acknowledgement of an incident drives significantly different behaviour.

[layer8]

Right, but I believe that this bias created by knowing the actual outcome for a single instance is much too strong, and we should rather strive to reduce that bias. In that light, the effort expended in continued speculation about the actual truth seems mostly wasted and misdirected energy to me.

[Izkata]

> Do you mean like making sure the labs follow certain biohazard handling standards and procedures? Which they currently have to do to maintain their certifications/ratings?

Part of the lab leak claim is that the 2018 experiments mentioned in the tweet were done in a BSL2 lab even though they required BSL3 or 4.