[whywhywhywhy]

> I don't know that I believe that the answer to which one happened in the case of covid-19, is all that important

It is when literally this week a version with an 80% kill rate but with the spread of the most transmissible was made in a lab for no good reason.

How many would die if that leaked out and the only reason it’s been made is just so some academic can get their name in a paper and earn some grant presumably.

The idea of we just have to trust that these labs are secure and competent enough when the fact they’re even making something so deadly raises questions about their competence. We need to start judging the people making these things with the potential to kill millions the same as we would anyone else building something that had the potential to kill millions.

I don’t see why playing with Weapons of Mass Destruction in a random lab is just considered fine when the weapon is invisible and can live inside your body or a mouse. At least Fat Man and Little Body couldn’t be carried off base by a single person.

[SturgeonsLaw]

> a version with an 80% kill rate

An 80% kill rate of mice that are genetically engineered to express human ACE genes. For comparison, the original SARS-CoV-2 strain killed 100% of those humanised mice. Those rates aren't the same among human populations.

[wnkrshm]

These kinds of experiments are going to be done either way - for example gain-of-function research on animal smallpox (which usually doesn't kill and can't infect humans) to make it lethal.

Experts on the matter (I read a book recounting smallpox research, not a domain expert myself [0]) were concerned more about the publishing of that research than about the research being done, since proliferation is deemed very easy in the field. You don't need resources as with nuclear weapons to reproduce research like that.

(Edit: typo)

[0] The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston

[rumpelstinkin]

it can't be that easy, there's plenty of groups that would routinely use something like that for terrorism etc. It hasn't happened yet, so it must be more difficult than it looks?

[wnkrshm]

I'm only citing experts on the matter (to paraphrase a quote: "all that is needed is access to a modern university's biology lab") but I think the reason we're not seeing attacks like that is that you cannot control a bioweapon - and everyone who is able to make one knows that.

[matkoniecz]

Stopping public funding of that would reduce risk.

[jonnycomputer]

I don't know whether the research should have been done, but it wasn't done for no reason, and information it obtained seems quite useful. The hope, and general assumption, has been the same mutations that led omicron to be so transmissible also reduced its lethality. This research suggests otherwise (that it was happy coincidence). That would be very concerning (and makes me want to get the omicron variant vax)

[k3liutZu]

> It is when literally this week a version with an 80% kill rate but with the spread of the most transmissible was made in a lab for no good reason.

It was a modified version bringing the kill rate down from 100% to 80% in lab mice specifically bread to be weak to this virus.

[farseer]

It could be a random lab in Cambodia, run by a professor with dreams and ambitions for fame and fortune. The point is you can't really regulate gain of function research. Pandemic preparation has to keep that in mind. That includes isolating countries immediately after a disease of unknown origin is found.

[matkoniecz]

You can, in the same way as we regulate murder.

It will not be 100% efficient, but reduction can be achieved.

[bombolo]

Then those countries will just not tell anyone.