[friend_and_foe]

Banned by whom? You can't ban it. You can pretend to ban it, countries could get together and do something similar to nuclear nonproliferation, but as we see today that is only a stopgap, and the big countries that were already doing it will keep doing it.

If it wasn't a leak, we need to understand the geopolitical dynamics that led to this, if this is the case it was on par with Hiroshima and surface nuclear weapons testing, it is as dangerous a technology as nuclear weapons.

[baja_blast]

Problem is unlike a nuke, a virus can not be controlled, and gives little bargaining power when compared to nukes. If the prestige of this research was taken away, China would stop investing in it.

[ethanbond]

Well right it likely won't be actually banned, which pushes this further into the "not meaningful" territory.

"If it wasn't a leak..." are you referring to a deliberate release scenario?

[friend_and_foe]

I'm just responding to what you said, I'm assuming that's what you meant so that's what I had in mind when I wrote what I wrote, yes.

[ethanbond]

This is one of the problems with discussing the lab leak hypothesis is that it refers to two very different theories: accidental vs deliberate leak.

I was primarily referring to the accidental version because deliberate is way less believable than accidental.