[cbsmith]

> I literally can't think of a more dangerous kind of research that we could be doing as a species than messing around and making viruses more dangerous.

You have a very limited imagination. ;-) I assure you that extensive research into biological (not involving viruses), chemical, and nuclear weapons... and really a wide variety of weapons research is easily more dangerous. There's plenty of opportunity in other areas like materials science, genetics, etc., as well.

> If we really have to do it, then we can do it in the middle of a desert with quarantine procedures instead of near/in population centers.

Now you'll want to have an ultra-secure means of transporting highly dangerous biological samples, not to mention research teams & observers, at very high speeds to the middle of a desert. Are you sure you've improved the risk profile?

[kosievdmerwe]

> I assure you that extensive research into biological (not involving viruses), chemical, and nuclear weapons... and really a wide variety of weapons research is easily more dangerous.

They very much are not.

Viruses and bacteria are unique in the fact that they can harm the whole globe as opposed to chemical and other disasters that will likely only harm the immediate area.

And harming the whole globe is all the more certain for infectious diseases if you put them in the middle of a large city with lots of air travel.

> Now you'll want to have an ultra-secure means of transporting highly dangerous biological samples, not to mention research teams & observers, at very high speeds to the middle of a desert. Are you sure you've improved the risk profile?

Why would you need to transport things at high speed for speculative research involving newly generated viruses/bacteria?

I never said anything about analysing things involving people who are actively infected, but there the disease is already out in the public, so the risk profile is completely different.

[cbsmith]

> Viruses and bacteria are unique in the fact that they can harm the whole globe as opposed to chemical and other disasters that will likely only harm the immediate area.

First of all, you added in bacteria, which are not viruses.

However, this statement isn't a useful statement "X is unique because it can harm the whole world, as opposed to Y that will likely only harm the immediate area".

The implication is that X will almost always harm the whole world, and Y will almost always impact the immediate area, but that's not necessarily true.

(I would remind you the "1% chance we'll ignite the entire atmosphere" of the Manhattan Project. Fortunately, any future nuclear weapons we might develop will almost certainly be less powerful... oh wait.)

It also implies that the risk of X and the risk of Y doing harm are equivalent, and that's undoubtedly not true. It's ignoring the reality that nature is already doing X all the time, and primarily in high population centers.

> And harming the whole globe is all the more certain for infectious diseases if you put them in the middle of a large city with lots of air travel.

I would think it'd be all the more certain if you're regularly putting the researchers working in the lab, along with any biological samples they might have, on flights to and from such large cities.

Pandemic risk is a systemic problem and has to be evaluated as such. Controls/mitigations you have in place generally have way more impact than where the experiments are run, and it's really not as simple as "well if the lab is away from people that reduces the risk".

> Why would you need to transport things at high speed for speculative research involving newly generated viruses/bacteria?

Because this research is not isolated from reality. Much of what they do is take samples from the real world, observe virology in the real world (both human and non-human populations), and work with front line healthcare workers who are usually the first to see new viral threats. Without that you pretty much eliminate the value of the research entirely.

> I never said anything about analysing things involving people who are actively infected, but there the disease is already out in the public, so the risk profile is completely different.

The threat doesn't come directly from a virus that is already out in the public. It comes from how a virus that is already out there might evolve. You appear to believe that nature is conducting fewer and less significant experiments in evolving viruses than people in labs. I don't think that is supported by the evidence.

The pandemic risk profile with a virus that is already out in the public is that it might evolve into something that has never been out in public before. Nature is conducting these experiments every day, all day. I'd be more worried about the outcomes of those experiments than anything going on in a lab.

[peteradio]

Nature has a more limited tool kit and has limited ability to bring together virus genes that would otherwise not occur in the same nucleus.

[cbsmith]

> Nature has a more limited tool kit and has limited ability to bring together virus genes that would otherwise not occur in the same nucleus.

Would that that were true. I'm curious how you explain how your perception aligns with the reality that no lab, anywhere, at anytime since the outbreak, has been able to produce COVID-19 variants as fast as occurred naturally.

Nature is experimenting all the time, with the overwhelming majority of viruses out there, with absolutely no interest in controls, mitigations or protections for the human population... and nature is far trickier to observe. We've gotten pretty good at reducing the risk from nature, but make no mistake, even with all the GoF research we could possibly hope for, it far outpaces our capacity to experiment. The only advantage GoF labs have is that they can direct their research in specific areas where there is greatest risk. That's the whole challenge.

[peteradio]

Variants are tiny natural changes.

[Wowfunhappy]

I assume the biological samples need to get transported at some point anyway. The researchers would need to live on-site. Yes this would dramatically increase the cost.

Personally, I think we just shouldn't do this at all.

[cbsmith]

> I assume the biological samples need to get transported at some point anyway. The researchers would need to live on-site. Yes this would dramatically increase the cost.

If you're worried about lab contamination, the risk is from the researchers moving amongst the population. I agree that you'd rather not, but I don't agree that regularly putting them on planes to and from major population centers really reduces the risk.

> Personally, I think we just shouldn't do this at all.

[Shrugs]. Some people are pro-pandemic.

[Wowfunhappy]

> I don't agree that regularly putting [gain of function researchers] on planes to and from major population centers really reduces the risk.

This would have to not happen regularly. The researchers would need to stay for many months at a time, and undergo a separate quarantine before they re-enter society.

[cbsmith]

> This would have to not happen regularly. The researchers would need to stay for many months at a time, and undergo a separate quarantine before they re-enter society.

So you would add months of delay, significantly impaired observability, and far less agility to our response to emerging threats. Congratulations, you've just increased risk.

[peteradio]

Are researchers acting as result couriers? Your responses come across as very daft and fighting for status quo of everything as it relates to virology research.. why?