[mkolodny]

I'm surprised people are still making that argument even after the pandemic showed us the risk is nowhere near worth the reward. Regardless you need to create a vaccine for the discovered virus (which can take less than a week, as was the case with covid). And then you still need to go through months of human trials.

I was hoping we were done risking starting pandemics by purposefully creating new deadly viruses.

[nemo44x]

Agreed. Making super viruses to show what could possibly happen, however unlikely, is the epitome of hubris. But boy is it a great to get funding.

I do wonder what the calculus is when comparing the chance nature could mutate and successfully introduce itself to the human population vs the chance of it escaping a lab after being created by humans to study gain of function, etc.

[jjeaff]

the jury is still out on whether COVID originated from a lab. it seems very possible, but there is still little evidence that proves it was created in a lab.

[andai]

Well, we do know COVID did leak from a lab in China at least one time: in 2021, a researcher in Taiwan was bitten by an infected mouse and contracted the disease.

Edit: My bad, as far as public knowledge goes, coronavirus leaked three times in China (SARS coronavirus 2x, COVID 1x), and once in Singapore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...

As for Wuhan in November 2019, the Chinese government took several actions at that time which you would expect to be taken in response to a biosecurity incident: visits from biosecurity officials, remedial biosecurity training, and (coincidentally) government simultaneously began work on a COVID vaccine.

Only circumstantial evidence, though... so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Source: a study by the US senate, covered here by WSJ: https://archive.ph/Kh2Fr

[HaZeust]

Can you please cite a source that shares that it took "less than a week" for the COVID vaccine to be developed after discovery?

[mkolodny]

“You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac...

[palata]

Isn't there a big difference between "designed" and "developed"? For instance the whole testing phase?

Which doesn't mean it is not impressively fast, but still it's not done in a week. Plus testing the covid vaccines was quick because there were many many people to participate in the tests.

[zelphirkalt]

Is this assuming, that Covid was lab made? Since I have not seen or read about proof of that theory, this comes across a bit like conspiracy theory.