[hn_throwaway_99]

> The correct response is likely to spend significantly more on doing actual research and a great deal on making sure everyone is well contained.

Strongly, strongly disagree. When even a teeny risk of escape means that millions of people could die, I think a much better argument is to simply make certain types of research completely off limits.

I'm certainly not the only person who thinks this. Zeynep Tufekci, who in my opinion had the most rational commentary during the pandemic, argued that much virus research just doesn't work from a cost/benefit analysis. For example, even if the root cause of COVID wasn't a lab leak, it's probably not a great idea having researchers milling around bat caves collecting sick bats and what not - it's very possible a zoonotic virus made the jump not necessarily in the lab but from researchers specifically looking for zoonotic viruses.

[Retric]

Looking at risks alone always biases you to avoid doing anything.

The benefits of research here are also human lives. So doing nothing has a real cost and the benefits extend indefinitely into the future.

Suppose you’re deciding between a 1% chance of a lab leak costing 10 million lives and a 20% chance you save 50 million lives over the next 100 years. That’s heavily weighted towards doing something, while still carrying significant risk. Some people would still say the risks aren’t worth it, but it’s not an obvious decision.

[mlyle]

I think you need to discount possible farther future benefits, because so much change can intervene and make the analysis invalid.

That is, when people want to do something-- risks tend to be understated and possible future benefits tend to be overstated.

I don't back the precautionary principle, but I do think risk in cost-benefit analysis has to be viewed from a pretty cautious place, in general (not just science).

[Retric]

Ultimately, we don’t know the actual benefits and I just picked numbers from thin air to illiterate a point. But yea linear extrapolation of such estimates hundreds of years into the future is nonsense.