[DiogenesKynikos]

Nobody in this thread seems to know what gain of function means. It's a very broad term covering a large percentage of all virology research. If you ban it, you might as well say that we don't want to do any research into understanding viruses from now on.

When you compare the massive risks of spillover from animal populations, which have millions of interactions with humans every minute of every day, with the risks from a small number of highly contained biology labs, the ratio between the two risks is so enormous that this entire discussion is absurd.

[timschmidt]

You're right that we should still do the research. But we should be doing it on an island, or a ship at sea, with supplies delivered by drone, and as little population exchange as possible.

[DiogenesKynikos]

That depends on whether the research increases the risk of a pandemic by any appreciable amount, compared to all the other things humans do.

It's kind of absurd that he have hundreds of millions of farmers and hunters interacting with infected animals every day, and nobody cares, but then we have a few researchers interacting with the same viruses under highly controlled conditions, and that's what we're worried about.

The reason is that people have watched too many sci-fi horror movies and listened to too many xenophobic / fear-mongering politicians who want to find scapegoats.

The problem with imposing even tighter conditions on research is that you end up making the research much more difficult, expensive, unattractive to actual scientists who have to live their lives. And all that for security theater, just to pander to ignorant politicians who won't actually be satisfied.

[timschmidt]

I don't know how you can read about the half dozen or more documented cases of lab leaks in this thread - regardless of what you believe about covid - and call heightened restrictions for experimental work with human-infectious viruses security theatre. It's not sci-fi horror movies folks are worried about, it's people making mistakes the way all people do. The way you seem to be doing.

We take the effort to air gap infected or security critical IT systems, but can't be bothered to air gap humanity from existential threats. If protecting all of humanity from the next pandemic is too much work for virologists, maybe it's best that they consider another career?

[DiogenesKynikos]

The examples of "lab leaks" being given in this thread are things like a large-scale human vaccine trial not using a properly inactivated virus. This is not a "lab leak" in anything like the sense of that is being alleged here.

> We take the effort to air gap infected or security critical IT systems, but can't be bothered to air gap humanity from existential threats.

My whole point is that we're not air-gapped in the first place. Millions of humans are interacting with infected animals every day, under conditions that are much less safe and controlled.

Imagine if all of your data had been leaked to the public internet, was mirrored across a dozen websites, and was being downloaded 1000 times a day, but then one security researcher had your data on an encrypted drive, and only read it on an air-gapped computer. Would you be more worried about the one security researcher, or the dozens of publicly accessible websites?

> If protecting all of humanity from the next pandemic is too much work for virologists, maybe it's best that they consider another career?

They are protecting you, and the thanks they get is that you scapegoat them, hound them online, and cheer when they get fired. You should be grateful that people like Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology worked so hard on understanding coronaviruses for decades, and warned about the risks of a pandemic. Instead, without any knowledge of the subject, you're participating in a witch hunt against her and her colleagues.

[timschmidt]

> My whole point is that we're not air-gapped in the first place. Millions of humans are interacting with infected animals every day, under conditions that are much less safe and controlled.

Factory farming is indeed a dangerous breeding ground for infectious disease which needs to be addressed. Farmers, however, are not performing gain of function research on the diseases in their herd. The largest danger of factory farms seems to be the widespread application of front line antibiotics, which is another issue entirely. Attempts to conflate the two are disingenuous at best. Unscientific whataboutism at worst.

> people like Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology worked so hard on understanding coronaviruses for decades, and warned about the risks of a pandemic. Instead, without any knowledge of the subject, you're participating in a witch hunt against her and her colleagues.

I've worked in science for more than a decade. I have lab experience. I have never named or witch hunted anyone as you seem to have. I have advocated for the most basic level of isolation of potentially dangerous experiments, and this is your response.

Thank you for demonstrating the arrogance which underlies the problem.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> Farmers, however, are not performing gain of function research on the diseases in their herd.

The phrase "gain of function" has become a general-purpose bogeyman, but 99% of the people using it have no idea what it means.

Farmers are interacting with viruses that are far more dangerous than the gain-of-function viruses. Gain-of-function experiments are generally just characterizing properties of viruses that already exist out in the wild. An effective way of doing that is to insert a component of the wild virus into a virus you can already grow and have characterized in the lab. The lab virus gains a function, but that function already exists in the wild.

> I have advocated for the most basic level of isolation of potentially dangerous experiments

Shi Zhengli and her colleagues are taking far more than the "most basic level" of precaution. Yet you're participating in the witch hunt against her and the virology community.