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Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

nytimes.com

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Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#11

Post by fabian2k »

One thing the pandemic certainly has shown is just how dangerous an otherwise unremarkable animal virus can be if it gains the ability to infect humans. Simply because nobody has a pre-existing immunity it gains enormous advantages in its ability to spread compared to similar viruses that are already endemic.

I think previous candidates for new pandemic viruses did mislead us as those never got far enough to become a true pandemic. Those were scarier than SARS-CoV2 by lethality, but were manageable by the usual epidemiological tools. Now we've also seen how a virus can spread that is far more contagious, and how we are unable to stop such a virus.

What I found scary about SARS-CoV2 is just how much it improved between variants. It didn't have any special features like influenza to increase its potential there. It simply had the numbers, enormous amounts of hosts to evolve in. So potentially any virus that is able to spread as far initially could be able to evolve in a similar manner.

I think avoiding many if not most gain-of-function experiments is a reasonable lesson to learn from this pandemic.

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#12

Post by ALittleLight »

fzeroracer wrote: post #7
dehrmann wrote: post #4

Rather than modifying viruses and seeing what happens in the hope that that will inform us for the next pandemic, it seems smarter to start making more vaccines with different techniques where mistakes are lower-stakes and the benefit is more clear.

What exactly do you think gain of function research is for? In order to determine how viruses behave in a safe and reasonable manner, gain of function is one of the ways we do so. For example, modifying a virus that normally only infects humans to infect an animal, so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments. Some of these fears and comments reminds me a lot of comments ar…

One huge problem is the "safe and reasonable" part. Gain of function has killed millions in a recent lab leak you may have heard of (high likelihood). That doesn't seem safe to me.

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#13

Post by fzeroracer »

dehrmann wrote: post #8
fzeroracer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you think gain of function research is for? In order to determine how viruses behave in a safe and reasonable manner, gain of function is one of the ways we do so. For example, modifying a virus that normally only infects humans to infect an animal, so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments. Some of these fears and comments reminds me a lot of comments ar…

> so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments This is where I see a gap. How does it actually inform vaccine design? Are there not enough wild viruses to play with?

Do you believe you can cure brain cancer by looking at skin cancer?

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#14

Post by somewhereoutth »

purpleblue wrote: post #5

I'm glad that things are slowing down here. Virology research is one of those things no one ever thought about, but the fact that a single careless lab was able to release a virus that killed tens of millions around the world should be a wake up call that the researchers were outpacing the regulations. The entire industry around the world has to be heavily regulated at this point to prevent this from happening again.

Except of course that isn't what happened.

All evidence points to zoonotic spillover, aggravated by our encroachment on previously undisturbed natural areas and global warming.

Sadly, it was both political useful ('the Chinese did it!'), and ideologically useful ('a few faulty humans did this, like in the movies'), to blame the lab in Wuhan. By doing so, we can absolve ourselves of blame, and of need to take action - action both to mitigate the effects of this pandemic, and to prepare for the next. The next being an inevitability, just a question of when (within 10 years is my uneducated guess)

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#15

Post by jncfhnb »

dehrmann wrote: post #8
fzeroracer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you think gain of function research is for? In order to determine how viruses behave in a safe and reasonable manner, gain of function is one of the ways we do so. For example, modifying a virus that normally only infects humans to infect an animal, so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments. Some of these fears and comments reminds me a lot of comments ar…

> so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments This is where I see a gap. How does it actually inform vaccine design? Are there not enough wild viruses to play with?

Not of the variety we need to study

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#16

Post by xracy »

I get that there are a lot of arm-chair experts who think this was a lab-leak. But we're making many large jumps here from:

Was this created in a lab? Was this leaked from a lab? Is there something inherently dangerous about studying viruses in labs? Full NIMBY.

The positive externalities of this are good jobs around virology study to try and prevent the next pandemic. But we're just leaning super hard into fear-mongering here. How many people in the comments of this article really describe the processes used at each of these labs to prevent the viruses from getting out? How many can say how effective those practices are? We've still not proven that COVID was a lab-leak, so we're attempting to say that something that otherwise has a very safe record is dangerous based on what might have happened.

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#17

Post by xracy »

ALittleLight wrote: post #12
fzeroracer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you think gain of function research is for? In order to determine how viruses behave in a safe and reasonable manner, gain of function is one of the ways we do so. For example, modifying a virus that normally only infects humans to infect an animal, so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments. Some of these fears and comments reminds me a lot of comments ar…

One huge problem is the "safe and reasonable" part. Gain of function has killed millions in a recent lab leak you may have heard of (high likelihood). That doesn't seem safe to me.

citation needed

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#18

Post by jksk61 »

dehrmann wrote: post #8
fzeroracer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you think gain of function research is for? In order to determine how viruses behave in a safe and reasonable manner, gain of function is one of the ways we do so. For example, modifying a virus that normally only infects humans to infect an animal, so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments. Some of these fears and comments reminds me a lot of comments ar…

> so we can examine how it works in a lab and in turn design better vaccines or treatments This is where I see a gap. How does it actually inform vaccine design? Are there not enough wild viruses to play with?

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Sun Tzu.

How do you think you can devise a vaccine if you don't know the virus? They experiment to find out what are the weaknesses of the enemy (i.e. proteins and other markers), so that they can target it. If the next pandemy is caused by a similar strain: ta-dam you have the vaccine already (or at least you know what to target).

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#19

Post by tmaly »

xracy wrote: post #16

I get that there are a lot of arm-chair experts who think this was a lab-leak. But we're making many large jumps here from: Was this created in a lab? Was this leaked from a lab? Is there something inherently dangerous about studying viruses in labs? Full NIMBY. The positive externalities of this are good jobs around virology study to try and prevent the next pandemic. But we're just leaning super hard into fear-mong…

I have not kept up with this topic.

What does the evidence point to?

Has any new evidence surfaced in the past year?

Re: Lab leak fight casts chill over virology research

#20

Post by xracy »

fabian2k wrote: post #11

One thing the pandemic certainly has shown is just how dangerous an otherwise unremarkable animal virus can be if it gains the ability to infect humans. Simply because nobody has a pre-existing immunity it gains enormous advantages in its ability to spread compared to similar viruses that are already endemic. I think previous candidates for new pandemic viruses did mislead us as those never got far enough to become a…

> I think avoiding many if not most gain-of-function experiments is a reasonable lesson to learn from this pandemic.

Help me out, I don't see the thread of logic from your previous points...

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