Yep - we kept having near-misses with prior coronaviruses, so understandably, scientists were spending a ton of energy trying to figure out what makes them so pathogenic and how the animal-human jumps occur. Considering the fact that SARS and MERS both came from zoonotic origin (and IMO, Sarscov2 did as well) - we should really be spending our energy on the best research methods to prevent another pandemic, whether that's GoF research or something else.
> Even if "we" figure out how the animal-jump can occur, it's not like "we" can stop it or even predict it.
The first step is understanding. Until you understand how it happens, statements about whether or not you can prevent it do not make much sense to me.
For example: imagine you have not yet discovered that the unwashed hands of doctors are transmitting disease in a hospital. You might make a statement very similar to yours about how "even if we can figure out how people get sick, it's not like we can stop it".
The problem is, there's no real clinical benefit that comes out of gain of function research. Virologists claim that there is, but they can't point to examples of where it helped us actually treat or prevent something.
Basically they're creating bigger and bigger fires and claiming that doing so somehow helps firefighters. Next we'll have nuclear weapons researchers claiming that higher yields are good to know about so we can work out how to protect against stronger explosions.
The potential benefit is developing novel viruses. That's it. They will likely be infectious. Hopefully, ahem, your operating protocols prevent the release of that virus and you study it in model organisms to figure out metabolic pathways to fight it before such a real virus occurs naturally.
I suppose I'm operating from the belief that everyone cares about preventing possible virologic doomsday weapons. I'm sure quite a few people have not the slightest concern.
That's true, but whether the understanding is worth the risk is questionable. It seems likely that we've managed to cause rather than prevent a pandemic with this particular research.
> Until you understand how it happens, statements about whether or not you can prevent it do not make much sense to me.
Except we do understand. It seems to me that you are lacking is basic scientific knowledge. Virus mutates naturally and become more virulent due to evolution.
> For example: imagine you have not yet discovered that the unwashed hands of doctors are transmitting disease in a hospital. You might make a statement very similar to yours about how "even if we can figure out how people get sick, it's not like we can stop it".
We can control our hands, we can't control viruses in nature.
I’m not sure how realistic your example is. Prior to discovering handwashing, were scientists doing things they knew had the potential to get literally everyone morbidly sick, just to try figuring out how it worked?
