“But you also have to deal with the specifics of the disease. How it transmits, it’s early symptoms. That’s how you isolate people early, reducing their contacts. And also understand that a lot of what we learn playing with known things in the lab is knowledge for its family when one is out in the wild. Stuff we learned about corona in the lab helped us with SARS in the wild.”
Can you name one virus that caused an outbreak that wasnt transmitted through aerosolized droplets from sneezing, coughing or by touching the eyes or surfaces? There are not that many mechanisms for transmission. Likewise there are not that many symptoms. Fever, sneezing, cough, fatigue, vomiting, etc. Anything we learned about the SARS virus in the lab only happened after the outbreak, unless you mean stuff about corona viruses in general.
“And it absolutely HAS to be done with novel extremely virulent pathogens. Because those are the biggest threats. And we need as much about those BEFORE they hit as we can. Because even the novel ones ARE members of pathogen families and do share traits.”
I would argue that the biggest risk is going to remote areas with a very low population density to find virulent viruses to “study” in or near major cities. The probability of an infected bat coming into contact with humans in some remote area is extremely low, unless the humans are there to catch bats for virus studies. An exception is China where they foolishly allow people to catch and sell bats to eat. Hopefully that will be corrected after the Covid fiasco.
As far as needing to learn about the next virus to “hit”, has anyone ever correctly predicted when, where or which virus was going to cause the next outbreak?
Ebola. But even then there’s depth you’re deliberately ignoring. Not all viruses are built equal. Some handle dryness better. Some handle heat better. Some can sit on surfaces longer. Then of course there’s the raw virulence, how much of the virus do you need to get into your body to probably get sick. Conceptually very simple, but where the rubber meets the road, when you’re trying to save human lives, shit gets complex FAST.
And every time ebola pops out your argument is proven wrong.
And now you’re using the “we’ve never gotten it right so let’s give up” argument for permanent ignorance. Except of course we DO get it right. They got it right on this one. They got it right on swine flu. And who knows how many times they get it so right they actually do prevent it. You’ve got to be in the business to know those. You’re like one of those people whining that the hurricane turned left so your area wasn’t hit. They do the best they can with the knowledge they have, they keep trying to grow the knowledge, they keep trying to do better. And they keep finding new ways. We’re now working on family vaccines, might even succeed. Do you want a flu vaccine that stops ALL the flus? No more guessing which strain is doing what and will break out, and often being wrong? That’s on the list of things their working on, a vaccine that focuses on the root of the flu, what all strains have in common, that will just stop them all.
THAT is what this kind of research CAN give us. And if you stop it you’re the enemy. It’s just that simple. Even the commonest of these things kills tons of people around the world every year. And the only way to fix that is research. Maybe if we’d had MORE research they could have had a universal corona vaccine in common usage and this thing never even gets started. That what research is for. And anybody arguing against it is a short sighted fool.