Controversial experiments that could make bird flu more risky to resume (2019) (opens in new tab)

A general defense is that nature is a far better incubator and gain-of-function laboratory that we could ever hope to be. A few billion birds have caught bird flu in the past decade, so we're talking about trillions and trillions of viruses constantly undergoing mutation in close proximity with farm mammals and humans all over the world... If we know the genetics of what turns a bird flu into one transmissible to humans, it's probably better to "get in front of it" rather than just awaiting that mutation to happen somewhere in nature for the first time.

There's a chance that being more informed might help form a different opinion more aligned with most informed people.

As long as china and other countries refuse to operate sanitary food chains, the risk they represent will be 1000s of times higher than a high security lab. That is why so many zoonotic diseases come from such places and so few from the rest of the world.

Don't "strain out a fly and swallow a camel"...

I was trying to figure out how bird flu would damage my CV.

> Weird title, needs a comma after "risky", but I guess HN removes them while sanitizing

It would be grammatically incorrect in English to put a single comma there. A correct alternative would be to put a comma there and also change "that" to ", which" - ie, reading, "Controversial experiments, which could make bird flu more risky, to resume". The entire relative clause needs to be sandwiched with commas; putting a single one at the end is incorrect.

That said, the title as it stands is grammatically correct, although it is potentially ambiguous in meaning.

Other languages have different rules about comma usage, but this is how it works in English.

What even is the most generous, steelman argument of how this could help humanity prepare for a pandemic? The article just glossed over that part.

Because after Covid it sure seems like whatever it is, there are a lot of much lower hanging fruit as far as detection, early testing, contact tracing infrastructure, understanding what air is, etc that would do a lot more to prepare for the next pandemic.

Extinction is hyperbole. Even a lack of immunity to smallpox did not result in native Americans being wiped out by smallpox, although it did drastically lower their numbers.