Why would a zoonotic origin of COVID reduce the risk of GoF?
A poor analogy is suppose in 1800s humans encountered nuclear explosion near nuclear research lab. It could have human or natural origin. If natural then it is important for us to accelerate nuclear research with relatively lax regulations and develop countermeasures. If human origin, lack of sufficient regulation is a more probable cause.
This is effectively not true in light of the mRNA platform, which negates the rest of your argument as well, because the existence of the mRNA platform is not contingent upon the origin.
Dangerous GoF was made excessively dangerous by the invention of the mRNA platform regardless of whether COVID itself even happened, never mind the specific origin of it.
Doing GoF research in major metropolitan areas is very obviously unacceptable and should have been considered such prior to COVID, and should be widely considered such after COVID. Again regardless of whether COVID itself came from WIV.
We already know everything we need to know about zoonotic possibilities which is that nature can produce pathogens orders of magnitude worse than COVID on any dimension.
If after learning that COVID was zoonotic, your conclusion is "guess it's okay to keep WIV and WIV-like labs in major cities doing the type of research they were doing," then you are simply insane.
> Doing GoF research in major metropolitan areas is very obviously unacceptable.
It is not so obvious to the people wanting to accelerate the research and solve cancer, aging or whatever their pet problem at (in their opinion) slim risk of catastrophe.
> nature can produce pathogens orders of magnitude worse than COVID on any dimension
Everything is possible, including nature producing mass extinction pathogens. The key missing information is the probability. Else we all will be living in bunkers.
> If after learning that COVID was zoonotic, your conclusion is "guess it's okay to keep WIV and WIV-like labs in major cities doing the type of research they were doing," then you are simply insane.
Agree, a single data point does not warrant extreme change in status quo. But it does weaken the argument to a non-zero extent that GoF research leads to global pandemic. This has trickle down effects of eschewing additional regulations which would have been added otherwise.
What GoF research either a) increases contagiousness of a pathogen or b) increases pathogenicity of a contagion and has anything to do with "cancer, aging, or whatever their pet problem" is?
> The key missing information is the probability.
COVID did - not - change the probability.
> But it does weaken the argument to a non-zero extent that GoF research leads to global pandemic.
No! It literally doesn't! The probability of GoF research leading to a future pandemic was the same the day before the COVID outbreak as it was the day after which is the same as it is today.
The only thing that will shift those probabilities are mitigations that we put in place.
