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I'm not entirely sure that biotech can be done safely anywhere in the world. Except maybe in a remote research station in Antarctica, where all the scientists are screened by personality before being allowed on base.
Securing complex and dangerous systems can be a hard problem to solve. I'm more familiar with computer security, since it is closer to my area of expertise.
Usually the first, most important, and sometimes only security measure is to just prevent people from having access to the thing you want safe. Passwords, secret access points, encryption, etc.
You can't really do that in biology. The biosphere is too leaky. Things get out. And often you have to give low level employees like Janitors access to areas for cleaning and routine maintenance. This would be like google basically giving access to interns to their most valued databased, just so the interns could do some data entry.
Unless you have a pathogen that is ridiculously virulent, such that it can survive indefinitely in the atmosphere and get to a human, you can mitigate most of the risk by having lengthy quarantine periods for workers with repeated screening.
Unfortunate that's not very tenable, since hardly anyone would agree to work shifts closer to that of a nuclear submarine, but if they're not dead in a few months, and they swab negative, they're probably fine, assuming you know which diseases you're working on. Antarctica might work too, but largely for the reason that you're accidentally isolating people for lengthy periods of time.
The workers themselves are the main problem. They constantly violate the bio sphere containment area, and they themselves are a biological entity.
I think it is difficult sticking to lengthy isolation periods and being good about cleanliness on a long term consistent basis. Hospitals do their best to accomplish this, but I don't think any hospital would ever claim 100% effectiveness. And that is the real problem. A bio testing location working on dangerous pathogens needs to be 100% effective at preventing bio sample escape. A single escape and its all over. All of the "value" of that lab is gone and far into the negative if they cause a Covid level problem. Covid caused trillions in damage, so just for any of these labs to be worth it they need to be safe 99.9999% of the time (expected damage multiplied by likelihood of causing the damage), which measured in days means about a million days without incident, and that is basically 100%.
It's insane that any GoF research is allowed in the first place. Those jokers aren't even doing it to create new vaccines? There's plenty of already extant dangerous pathogens they could be working on creating vaccines against, yet they'd rather have the thrill of creating "the most dangerous virus ever, bro!" There have been leaked emails to that effect. From the group of people who, when COVID started, agreed it very likely came from a lab, and then agreed to state the exact opposite, that it didn't come from the lab, to the public.
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I certainly agree, anyone involved in GOF research deserves to catch Ebola in the first place, the risk to reward ratio could serve as a space elevator!
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