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There are more or less dangerous incarnations of gain-of-function. The most dangerous is testing animal viruses on humanized mice, evolving them to be proficient at infecting human tissue. This is of that kind, as was the stuff Daszak was doing in Wuhan. He admitted as such in a tweet: https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/50-SARSr-CoVs.png
There's no need for strict, legalistic accuracy: the US has drone-striked and tortured people on much hazier grounds like 'some Afghans said he was a terrorist' or 'there were weird-looking tubes in his car'. The definition of terrorism swings around like a weather-vane in a hurricane, depending on who's serving who's interests at any given point. You can be arrested for thoughtcrime if you stand still too long, silently praying, near a UK abortion clinic. Trivial matters get grossly authoritarian treatment.
Daszak, Bat Lady and the humanized mice brigade aren't serving anyone's interests. They're not creating vaccines for real viruses killing in real time, they're conjuring up new threats. The best interests of humanity are served by liquidating them and sending a clear, unambiguous message that this sort of thing is not to be tolerated, no matter what word-games are played it'll lead to a sticky end.
Those threats exist, they just haven't reached the human population yet. It sounds like your position is that surveillance for pandemic-potential viruses shouldn't be done as you believe it's not worth the risk, and we should instead wait for the spillover to happen before studying a virus? Does this include not studying known pandemic-potential viruses like H5N1? Who defines what counts as a distinct virus (the link you gave talks about "SARS-related CoVs" after all, and was posted well after the SARS spillover)? Actually, until you've collected and analyzed the viruses, how do you even know if there's novel ones in your sample; should we stop collecting viruses from non-humans all-together? What about research on viruses affecting agriculture (see H5N1)? Or maybe I'm drawing the line at the wrong place and you think no research should be done with humanized animal models, in which case I don't know how you're going to develop any vaccines.
No they don't exist or at least they didn't exist until they were artificially created by the GoF brigade. An animal virus is not a threat (except for farmers), an animal virus that infects humans is a threat.
It should be done but surveillance does not equal creating pandemic-potential viruses, which is what they did and what they're still doing all over the world.
Yes, this is how cause and effect works. We can only study a virus after it emerges.
Collect them, study them, don't stick them in humanized mice and make them dangerous to humans!
Go read my last paragraph again, Daszak wasn't conducting vaccine research because vaccine research can only be done after the virus emerges. The idea that these people are going to predict what viruses emerge and have vaccines ready for them is insane. There are so many potential combinations of dangerous viruses and not nearly enough money to develop vaccines for them.
And even if they did pick the right viruses and do preliminary research, it still isn't helpful. Vaccine development is quite fast already, the issue is with safety, testing, mass production, logistics and politics - not the basic science.
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