The what, in this case, was the type of thing that could cause another pandemic: This has not made enough people very angry, and is insufficiently widely regarded as a bad move. It happened, and we are paying for similar things to happen again. There’s a section on that below (you can Ctrl-F for Gain of Function).
Yeah Balsa should definitely think about ways to curb (halt) GoF research. I have no idea how to do this. You somehow need buy in from the research community... which is to say they have to give up their research and funding. Yeah that is not going to happen.
>>> How do we write a law that stops people from doing and building this?
"It shall be an affirmative defense to homicide in any degree that the decedent had engaged in virological gain of function research in the past year."
I did not have the same "this is permanent midnight" reaction to the NYT suggestions. I'm generally done changing behaviors due to personal COVID risk, but I have elderly parents and grandparents I'll be seeing over the holidays (all have avoided covid so far) and thought something like NYT's suggestions seemed reasonable: at least timing my booster to maximize effectiveness around Christmas, perhaps mini-quarantining, perhaps testing and masking when I wouldn't otherwise.
Are these recommendations really so objectionable?
Someone needs to put a million dollar bounty on the head of a prominent GoF researcher. Even if it doesn't get claimed, it should be enough to scare these researchers into oblivion.
Blanket statements such as "ban gain of function" research sound good, but what we really want is to ban research where the potential downside is enormous and the potential upside is small or non-existent. I don't think this particular research qualifies as being clearly off the tail end of the cost-benefit curve, and we should recognize that there is, in fact, a curve.
"How do we write a law that prevents people from doing this?" XY problem. Should we really feel constrained to legal means in stopping people actively trying to destroy civilization?
Yeah Balsa should definitely think about ways to curb (halt) GoF research. I have no idea how to do this. You somehow need buy in from the research community... which is to say they have to give up their research and funding. Yeah that is not going to happen.
>>> How do we write a law that stops people from doing and building this?
"It shall be an affirmative defense to homicide in any degree that the decedent had engaged in virological gain of function research in the past year."
I don't understand this:
> The larger your state, the less of an issue ‘can’t cross state lines’ poses
I would think large state create more of an issue (farther to travel to get out of state), not less.
This is what I just emailed to my congressman:
Criminalize gain of function research.
I don't want to die.
Some Boston University scientists just published a paper on how they mixed COVID variants
to combine the infectiousness of one with the virulence (higher fatality rate) of another.
Every experiment like this is risking a lab leak. Protocols are never perfect
and are never followed perfectly. Even a tiny chance of escape is unacceptable when many
millions of lives are stake.
Banning the federal government from funding this stuff would be a good start.
But millions of us will be just as dead if the lab leak is privately funded.
Gain of function research should be a federal offense.
I did not have the same "this is permanent midnight" reaction to the NYT suggestions. I'm generally done changing behaviors due to personal COVID risk, but I have elderly parents and grandparents I'll be seeing over the holidays (all have avoided covid so far) and thought something like NYT's suggestions seemed reasonable: at least timing my booster to maximize effectiveness around Christmas, perhaps mini-quarantining, perhaps testing and masking when I wouldn't otherwise.
Are these recommendations really so objectionable?
Someone needs to put a million dollar bounty on the head of a prominent GoF researcher. Even if it doesn't get claimed, it should be enough to scare these researchers into oblivion.
I struggle to identify what was done here as gain of function. Here's a good alternative viewpoint from Derek Lowe: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/gain-function-not-so-fast
Blanket statements such as "ban gain of function" research sound good, but what we really want is to ban research where the potential downside is enormous and the potential upside is small or non-existent. I don't think this particular research qualifies as being clearly off the tail end of the cost-benefit curve, and we should recognize that there is, in fact, a curve.
> You can’t scale what won’t sell.
Man... you don’t know how much you just made me go “oh shit! I had that same thought but this is phrased so much more elegantly.”
"How do we write a law that prevents people from doing this?" XY problem. Should we really feel constrained to legal means in stopping people actively trying to destroy civilization?