LittleDixie
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2021
- Posts
- 2,732
The fact is that there are many viruses that exist in some non-human animals that are only a few mutations away from crossing over to humans. SARS was one of these viruses, and SARS killed about 10% of the people who contracted it. Viruses will occasionally undergo a structural mutation that makes them viable for human incubation and this is a risk.
People like Peter Daszak understand that these viruses are a looming threat to humanity and could cause a catastrophic plague. They're not wrong. This is a real threat.
These are smart guys, so they think "One day this virus will start infecting people and we will have to scramble to create a vaccine to fight it. That could take years, and in the meantime millions of people could die." But, because Daszak is a smart guy he knows that he can force exactly the mutations that would be needed to infect people. THEN, he can create a vaccine for what he just created.
I think that Daszak wanted to identify risks to humans, he wanted to create vaccines before the viruses naturally mutated. He wanted to have a library of proactive vaccines for viruses that haven't actually been seen in the wild yet.
I don't think this is dumb. It's logical and it is exactly what gain-of-function research aims to do. But, all it takes is a moment of carelessness - just one skipped safety protocol - one overlooked shortcoming and the virus will get out. I don't think they released it on purpose, I think that they made a mistake. They made a mistake and the have got to lie about it because if anyone finds out they are going to shut down gain-of-function research, and the scientists will be right back where they started - knowing that a novel virus could drop and that they will have to wait for it to evolve naturally before they can start fighting it.
