Thread by @Ayjchan

If you’re curious about how SARS viruses can leak from a lab, @politicalmath and I discuss on his podcast.

One misconception is lab origins = creation of a novel virus from scratch.

But there are many lab-based scenarios by which pathogens can emerge.

soundcloud.com/matt-shapiro-8…

I listened to a BBC podcast this morning that stated that it is incredibly unlikely that SARS2 was designed or created to infect humans. 💯 agree.

But the issue is that we aren’t evaluating the risks of outbreaks stemming from research fieldwork or simple experiments in the lab.

Sometimes experiments that were not designed to create a dangerous pathogen can still surprisingly produce a dangerous pathogen.

You might be working with an attenuated or mouse-adapted strain, engineer in a novel feature (eg the FCS), and suddenly it has pandemic potential.

It’s this grey area of what counts as risky pathogen research/fieldwork that more experts need to be discussing.

Is the simple process of hunting for viruses and culturing them in the lab risky? Should these projects be re-evaluated and de-risked?

Many top experts say that the increasing interfaces between humans and wild animals is accelerating the emergence of novel human pathogens.

But it is often not stated that virus hunting is also one of these interfaces where humans are exposed to wild animals and pathogens.

Acknowledging the risk of natural spillover does not diminish risk of lab leak.

Acknowledging the risk of lab leak does not diminish risk of natural spillover.

These risks are not inconsistent with each other. They’re the same logic that human activity drives emerging diseases.