It's difficult to bet on whether the next pandemic will come from nature or a lab when you don't know what experiments are ongoing or will be carried out in hundreds of labs around the world.
It's difficult enough trying to find out what was happening in 1 lab in Wuhan #OriginOfCovid
Try scaling that to 100s of labs and predicting when and where lab-based outbreaks will occur.
Try scaling that to 100s of labs and predicting when and where lab-based outbreaks will occur.
Pathogen research today is very different than it was decades ago. Scientists are actively looking for pandemic potential pathogens and genetically modifying these live pathogens in the lab - labs often based in large metropolitan cities (and sometimes they have wet markets!).
It frustrates me to see policymakers and funders looking for quick fixes to both natural and lab outbreaks. You can hunt all the viruses and use all the #MachineLearning you want - I'm confident that these are not going to help predict or prevent the next natural or lab pandemic.
Let's get real. If people are dying from a mysterious new pathogen in hospitals, it's not because not enough viruses were hunted and it's not because there wasn't enough machine learning.
ChatGPT has spoken. 
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