One key lesson I came away after this many months of research has been that we were due for a coronavirus pandemic—one way or another. We may not know what that way has been, but we can still try to prevent all the potential ways we’ve learned about. And that is more important than anything else.
📑 Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling.
Despite the current dissembling, we should assume that the Chinese government also doesn’t want to go through this again — especially given that SARS, too, started there.
This means putting the public interest before personal ambitions and acknowledging that despite the wonders of its power, biomedical research also holds dangers.
To do this, government officials and scientists need to look at the big picture: Seek comity and truth instead of just avoiding embarrassment. Develop a framework that goes beyond blaming China, since the issues raised are truly global. And realize that the next big thing can simply mean taking great care with a lot of small details.
Zeynep Tufekci brings together everything that we know about viruses both past and present, explaining that even if COVID19 did not leak from a lab, that we need to learn from the current situation to make changes to the way we work within such spaces.