What they were researching was the mechanisms that cause the viruses to first leap from animals to humans, something very important to understand in preventing future outbreaks of such dangerous viruses. SARS, Swine Flu, Avian Flu, Ebola, HIV, etc.
Sometimes things in science can be dangerous, or can be later misused, but that doesn't mean the research to understand how animal to human transmission happens in the first place is necessarily nefarious or done with the intent to weaponize, etc.
I know "gain of function" is easy to misrepresent to be some evil weaponization thing, but that's not actually what was being studied or why.
It's much easier to make a bio weapon by taking an already existing animal virus and coaxing it into becoming human transmissible. There are TONS of animal viruses that you would absolutely never want to cross into humans, stuff of nightmares. For a less advanced country with less capability, like China, these are shortcuts that could be very effectively used to create a plethora of deadly bio weapons on the cheap. It would make no sense that China wouldn't be exploiting that potential. We must by default operate under the assumption that any event like this is deliberate. Otherwise we risk treating every attack as an accident or happenstance.
That's a silly assertion. What is more realistic is that there isn't not any virus that made the leap to humans to be used as a bioweapon. And considering the:
Secrecy that allowed the virus to go unchecked and spread globally
Unrestricted international travel by the well-aware Chinese government that allowed the virus to spread globally
....It's clear the spread of the virus was intentional and meant to have the global effects that it had. You can't even bring it down to negligence. It's unthinkable that when a new virus is rampaging through a country, that you wouldn't stop international travel. And even though the virus is clearly not as deadly today as it was considered at first, it was definitely very deadly at the start from every perspective, so there's simply no excuse. It was mainly deadly in China because Chinese 'professional' healthcare is primarily based on holistic medicine, and the poor general state of health of the Chinese populace was clearly demonstrated.
You know what rice is? It's sugar. That's what your body turns it into when breaking it down. Rice is literally as bad for you as eating a candy bar. It's almost exactly the same as eating pure table sugar, and that's not hyperbole. As we know, China eats a lot of rice. On average, an adult Chinese person will eat 170lbs of rice in a year.
So you can essentially look at it as if they are eating 170lbs of sugar a year. Granted the average American isn't that much better, consuming 152 pounds of sugar a year. But Chinese don't only eat rice, they eat other sweet stuff too. That American sugar consumption is total sugar. The Chinese rice consumption is not a total. With that in consideration, the average Chinese person probably is technically consuming well over 200lbs of sugar a year. Then there's a plethora of other reasons why Chinese populace as a whole, is even less healthy (and thus more susceptible to illness) than even obese populations.
But the point is, from China's standpoint, they were dealing with a deadly new virus, and they did nothing to stop its spread internationally. As they were literally boarding people up into their homes, they were also boarding people to fly internationally in huge numbers. That's not a mere oversight, that can't be anything but intentional and motivated by nefarious intent.
Not actually true.
What they were researching was the mechanisms that cause the viruses to first leap from animals to humans, something very important to understand in preventing future outbreaks of such dangerous viruses. SARS, Swine Flu, Avian Flu, Ebola, HIV, etc.
Sometimes things in science can be dangerous, or can be later misused, but that doesn't mean the research to understand how animal to human transmission happens in the first place is necessarily nefarious or done with the intent to weaponize, etc.
I know "gain of function" is easy to misrepresent to be some evil weaponization thing, but that's not actually what was being studied or why.
It's much easier to make a bio weapon by taking an already existing animal virus and coaxing it into becoming human transmissible. There are TONS of animal viruses that you would absolutely never want to cross into humans, stuff of nightmares. For a less advanced country with less capability, like China, these are shortcuts that could be very effectively used to create a plethora of deadly bio weapons on the cheap. It would make no sense that China wouldn't be exploiting that potential. We must by default operate under the assumption that any event like this is deliberate. Otherwise we risk treating every attack as an accident or happenstance.
So all the other viruses that have made the leap to humans were all intentional, man made bioweapons?
That's a silly assertion. What is more realistic is that there isn't not any virus that made the leap to humans to be used as a bioweapon. And considering the:
....It's clear the spread of the virus was intentional and meant to have the global effects that it had. You can't even bring it down to negligence. It's unthinkable that when a new virus is rampaging through a country, that you wouldn't stop international travel. And even though the virus is clearly not as deadly today as it was considered at first, it was definitely very deadly at the start from every perspective, so there's simply no excuse. It was mainly deadly in China because Chinese 'professional' healthcare is primarily based on holistic medicine, and the poor general state of health of the Chinese populace was clearly demonstrated.
You know what rice is? It's sugar. That's what your body turns it into when breaking it down. Rice is literally as bad for you as eating a candy bar. It's almost exactly the same as eating pure table sugar, and that's not hyperbole. As we know, China eats a lot of rice. On average, an adult Chinese person will eat 170lbs of rice in a year.
So you can essentially look at it as if they are eating 170lbs of sugar a year. Granted the average American isn't that much better, consuming 152 pounds of sugar a year. But Chinese don't only eat rice, they eat other sweet stuff too. That American sugar consumption is total sugar. The Chinese rice consumption is not a total. With that in consideration, the average Chinese person probably is technically consuming well over 200lbs of sugar a year. Then there's a plethora of other reasons why Chinese populace as a whole, is even less healthy (and thus more susceptible to illness) than even obese populations.
But the point is, from China's standpoint, they were dealing with a deadly new virus, and they did nothing to stop its spread internationally. As they were literally boarding people up into their homes, they were also boarding people to fly internationally in huge numbers. That's not a mere oversight, that can't be anything but intentional and motivated by nefarious intent.