I remember when you were a racist or a Russian stooge if you believed the Wuhan virus escaped from a laboratory. Three years later, it turns out you just had your eyes open.
In all of the discussion over whether it did or didn’t, I don’t recall any discussion about the main question I would ask about that lab.
Why? Why does it exist?
Why is anyone studying “gain of function” virology — that is to say, why is anyone studying ways to make viruses more deadly? What monsters would weaponize disease?
Life is short and often cruel. Why study how to make it shorter and crueler?
I’m relieved that people have finally come to their senses enough to realize that if a pandemic has its roots in the same town as a bioweapons laboratory, the lab probably had something to do with it.
But I’m discouraged by the thought that someone took leave of their senses and convinced enough other people to build and equip a place where diseases are stored against the day when they can be deployed against human beings.
I have no illusions “they” are the only ones conducting such studies. I am fully confident that “we” operate a bunch of these hellish laboratories. The quotation marks are because I don’t believe such insanity belongs either to “us” or to “them.” Normal people don’t think or behave like the sociopaths who claim to rule us.
Someday, I hope and pray, humans will be better than this.