And as someone that isn't working in the field, I have to admit that it is very illogical that they would conduct gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in a country previously hit by a coronavirus outbreak while violating safety standards. Obviously that's hindsight but shouldn't this be very obviously a bad idea? It's not like the existence of a virus like COVID-19/sarscov-2 was completely unexpected.

[–] Silverseren@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean, you'd do the research where you would be finding the wild zoonotic pathogens you want to study. So the location makes perfect sense.

The biosafety issues are more just a long-standing problem with how science is done in China in general, which is overall bad.