Coronavirus: Lab Leak Part 7 - Ramifications if True

The Guardian via Yahoo (Jun 1) has an opinion piece up about the ramifications that could occur if the lab leak hypothesis for the spread of COVID-19 turns out to be true:

Because if the hypothesis is right, it will soon start to dawn on people that our mistake was not insufficient reverence for scientists, or inadequate respect for expertise, or not enough censorship on Facebook. It was a failure to think critically about all of the above, to understand that there is no such thing as absolute expertise.

By "all of the above," the writer is talking about the fact that lab leaks happen, the Wuhan lab was doing gain of function research, that the US was helping fund the research as well as some other listed bullet points that you can read in the link.

The focus of the opinion piece is that this would cause distrust in scientists, social media, etc that would expand beyond conservatives. Yet, I think there is a big miss in this opinion piece. I suspect there would be significant blowback against China. Yes, it appears that the United States provided research funding to the Wuhan lab and so we would be culpable, as well. The article discusses this. I would doubt that US scientists or government officials would have known that the virus leaked from the lab; however.

On the other hand, China would have known that it came from their lab. China could have come clean about it in late 2019 or early 2020. Instead, it is now July 2021 and they haven't admitted it. Maybe they don't have anything to admit to. But if they do, I think there will be some global anger aimed at China for hiding this important info. 

I think people would come to two conclusions:

First, China could have warned the globe much earlier about the situation. Maybe it wouldn't have made much of a difference, but who would really know. The globe might have reacted much quicker in cutting off travel to and from China. Now, I suppose you could say that they should have done this anyways. On the other hand, the globe might have taken things much more seriously if they knew it was a manipulated virus. To me, there's just something about a lab virus that would freak out the world.

Second, this would put gain of function research into question and I suspect people will be angered that gain of function research wasn't questioned sooner due to China hiding the truth. 

This could lead to economic pain for China as many companies might feel compelled / pressured to take their business elsewhere.