alt Hacker NewsYour status as a "defender" is measured by the fanciness of the threats you defend against, not their actual magnitude. That's why Space Force is so popular, and everyone working on vaccines is miserable.
Also, see the "lab leak" discourse. To me the question seemed irrelevant because the countermeasures would be exactly the same, but that's not how other people think; they're not interested in a mask mandate against a naturally occuring virus, but if they can tie the exact same genetically identical virus to a human enemy? The social status of the threat goes up!
Regular old measles? Not sexy. But a convenient vector for the internal threat. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/08/americas-measles-ep...
Made-up AI-assisted super-measles? Doesn't exist yet. But it's a great super sexy threat to defend against. You just have to ignore the kids dying of boring old regular naturally occuring measles in the meantime.
Replies
> they're not interested in a mask mandate against a naturally occuring virus, but if they can tie the exact same genetically identical virus to a human enemy? The social status of the threat goes up!
Oh, that's what it is? I never had a model for such thinking.
The countermeasures to prevent future lab leaks are not the same as the countermeasures to prevent natural viruses. We should take lab safety more seriously and stop enhancing the lethality of viruses regardless of what happened with Covid, but we have failed to do so, probably in part because of denial of the lab leak.