Returning to the issue of the general pandemics threat to humanity, I think this is an easy-to-understand and interesting article + short video about the risk and nature of future pandemics.
"In the last 20 years, we've had six significant threats - SARS, MERS, Ebola, avian influenza and swine flu," Prof Matthew Baylis from the University of Liverpool told BBC News. "We dodged five bullets but the sixth got us."
"And this is not the last pandemic we are going to face, so we need to be looking more closely at wildlife disease."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52775386The Nipah virus mentioned in the text (not the film) sounds extremely nasty. In the Malaysian outbreak it made the jump from fruit bats to pigs and then from pigs to humans, but thankfully didn't appear very 'competent' in spreading from humans to humans. (This time around at least). Just a few isolated cases of it doing that, apparently (see Wikipedia article on "Nipah virus").
The article and film also make clear (again) why medical researchers collect and study selected animal viruses in certain dedicated labs. And why this essentially is more of a 'good idea' than a 'bad idea'. As the researcher puts it: "To find them before they find us". And hence to have better information for recognizing and combating an outbreak caused in the real world by a 'mystery' virus. But of course this also creates a risk, theoretically at least, of a dangerous virus 'leaking' from a lab. On the other hand, the risk of further new viruses in the outside world making the jump to humans and, er, going viral, would seem to be much greater than a possible route via research labs.
(If anyone has some new actual evidence to back up this claim regarding Covid-19, then shoot. Otherwise BTDT). Assuming that these labs are run properly and also monitored properly by other bodies. A risk trade-off, in other words. Ending all research on such viruses would, IMO, be a head-in-the-sand approach because when the new pandemic comes, sooner or later, we would probably start off with a much poorer knowledge base than we would otherwise.
-- But I've just had a great idea. Don't try and reduce human encroachment on, and destruction of, jungle habitats. Accelerate it! Carpet napalming of every jungle in the world, followed up by mass spraying of herbicides and cyanide. No more jungle, no more jungle wildlife, no more nasty emerging viruses. Sorted.