[rain_iwakura]

I'm honestly of the opinion that all of the ethical questions that arose during this search are fairly minuscule compared to the potential findings that could help us end this never-ending outbreak altogether. (At least by developing better targets for drugs like Paxlovid, if their hypothesis about GI tract replication turns out to be correct.)

Of them all the potential to reveal that the patient X is hiding their HIV status is probably the biggest tragedy that can happen, since it will compromise their social and work standing due to stigma. If, however, this person does NOT know they have HIV or something similarly immunocompromising, it's in fact their moral prerogative to find this person and inform them of their disease, instead of beating around the bush trying to go easy on their feelings instead of potentially saving their life.

Either way, at some point it becomes a question of common-good vs individual good and these options aren't so bad to even have this debate.

[nradov]

There is nothing that can help us "end" the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak. A highly infectious respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs can't be eradicated or even really contained. At this point it's just one more of several endemic human coronaviruses and will always be around in some variants, much like HCoV-OC43.

[rain_iwakura]

I think you misread what I said. I said "could help us" which just implies it's a distant possibility. I am aware that it's an extremely low probability event, but not an impossible one, for example in 200 years they might find a universal beta coronavirus vaccine based on a general stem and not on a variant specific spike.

More information in this case is better outcomes regardless. We can't just accept the current state of affairs and do nothing if there are still avenues of improvement that don't involve pretending like COVID is a mild disease or forcing quarantines whenever some worse variants shows up.

Whether it will jump back from deer or dogs (two animals aside from minks who i remember testing positive for sars-cov-2) back to humans is a huge if (hasn't happened so far as far as I remember, or if it did, it couldn't have been more than ballpark ~5 cases), but I don't disagree that it might happen once more, since I'm not a lab leak guy.

[mschuster91]

> There is nothing that can help us "end" the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak.

We could massively mitigate its effects to the point we could actually live with the virus without risking the often debilitating effects it can have.

On a societal/systemic level: HEPA air filters in hospitals, care homes, public transport, schools, churches, generally any indoors place where large amounts of people gather would not just drastically cut down on transmission of pathogens of all kind, but also make the lives of people suffering from allergies so much easier. We put a lot of care into regulating our food, water, even our clothing to be free of pathogens and contaminants - but the air we breathe daily is barely regulated at all!

On an individual level, we could wash our goddamn hands more often (I'd be really interested in, but probably also really disgusted by a study on soap and towel consumption in large office buildings before, during and after the pandemic), wear masks in public transport, and stay the fuck home when sick - although I realize that this is all but impossible in the US with there not being a federal law that allows people to stay home when sick with anything without risking of getting fired. Here in Germany, it's no big deal.

Instead, our politicians seem to have completely given up any idea of dealing with covid.

[lamontcg]

> could help us end this never-ending outbreak altogether.

it has jumped to so many other species where it has established reservoirs that it'll never be gone.

this virus is going to be with the human race for at least the next hundred years.

it may very well spill back from other species into new pandemics (although those pandemics are likely to look more like the 2009 swine flu pandemic since everyone will have cross reactive T-cells).

there's nothing we do to stop this with any known or really plausibly imagined technology.

even if you could snap your fingers and wipe it out of the human race, then the problem is that the longer it goes with humans not establishing immunity to it, the worse the pandemic will be when it jumps back from the deer or mice or whatever (although that likely wouldn't take very long at all).

[rain_iwakura]

my point was not to make it disappear, but to develop better targets for antivirals, which effectively make it end by just shortening the disease course to 1-2 days. Right now, the rebounds that happen are mostly due to virus reservoirs within the body that aren't completely eradicated by 5 day course. More effective targeting within the body could be key. Either way, saying "nothing can be done" and just throwing in the towel when valuable info could be obtained is not the way to go. Personally, I have a general interest in the virus (though I'd never work as a virologist due to my germaphobia) so I think it's worth investigating for its own sake.