More importantly, focusing on origins begs a question were there really major health policy or research directional changes for previous pandemics when the origins were determined? Take HIV for instance: we learned the chimp to man transmission occurred in rain forests, but we did not interrupt visits or human life in rain forests. We learned HIV likely came to cities because of population movements and increased prostitution, and then became global by changes such as frequent travel by large numbers, increased sexual contacts, blood and plasma medical use, and IV drug addiction. Needless to say, public policy changed little. SARS origin was learned but we now have SARS-CoV-2. The great influenza pandemic may have originated in WW I army barracks, but we moved on to WW II and did not stop soldiers being in barracks. In short, knowing origins made little difference in how we treated and dealt with the disease—in most if not all cases.

Yet the World Health Organization (and much of the scientific community) initially agreed with the Trump Administration’s claim that understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 was of vital immediate importance. The administration’s concern was, plausibly, less a matter of dispassionate interest in science but more an effort to open a new front in the U.S. response to a rising China, or an effort to divert attention from a delayed and chaotic U.S. response to the pandemic. Those who advocate for an intensive effort to discover the origins of SARS-CoV-2 assert there would be value in terms of establishing public or public health policy based on that understanding. Just what should be done differently to counter Delta or, now, Omicron by understanding the origin of SARS-CoV-2 better? Knowing origins could bring closure to the ongoing politically charged debate and contribute importantly to scientific understanding. We doubt, however, that knowledge of origins would change anything about how we should respond to the challenges of SARS-CoV-2, or how we would prepare for a future pandemic. We can act now on the assumption that either hypothesis (nature or laboratory leak) could be correct.