We could certainly make GoF research safer - but I don't know if we could ever make it safe enough if the downside is a pandemic.

For one, indemnification is impossible. That's a big reason why we're likely to never find out the real origin of this virus. The Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 people and caused billions of dollars in damage. That's a pittance compared to Covid - and Covid is low to mid level pandemic. But even then, BP was not on the hook for the full cost of the Deepwater Horizon. The US govt gave them cover for the disaster and the people on the hook for the damages were the people who lived and worked in the gulf.

If you can't indemnify against something, I think you need a better reason to do it than "maybe we can know how to put out a fire if we light lots of fires."

And there's a danger of trying to out-flank a virus with vaccines if the vaccines are leaky. One is ADE and the other is Marek's disease.

These aren't insignificant risks - counterbalanced against a virus that kills less than 1% of people and far less than that among young/healthy populations.

We could make this virus much worse, and the way to do it is to introduce leaky vaccines in the middle of a pandemic of an adaptable virus.