Understanding BSL-4

The lab from which the Wuhan Flu aka covid-19 escaped was China's premier bio containment facility. Touted as a state of the art facility, it opened in 2015. Wuhan has had  various BSL labs since 1956. Too bad Live Science is wrong, The Chicom facility could NOT handle it. Apparently, their quality control for BSL is about the same as their quality control for toys, tools and other stuff we foolishly buy from our economic enemy.
How does a BSL laboratory work? Certainly there are numerous controls and standards which have to be met in order to work on some of the most dangerous contagions on the planet. There are indeed standards. Whether China met those, or not is questionable. There are around fifty facilities in the world listed as BSL-4 facilities. There are more than 1350 BSL-3 facilities in the United States alone.
Bio Safety Labs are expected to be able to contain the pathogens. A wide variety of methods are used to assure containment.
First, it is a sealed building. This is not going to be a WalMart style structure where you can just walk in the door. It will have high level security and most likely it will have barriers to prevent a vehicle attack. The entire structure would need to be contained in a single uninterrupted shell. The walls would have to be securely sealed to the roof and floor. Imagine a deep diving submersible stuck on land. Now, envision it being the size of a major hospital.
Second, it will need to be strongly built. Any structure like that would need to be able to withstand a tornado, a hurricane or an earth quake.It would also need to be built to be fire proof, bomb proof, and idiot proof. Clearly the one at Wuhan was not.
Entry would need to be controlled. Not just an ID check system, but an air lock system. If that BSL studies animal pathogens, subject animals and feed would need to be brought in periodically. Their entry would also need to be extra secure. That means every path in would need to have multiple doors and each door would need to be sealed.
The lab would need to be depressurized. Not much, but enough that positive air flow would always be in, never out.
Inside the lab, every area would need to be equally sealed from the next space to prevent cross contamination.
The lab would need a disposal area as well. Every bit of waste generated in the building would have to be incinerated, every drop of fluid boiled beyond the point where any pathogen could survive. Some of the vents in the ocean floor are boiling hot from the magma present at them. Those vents contain bacteria. That kind of hot.
BSL-4 is for dealing with the worst pathogens. Smallpox, Foot and Mouth to name two obvious ones.
In doing reading these last few weeks, I have learned a bit about these places. Some pathogens are considered too dangerous to handle even in BSL-4. Those pathogens get broken down and strings of DNA paired with other strings to create a less dangerous variety, one that is less deadly, but can produce a cure that would work for the more dangerous virus.
Basically, a virus is factored several ways. those include level of danger, ease of spread, mutation, robustness of the pathogen to name four. Most DNA has been mapped. Scientists know a lot about what the DNA does, so what makes a particular one tick. If they fond one that is very robust, they may want to look for something that will attack it's shell, so they might graft that string onto something that is a mild one to look for a way to compromise it's spread.
One thing I have noticed is that the scientific community tends to share information between labs. No one is working in a bubble, several facilities may be doing the same thing at the same time.
There are two sides to the research, medical and military. The medical side looks for cures. The military side is looking to make the stuff that obliterates humanity when ordered. The U.S. has nailed several military agents posing as medical researchers. Those folks had ties to the Wuhan lab. From everything I can see, it poses as a medical facility when in reality it is a military one.
I know I am not alone in my opinion, China needs to be cut off from all American schools, and if foreign universities want to take them, we should sever our ties to them as well.
For that matter, we should take the fool who wrote the pile of BS for live science and send them to Wuhan as well.