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Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

• iszomer 4y ago
  At face value, no one thought it strange that the Energy Department had any authoritative say in the matter? This is like sourcing your nuclear armaments statistics from a PubMed publication..
• cainxinth 4y ago
  https://archive.is/knkjg https://archive.is/knkjg
  • hilbert42 4y ago
    Thanks.
• alphabetting 4y ago
  The latest Sam Harris podcast with Alina Chan who wrote a book on the lab theory is fantastic.
  • cosmotic 4y ago
    Link: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/311-did-sars-co-v-2-escape-from-a-lab https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/311...
• ironyman 4y ago
  I strongly suspect that the three-letter agencies have good intel to conclusively show that this is the case, but they have decided to hold back on it for the sake of US-China relations. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-releases-report-covid-19-origins-2021-10-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-releases-repor...
  • michaelgrosner2 4y ago
    I'm not sure what world you're living in but we've been shooting missiles at Chinese military objects and restricting their access to semiconductors. I have little doubt that if the CIA or FBI had information it was actually a Chinese plot they would have released it by now.
    • ChatGTP 4y ago
      Not unless you were using it for leverage ?
    • aquarium87 4y ago
      Naw. Nobody wins from increased instability. Seems to me the playbook is obvious. You see in politics all the time. Everyone knows the truth but pretends otherwise until the proper time when things have settled down and the truth can be allowed to be free. We are coming to the time when people are forgetting what lockdown were like and just want to move on with live. The near future is when the lab leak hypothesis can become the de facto default of scientists and intel agencies. Same applies for the vaccines. 4 months of study for top level review of vaccines as a metastudy. 6 months of journal review for meta analysis of existing papers. 6 months of journal review, 4 months to parse the data. Already, before the narrative can change, 20 months need to pass since the end of the dataset. If you want relevent data on covid and vaccine outcomes, then it's Jan 2021-Dec 2022. First two years of preliminary data won't be finalized and combined and analyzed to a sufficient degree to potentially flip the narrative until about September 2024. Want real data on covid and the vaccine? 5 years worth? You can have it in September 2027. Why bother having the CIA release shit when you can just have the scientists do your dirty for you and time slide relevent information into 2024+? Its all coming out. Just a matter of timing.
    • idopmstuff 4y ago
      How would that improve anything for the US, though? Shooting down balloons helps us because it gets rid of spy equipment in our skies (and lets us get our hands on it). Restricting access to semiconductors keeps us on better technological footing than China. If they release evidence of a lab leak, China will deny it and relations will deteriorate. How do either of those things help the US? It's not going to make China a pariah in the world (and even if it did, that may or may not be a good thing) - the world is already very clear on their profound human rights abuses of Uyghurs, but nothing happens because they're too economically important. We'd maybe gain some theoretical moral high ground, but that doesn't make the world safer or better.
• h2odragon 4y ago
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  • alchemist1e9 4y ago
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  • ttul 4y ago
    That may be a neat concept for a science fiction novel, but it seems more likely that someone at the Wuhan BSL4 was working with coronaviruses (as they do) and somehow contracted the virus themselves. They may have been working with lab animals, such as bats. The virus didn’t have to come with a sinister intention. Looking at this another way, until today, the most common hypothesis was that the virus crossed into humans because of contact with wild animals. A lab leak probably also involved contact with wild animals. It’s just now the Energy Dept. has gotten their hands on intelligence supporting this notion in particular.
  • IngvarLynn 4y ago
    My tangential hypothesis is: the virus was intentionally leaked prematurely to vaccinate humanity from real bio-weapon it would be developed into.
    • h2odragon 4y ago
      I like that one. I kinda figure Omicron was a developed "vaccination version" of COVID.
      • alchemist1e9 4y ago
        It’s not such a crazy idea because it had a large unexplained evolutionary gab in generic sequences from other variants that I believe is still pretty unexplained. The “conventional” theory is an immune suppressed HIV patient, but I’ve read that idea has a lot of holes in it.
  • hotpotamus 4y ago
    And given the path of technology, what's to stop one future Harvard PhD virologist from developing his own viruses in an off-grid shack in the woods?
• boeingUH60 4y ago
  Nothing seems certain at this point, but, let’s say the pandemic was actually caused by a lab leak. That’ll mean the world was brought to an economic standstill and millions of people died because of the errors and carelessness of some people…will there be consequences? What will be the assurance that such deadly mistake won’t occur again? If it was actually a lab leak, then it’ll definitely rank as the most costly and fatal mistake in the 21st Century. I can hardly wrap my head around it; human error causing damage on a mythical scale. Scary stuff.
  • psychlops 4y ago
    Based on what you suggest, there is every incentive for things to remain uncertain permanently. Any smoking gun will be hidden away and discredited.
  • tkiolp4 4y ago
    Let me play the game. If covid was caused by a lab leak, I think the right question to ask is: who benefits (did benefit) by the leak? And remember that number of dead people is something that governments don’t care about (i.e., governments easily go into war every now and then: it’s clear they couldn’t care less about civilians).
    • imnotreallynew 4y ago
      > who benefits (did benefit) by the leak The worlds billionaires, combined, made more money in 2020-2022 than the previous 20 years combined. When there’s that much money involved, one must be a little suspicious.
    • gjsman-1000 4y ago
      Another question you should ask: Who insisted it almost certainly wasn’t a lab leak, and who possibly had motives to deny it?
      • bee_rider 4y ago
        I dunno actually, who has actually been arguing that it couldn’t be a lab leak? I’ve generally seen people arguing the position: there’s no evidence for it having been a leak. This second hand story about a low-confidence classified report doesn’t push me much in either direction. It is possible, though. What do we do if it leaked? Dangerous thing are handled in labs. We should double check the handling protocols based on the unknown possibility that it was a leak, just to be safe. I bet there are more dangerous things than COVID in all sorts of labs.
• lapcat 4y ago
  > The Energy Department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report.
• joenot443 4y ago
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  • michaelgrosner2 4y ago
    > American media Huh? The previous President of the US frequently called it the "China Virus". > GOP conspiracy to bring down Biden Biden wasn't President for the first year of the pandemic, not sure how that works out. > Are American progressives so fragile in their identity that they avoid agreeing with conservatives for fear of guilt by association? I personally don't care whether the virus was man-made or natural. It bares next to zero importance on my life. At the end of the day what are we really arguing about? Lab practices in China? The Chinese should be better about lab safety and wet markets. But there was a pandemic which has killed millions of people. It seems like the people most invested in this question are also the ones most invested in downplaying the pandemic, which is just evil.
    • joenot443 4y ago
      >I personally don't care whether the virus was man-made or natural That's really surprising to me, because in my opinion the answer truly does matter, and sticking my head in the sand feels defeatist. I suppose that's a difference of opinions, though.
      • kelipso 4y ago
        I guess it's a natural human reaction when something reflects badly on you. I never cared about it anyway, it doesn't really matter, etc.
      • gWPVhyxPHqvk 4y ago
        How does it really matter though? What are in the Western world going to do in retaliation? Are we going to start a war with China over their bio-lab programs?
        • alchemist1e9 4y ago
• ttul 4y ago
  The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it’s most likely a naturally created virus. However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good science from this work. But because this is China, if a lab accident happened, it won’t be getting reported in the media. It’s a state secret. The Energy Department gave a low probability to their assessment, but this is still a bombshell. Imagine the legal liability for China in international courts if the evidence is solid enough for litigation. 1. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/tag/lab-leak-hypothesis/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/tag/lab-leak-hypothesis/
  • tiahura 4y ago
    they produce good science from this work. Other than securing more funding for more research, and trivia for virologists, what good science has come from this lab?
    • ttul 4y ago
      I’d have to re-listen to numerous TWiV podcasts, but here is a WaPo article discussing the quality of research at WIV: https://archive.ph/2020.01.31-185716/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debunk-fringe-theory-linking-chinas-coronavirus-weapons-research/ https://archive.ph/2020.01.31-185716/https://www.washingtonp... The Wuhan institute was celebrated as an improvement over the facilities at which dangerous viruses had previously been studied in China. The 2004 SARS outbreak originated in a lab: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/
      • fidgewidge 4y ago
        That WaPo article isn't about the quality of research at the WIV, it's an attempted (failed) debunking of the "fringe theory" that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab. It has nothing to say on what good science they produced, perhaps because there wasn't any. Virology appears to spend its time fiddling with viruses based on the claim that doing so will help create vaccines, except, their work doesn't seem to have contributed to any vaccine development.
• bediger4000 4y ago
  How is this lab leak theory anything more than an attempt to excuse Trump from any blame for his pandemic response failure?
  • ttul 4y ago
    The Energy Department is no longer a Trump organ. I don’t see why the senior bureaucrat who oversees it - who is a Biden appointee - would be doing anything to help out Trump here. “Jennifer M. Granholm was sworn in as the 16th Secretary of Energy on February 25, 2021.” https://www.energy.gov/leadership https://www.energy.gov/leadership
    • bediger4000 4y ago
      Biden admin might strategically decide to do the lab leak investigation as part of their anti-China plan. That would be a balance decision, but I could see it coming down on lab leak investigation.
  • lsdflkwe 4y ago
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• rejectfinite 4y ago
  Not unplausible at all. Has happened before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
  • ttul 4y ago
    And this is precisely why BSL4 labs exist. And accidents also happen at BSL4 labs. But in the west, at least we have reasonably transparent and trustworthy governments, with some notion of accountability for enforcing rules.
    • tjpnz 4y ago
      Some accounts I've read suggest the Wuhan lab was operated under conditions more akin to BSL1. Think your High School biology lab or your dentist.
      • ttul 4y ago
        My source of information is the hundreds of hours of This Week in Virology episodes I have listened to since March 2020, so with that in mind as my bias: Reputable western scientists who have worked with Wuhan virologists professionally have a lot of respect for the Chinese scientists and the Wuhan lab generally. But the fact that many virologists have professional friends at the Wuhan lab does not rule out that the lab was being poorly managed or that an error might have been swept under the rug by the CCP. My personal opinion synthesizing all that I have read and heard on this topic for three years is that the lab leak is plausible because China is an autocracy and does not have the rule of law. It’s in the CCP’s interests and within their capabilities to hide a lab leak quite successfully.
        • notahacker 4y ago
          > It’s in the CCP’s interests and within their capabilities to hide a lab leak quite successfully. tbh the general impression given by China's known attempts to cover anything up tend to give the opposite impression, precisely because of their default to autocracy. This is a government party that generally covers up stuff by banning it from being talked about, regards "she regrets making that comment and wants to stay at her home and not play tennis or talk to the media any more" as a reasonable coverup, and made such a clumsy attempt to silence the doctor first raising the alarm COVID symptoms that be became a hero inside China and the officials responsible got their wrists slapped. Allowing lab staff to communicate with the outside world and release papers on COVID origins considered plausible by uninvolved overseas virologists would be an uncharacteristic way for the Chinese government to act if they suspected there was something to be uncovered...
• acheron 4y ago
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  • ttul 4y ago
    What will make this information dangerous is if people misconstrue “lab leak” to mean “human designed”. The report specifically says it was not from a bioweapons program. I’m sure they took pains to verify that because the implications of THAT conclusion would be explosive.
    • ethanbond 4y ago
      You’re already seeing that exact type of confusion strewn about this comment section. Some people interpreting “lab leak” to mean deliberately designed, others to mean deliberately released, others to mean an accident involving a natural research virus. So yeah this whole conversation will continue to go nowhere because in reality it is full of conspiracy theorists who make the conversation impossible to have.
      • cld8483 4y ago
        The research out of this lab didn't help develop the vaccine, so what were they doing in the first place? Weapons research, it's as simple as that. As soon as the virus started circulating through the public, that was their chance to shine! They could have released everything they knew and jump-started vaccine development.. but they didn't. They covered it up, because fighting bugs was never their interest in the first place. Why should anybody believe otherwise? Principle of charity? Please.
        • ethanbond 4y ago
          Even if I were to accept the (ridiculous) premise, it's still wrong. Wuhan Institute of Virology did actively contribute to the development of the Vero vaccine by Sinopharm. Regarding the premise, there's no reason to believe that a lab working on coronaviruses (quite common) that did not happen to contribute directly to a successful vaccine development effort (profoundly uncommon) was necessarily working on a bioweapon. FWIW, there are ~59 operational BSL-4 labs in the world, and only a BSL-3 is necessary to work on potentially airborne diseases like coronaviruses. According to this study[1] of published research papers, there are probably about 150 BSL-3 labs in the United States alone. Are those all bioweapon programs because they didn't contribute to the vax development programs? [1]: https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/mapping-biosafety-level-3-laboratories-by-publications/ https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/mapping-biosafety-le...
• imnotreallynew 4y ago
  I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I always found it it little odd that the guy who became the de facto pandemic era “leader” in the U.S. was also the same guy that personally approved funding for the lab in Wuhan.
  • puffoflogic 4y ago
    The state religion reveres experts, who are by definition the people with conflicts of interest. It's normal.
  • ethanbond 4y ago
    You think it’s weird that one of the top virologists in the world was responsible for finding virus research and for planning virus outbreak response?
    • carlivar 4y ago
      How is "top" virologist measured? If it's simply by years of power, this is accurate I suppose. However I think "most powerful" is a better term than "top".
      • ethanbond 4y ago
        Like it or not this is how scientific output is usually measured. He is a prolific scientist in his field and has been for decades, well before COVID happened. > In a 2022 analysis of Google Scholar citations, Dr. Fauci ranked as the 44th most-cited living researcher. According to the Web of Science, Dr. Fauci ranked 9th out of 3.3 million authors in the field of immunology by total citation count between 1980 and April 2022. During the same period, he ranked 22th out of 3.3 million authors in the field of research & experimental medicine, and 715th out of 1.4 million authors in the field of general & internal medicine. 2019 and prior Google Scholar shows him cited about 8,000 times per year. In 2020+ that only jumped to 10,000, so his ridiculous statistics here are not entirely (or even mostly) due to COVID related stardom.
    • aquarium87 4y ago
• denotational 4y ago
  Without meaning to take a position either way, as a non-American, why does the Energy Department have a position on this? I’m aware that the Energy Department has sone degree of responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal, but even taking that into account, it seems out of scope.
  • vitus 4y ago
    Per the article, it looks like a supporting report came out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is funded by the DoE. While LLNL is primarily known for nuclear research, biosecurity is also apparently part of its mission: https://www.llnl.gov/missions/biosecurity https://www.llnl.gov/missions/biosecurity
    • nubinetwork 4y ago
      They're also one of the few people with a massive "supercomputer cluster" to do simulations. (and part of the reason we have zfs on Linux now)
  • fidgewidge 4y ago
    The US government is so large and sprawling that essentially every agency concerns itself with every possible topic.
    • Izkata 4y ago
      Another example - the CDC expanded itself to health in general and involves itself with gun violence: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm...
  • ttul 4y ago
    Firstly, the DOE has expertise in areas such as biosecurity, biodefense, and biological threat reduction, and is responsible for managing national laboratories and supporting research in various scientific fields. Just one example of this is the HAMMER facility at Hanford, WA, where DOE can train people to deal with all manner of disasters. https://hammer.hanford.gov/ https://hammer.hanford.gov/ Given the potential for a laboratory-originating virus to pose a significant threat to national security, the DOE may be interested in studying the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to better understand the risks associated with biosecurity and to inform its efforts to prevent and respond to biological threats. Secondly, the DOE has collaborated with other agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in conducting research related to COVID-19. The origins of SARS-CoV-2 are an important aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic and understanding its origins can inform public health responses and the development of treatments and vaccines. Finally, the DOE has a stake in global scientific cooperation and the international research community. The origins of SARS-CoV-2 are an area of intense global interest, and understanding the virus's origins is important for future pandemic prevention efforts. By contributing to the scientific understanding of the virus's origins, the DOE can help to advance international collaboration and cooperation in addressing global health threats.
• SvenGPo 4y ago
  If you read the report, the statement was released with low confidence, meaning it's a possibility that it happened!
• chewbacha 4y ago
  The US agency making the assertion is the department of energy. Obviously the foremost thought leaders in virology and epidemiology.
  • dekhn 4y ago
    The DOE runs national labs with research into biology. In fact, they funded the human genome project earlier than the NIH (who later swooped in after realizing they were missing out). They also have labs that work on biosafety. Lots of scientists.
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  I thought it was xenophobic and dangerous to suggest that it was a lab leak? does this mean it's OK to talk about it? Sarcasm aside, this is ridiculously overdue. It was never xenophobic to want inquiry into Covid being a lab leak. The outrageous politicization of finding the source of the outbreak is shameful.
• someuser54541 4y ago
  I'm fairly confident posts like these are artificially weighted to fall off the front page..that seems to happen when a COVID related post gets popular on HN. This post has more points and comments than the majority of stuff on the front page but it's currently on page 3. I've casually noticed something similar over the past ~18 months with posts related to COVID.
  • leereeves 4y ago
    AIUI, comments count against a post's ranking on HN, in an attempt to cool the discussion of controversial topics.
  • boeingUH60 4y ago
    Many people flag these types of posts (including myself) because they get too toxic. I even flagged this one despite commenting on it.
    • alanfranz 4y ago
      Is “because I think they become too toxic” a good reason to flag a post? I flag spam, shitposts, unsubstantiated or patently false articles. You, like other people, are abusing your flagging powers.
      • tanseydavid 4y ago
        ^^^ This summarizes the problem perfectly.
    • 323 4y ago
      Toxic to whom? The scientists which are trying to bury this because it's putting their careers in danger?
    • tanseydavid 4y ago
      >> flag these types of posts (including myself) because they get too toxic Please do not do this. When you do this, it potentially prevents others from being able to to analyze it and form their own judgement. "Too toxic" is an opinion.
• snird 4y ago
  As a non-American, the whole thing seems crazy to me. It seems like Trump said it from the start, and the media negated him based on political views, not facts. And now, only years later, there is a reconciliation with the facts. Now, I'm not that aware of the politics or the media in the US. But I think the way I see it may be the way many others saw this story roll. Whether or not it's true - it is a big reason that many people don't trust the media. And this may be the bigger story for us all going forward.
  • 323 4y ago
    > the media negated him based on political views No, the media negated it because all the notable scientists and publications (Nature, Lancet, ..) said it was a crazy conspiracy theory.
    • locustous 4y ago
      And all those with different opinions were cancelled... Doctors quickly learned to tow the line or you lost your job and license while the masses cheered. Hard to find "valid dissent" when you punish and disqualify everyone who tries.
      • Zetice 4y ago
        And yet, these people seemed to have conducted their research without trouble. Weird, how approaching a problem scientifically and not bombastically elicits a more measured response...
        • locustous 4y ago
          I don't understand "these people", your response is somewhat ambiguous. If you are referring to skeptics... Then I find your conclusion inaccurate. The response is not "measured". Shunned and ridiculed is what I have mostly observed. Society generally had adopted intolerance and seeks to punish detractors. Both sides are doing this. Again, this is not... measured...
• raitchev1 4y ago
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• fithisux 4y ago
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• philistine 4y ago
  Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. If a novel virus once again originates in China from a city with a BSL4 lab, I think we ought to skip the twice is coincidence.
  • dang 4y ago
    Please don't do this here.
• kklisura 4y ago
  Nothing will breed more conspiracy theorists than the way how the scientific community dealt with Covid-19 pandemic.
  • seydor 4y ago
    They did act like a global cabal in a bubble and told people of power what they wanted to be told
    • logicchains 4y ago
      That's inevitable when most science is funded by people in power; you don't get funded if you're the kind of person who tells people in power what they don't want to hear.
  • Tokkemon 4y ago
    That makes no sense.
  • _blz2 4y ago
    well is it a conspiracy or not? The suppressing of calling it a lab leak?
• lsdflkwe 4y ago
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• lsdflkwe 4y ago
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• nzealand 4y ago
  I wonder how the classified intelligence report responds to the fact that the early cases clustered around the Huanan Market not the Wahun Institute of Virology... https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/03/03/1083751272/striking-new-evidence-points-to-seafood-market-in-wuhan-as-pandemic-origin-point https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/03/03/1083751...
  • hackinthebochs 4y ago
    Do people typically gather in the parking lot of the WIV in large numbers? What was the reproductive rate of the initial version? What was the probability of an infection turning into a severe enough case to register to epidemiologists months later? For a relatively low reproductive rate or severity, you will need a lot of human contact to have detectable cases. The fact that the initial detectable cases are clustered within a nearby population center that manifests many close contacts should be expected.
    • DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
      The market is not near the WIV. They're on opposite sides of a very large city.
      • hackinthebochs 4y ago
        "Near" is a relative term. In the context of all the places in China this novel virus could have popped up, it is definitely near. It's also a 45 minute drive from WIV (as stated in another comment). In the context of a location that will attract people from all over the city, it is also near.
  • Vecr 4y ago
    The market was an early superspreading event (or actually multiple superspreading events), I don't know why people conflate spread at the market with a spillover at the market. I guess it made more sense when the virus was thought not to be airborne.
• djkivi 4y ago
  Huh. I thought that theory was debunked a long time ago. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/washington-post-corrects-year-old-article-calling-lab-leak-theory-debunked/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/washington-post-corrects...
• cc101 4y ago
  How can they tell the difference between a lab leak and a deliberate release to explore the world's reaction to a viral weapon?
  • cld8483 4y ago
    You can tell the difference by looking to see if any of their research helped in developing the vaccine (it did not.)
    • friend_and_foe 4y ago
      That's not definitive because you're assuming motivation, it could be that someone didn't want a vaccine, and you're assuming all research was publicized to us. This was the fastest vaccine ever developed in human history, it's worth noting.
  • this_user 4y ago
    Because deliberately releasing a virus that is so infectious that it will cause a global pandemic and will inevitably hit your own country is a bloody stupid thing to do. Everyone loses, unless you already have a vaccine that you can sell. And if you are trying to insinuate that it might have been the Chinese that released it, it becomes even more bloody stupid, because you would obviously never release it on your own soil right outside your own biolab which would immediately be under suspicion of being the source. You'd release it at NY Grand Central Station or the Atlanta International, and no one will be able to figure out what happened.
    • friend_and_foe 4y ago
      Its not a stupid thing to do when: 1) You're facing a demographic crisis due to your aging population and your next closest rival has a population of which half are under 30, 2) the virus primarily kills the elderly, 3) your approach to increasing influence and power is to increase your relative position and your relative position is decreasing after decades of increasing, and 4) you can cause an economic crisis for your rivals when they shut public life, and consequently their economies, down, and thus increase your relative position in the world. I won't comment on any western motivations for going along with it.
• bradgranath 4y ago
  Why is the Department of Energy making this announcement? What does the CDC think?
• Giorgi 4y ago
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  • Zetice 4y ago
    I would hate to live in a world where, when people randomly guess something correctly, they feel vindicated and emboldened to say other random guesses that are as completely unfounded as the one they happened to get correct.
    • friend_and_foe 4y ago
      Well you live in that world, and it's always been that way. This propensity is the fundamental cause of gbling addiction and superstitious behavior. But I'd point out, this wasn't a random guess. There has been a whole lot of circumstantial evidence for a long time, it's not quite a smoking gun but better than a guess for sure.
    • coolestguy 4y ago
      >when people randomly guess something correctly Or an educated guess where labs in the area were studying this exact type of virus
• lopkeny12ko 4y ago
  > Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided. So each US government agency independently publishes their own conclusions...?
• brucethemoose2 4y ago
  I would like to see that evidence. I'm not particularly surprised by the accusation, but I am a surprised they dug up more evidence so long after the fact.
• Zetice 4y ago
  Why is this a WSJ exclusive, why was it leaked, why is this only coming out now, why are various government agencies disagreeing with one another, why “low” confidence… This ratchets up the credibility of the claim for me, but there are a lot of strangely unanswered questions that leave me skeptical, still.
  • bayesian_horse 4y ago
    It's credible to you because you want it to believe. The article doesn't say what the department of energy thinks went into that supposed lab and what came out of it. Which is a major piece of the puzzle I'd say.
    • Zetice 4y ago
      Er, it's credible to me because it's the Department of Energy. I don't "want" to believe it, and generally believe folks who were touting it as fact up to this point were cranks. Even now it's still extremely murky, and as I said, there are a lot of unanswered questions.
      • wahnfrieden 4y ago
        why is it credible to you when you can as easily find contrary positions from other us govt agencies? what makes a "low confidence" doe take more credible than the other agencies to you
        • Zetice 4y ago
          Hm, so the way I'm using "credible" here is as, "able to be believed". So I find the DoE and therefore the idea credible. It doesn't mean I do believe it, or that I find other, contradicting positions "uncredible" (incredible? lol). The DoE is just an institution I trust, and if they're willing to publish this, I'm willing to listen to what they have to say.
          • Vecr 4y ago
• downrightmike 4y ago
  And there seems to be a lot of traditional sabotage using infectious agents in farming, like how triads were infecting pig farms with African swine fever in 2019 (1). Maybe they didn't just use African Swine fever and thought they found something better. There was an explosion of pig farming this century(2), and underhanded tactics should be suspected. (1) https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3042122/chi https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3042122/chi... (2) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca16b https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca16b
  • bayesian_horse 4y ago
    Ridiculous. First of all, those triads would be stupid, if they had done that with Sars-CoV-2, knowing it will hit them, too and wreck all their earning potential. Secondly, bioterrorism (or whatever you want to call this) using a pandemical Virus is really hard. You have to find a virus that is able to cause a pandemic, and they are really really rare, but never did so (otherwise it can't do that because of the immunity). Sars-Cov-2 was only so dangerous because it was novel. So those triads would have found this needle in a haystack, and they aren't exactly known for running world-class virus finding operations. It's easy to find and smuggle some infectious ASV material. Maybe slightly harder to do so for EBV or the like. Much harder to find a completely novel virus.
• bayesian_horse 4y ago
  Lab leak of what even? There is nothing magical about virological labs. They don't create new virus out of nothing. Most of the time there is a "lab leak" the virus already had all the potential it had before. In all the cases I can remember, the only reason the "lab leak" was even a significant event (as opposed to a bucket spilling into the ocean) is when the lab was geographically distinct from the endemic occurrence or the virus had been largely eradicated before. The main problem with "lab leak hypotheses" is that they aren't clear about what went into that supposed lab and what came out of it. Was there an obscure bat virus? Was there something already infectious to Humans (but somehow undetected by other scientists)? Are we alleging genetic editing? "Gain of Function" (which is easier said then done)? That Sars-CoV-2 genome which first hit Wuhan was already a finely tuned killing machine, much more finely tuned than anything a lab could produce intentionally. All of this makes speculation about the Virus having passed through a laboratory somewhere incredibly pointless, except for trying to undermine scientific consensus.
  • rleigh 4y ago
    What do you exactly mean that Gain of Function is "easier said than done"? We routinely engineer changes in viruses for all sorts of purposes. Even I can do it [baculovirus expression cassette vectors--takes less than a day from engineering the cassette to getting expression products]. The tools to do this can be ordered from a catalogue, and it's never been easier to manipulate genomes. You design and order the primers you need and get them a couple of days later. Just take a look through the first few links here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lentivirus+expression https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lentivirus+expression That's just one type of technology that can be used with ease. There are many others. Baculovirus and adenovirus systems are in common use. Making a custom system for a different virus isn't hard, it just takes a bit more time and effort. I was taught multiple techniques to do this in the late '90s and they weren't new even then. Genetic modification started in viruses--the M13 bacteriophage. It's only got easier and more sophisticated since then. The Wuhan researchers already have multiple papers published which involved making modified viruses, and were specifically funded to perform Gain of Function research. You seem to be claiming this is out of the question, but this seems counter to what is possible, their existing track record, and the grants they were working under at the time. Why are you underplaying what went on here, and maybe wilfully misdirecting? A lot of this stuff is already well documented, since it's been going on for many years. You can find their papers with a few searches, and they have already been reported on multiple times over the last couple of years.
• paganel 4y ago
  This was considered "fake news" and heavily reprimanded all throughout the pandemic in the media attached to the Western consensus, hilarious how they're starting to do a 180 on it (next is doing a 360, I guess).
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    It's always been a possibility although other explanations are more likely. I'd be interested in the evidence.
    • UKR_anon 4y ago
      [flagged]
    • lockhouse 4y ago
      Why are other explanations more likely? I'd be interested in your evidence for that.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • zzzeek 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • UKR_anon 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • zzzeek 4y ago
        I never saw lab leak called fake news. I saw it called irrelevant, not important, unlikely, not knowable , but never "fake". Just want to see the source, that's all
        • 4y ago
• aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cause,' and a confidence score: 'low'. The NYT goes on to say: Some officials briefed on the intelligence said that it was relatively weak and that the Energy Department’s conclusion was made with “low confidence,” suggesting its level of certainty was not high. While the department shared the information with other agencies, none of them changed their conclusions, officials said. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-leak-coronavirus-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-lea...
  • alchemist1e9 4y ago
    Also article mentions FBI has “moderate” confidence it was lab leak. I find that very interesting given it wouldn’t be so much based on scientific analysis but some intelligence collection the FBI has.
    • teawrecks 4y ago
      Science is the collecting and processing of empirical data using peer reviewed methods to reach a conclusion. Which part do you think the FBI is not doing which separates their process from science?
    • kranke155 4y ago
      Doesn’t the FBI also have a large biological analysis team? For bio terror ?
      • orlp 4y ago
        I think if anything COVID has shown us that biological warfare makes as much sense as nuclear: none. In our globally connected world it's mutually assured destruction, and that's without even the need for your enemy to maintain stockpiles of weapons. The virus will find itself within your own borders soon enough.
• seydor 4y ago
  Even for the people that have always thought so, this must be uncomfortable. This is only the 1st engineered virus which brought the world upside down. We may be living in a biological war already, or at least some potential for weaponization.
  • ajross 4y ago
    No one is claiming this was an "engineered virus" (and the evidence for is really thin, FWIW). The finding in the linked article is only that a lab leak is the most probably origin of the pandemic. That's the problem with this discourse. Everyone has gone full absolutist and views even relatively sane, nuanced positions as evidence for nonsense like "we may be living in a biological war already". The fact that those of us in the "it's probably a natural virus" camp may have been wrong about WIV involvement doesn't validate your favorite conspiracy theory!
    • seydor 4y ago
      The article does not say it's not an engineered virus either. What's the hypothesis here, that the virus naturally arose only inside the lab where it infected one person? Or if it occured naturally in the wild, how come that it infected only one person inside the lab , since it's easy to infect
• timcavel 4y ago
  [dead]
• zzzeek 4y ago
  perhaps this is to pressure China into allowing the WHO investigation, which they have blocked [1], to proceed. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00283-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00283-y
  • imiric 4y ago
    Why does it even matter at this point? The WHO investigation in 2020, and subsequent report, was a complete sham. The CCP has the WHO in their back pocket. Nothing they say has any relevance in the matter.
    • lgvln 4y ago
      Any evidence for the claim that WHO/WHO reports are not to be trusted?
      • imiric 4y ago
        If you're looking for definitive evidence, you're unlikely to find any. But there have certainly been many instances of the WHO acting in favor of China's best interests, and there are many criticisms of their SARS-CoV-2 research and report. https://archive.is/HN0YY https://archive.is/HN0YY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM https://nypost.com/2021/03/30/us-other-nations-slam-who-report-on-origins-of-covid-over-chinas-role/ https://nypost.com/2021/03/30/us-other-nations-slam-who-repo... I, as a layperson, found several issues with the report as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26757817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26757817 All of this mounts sufficient evidence for any reasonable person to be suspicious of the WHO, if not to entirely dismiss their claims.
• yazzku 4y ago
  Where is the link to the DOE's publication? You'd think the goddamn newspapers would list their references.
• kossTKR 4y ago
  https://theintercept.com/2021/11/03/coronavirus-research-ecohealth-nih-emails/ https://theintercept.com/2021/11/03/coronavirus-research-eco... Isn't this a very important part of the context? And shouldn't we be sceptical when it comes sources directly from the state or industrial complexes? We live in a realpolitical but PR narrated world.
• EGreg 4y ago
  Publishing this with “low confidence”. Glad our official experts are on the case! Next we will find out whether Assad gassed his own people, and who blew up the Nordstream pipelines. (Just kidding. Maybe years later we finally find things out after they get declassified: https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/213722 https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/how-jimmy-carter-...)
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  This is not a surprising conclusion given the way things have gone. The collapse of the natural origin theory (which was based on various schemes involving co-infection of bats, pangolins, civets with various wild-type viruses which didn't pan out) and the refusal of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to have an open investigation, along with the fairly shady behavior of the Ecohealth Alliance partnership that was partially funding the WIV (not disclosing conflicts of interests in those early Nature and Lancet letters claiming a natural origin), all result in a 'so what else could it be but a lab leak' circumstantial conclusion, even if positive evidence remains hidden. What kind of lab leak is an interesting and important question, however. There may be four scenarios: 1) Collection of a wild-type virus that somehow evolved in a bat species, followed by accidental infection of a lab worker. This seems the least likely, as the viral lineages of the betacoronaviruses that would have had to fuse in the wild to form Sars-CoV-2 (sarbecovirus w/o furin site and marbecovirus w/ furin site) infect different bat species from different regions; 2) Collection of a multitude of wild-type viruses as well as a variety of bat species, then having accidental genetic fusions due to coinfection of the laboratory bats with a variety of different viruses (like what seems to happen on pig farms with avian / human / swine flu), which might be more plausible, though would indicate incredibly sloppy lab management; 3) 'Natural' mutational pressure via deliberately cultivating wild-type bat viruses in human cell cultures or in mice etc. expressing human genes, and looking for rare mutations that arose and gained the ability to infect human cells (things like this were done in the Soviet bioweapons program according to defector Kanatjan Alibekov, see "Biohazard") or to become more infectious than it already was; 4) Direct gene manipulation of wild-type (or possibly mutated) viruses using CRISPR technology, in which parts of the wild-type template virus are excised and replaced with specifically synthesized new sequences designed to bind to human receptor sites to facilitate entry to human cells by the virus. It'd be likely they synthesized a variety of such chimeric viruses and then ran them through human cell cultures to see which were the most infectious. They were doing this kind of work at Wuhan, based on prior CRISPR-based work done in the USA c.2015, and it seems most likely that a lab worker got infected then passed it to the local community, then onto the trains and airplanes. Notably, 2-4 all could be called 'gain of function' research, which is a sloppy term that nobody in the field seems to use. It's all pretty reckless and poorly justified research, and people have been warning for about a decade since these precise gene swapping technologies became widely available that this kind of outcome was likely if not inevitable. It's also basically indistinguishable from offensive biowarfare research, even if that wasn't the goal (claims that this was deliberate are nonsensical, it looks like a "oopsie, we caused > $10 trillion in economic damage and killed millions of people by accident" event). International collaborations to fight infectious disease should still be supported however, that's how smallpox was eradicated. Just not this kind of thing, please.
• goolulusaurs 4y ago
  IMO, it seems obvious from the behavior of China's government that they know it is a lab leak. If it wasn't a lab leak, then presumably there is an animal reservoir of the virus somewhere in China, but as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it. But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work? A lockdown on travel would only really prevent the virus spreading from people bringing it into the country but obviously wild animals would still be spreading it. Yet the Chinese government claimed that their lockdowns did work. How is that at all compatible with the virus being from wild animals and not being a lab leak? It doesn't make any sense.
  • unicornmama 4y ago
    Lockdowns serve a purpose: to slow the spread of the virus.
    • Gigachad 4y ago
      That’s not what china was doing though. They were attempting total elimination.
      • HKH2 4y ago
        Exactly. How can a zero transmission rate be anything else?
    • jcadam 4y ago
      [flagged]
    • psychlops 4y ago
      Lockdowns serve many purposes, not simply the stated one. They also have many side effects.
    • jandrese 4y ago
      Also to give people time to develop the vaccine for the virus. Lockdown until the vaccine is administered to the community is a sound policy.
• unity1001 4y ago
  Speaking of lab leaks... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick-biohazard.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick...
  • NicoJuicy 4y ago
    > But there has been no threat to public health, no injuries to employees and no leaks of dangerous material outside the laboratory, Ms. Vander Linden said. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
    • unity1001 4y ago
      In the US common law, that is the thing that you need to say in case you face any court case whatsoever in the future. Any objective details that you give about the situation may be used as evidence against you in a court case by the prosecutors. Therefore you always need to start from 'nothing ever happened' and then negotiate down the responsibility as much as you can. Immediately in that period the retirement homes in the area and later the state, started experiencing 'mystery pnemonia cases' in which a lot of elderly have died. This is without the fact that the US govt. fighting the Army in the court to shut down a bioweapons lab should already signal the severity of the affair. For anyone who follows the US corporate & regulatory space in regard to public interest lawsuits, that article at NYT not only being up today, but also having been branded 'published in 2019' to attract attention says a lot: That article basically says that there was a leak in a bioweapons lab in the US due to failure of security measures, but the government has properly acted and even took the army to the court to shut it down. It basically exonerates the US admn. legally by hooking up the army, and actually the administration that very specific lab with all the responsibility, meanwhile signaling to all international observers including the decision makers in countries around the world that it was not the US govt. who did it. Therefore the US govt. cannot be sued for that even inside the US. So the very article is a legal precaution per US law itself. ... "Whataboutism" Any claim/proposition has to be made on an objective framework. Otherwise they become hollow smears.
      • 4y ago
• ThePhantom 4y ago
  The lab leak hypothesis makes the most sense. The lab in Wuhan which researches coronaviruses conducts experiences on animals, including bats. Like other labs, there are dedicated personnel for hydrating and feeding the experimental animals. Notably, there are "wet markets" in Wuhan where live animals are sold, including bats, which harbor coronaviruses. Someone who is working in the facility in charge of maintenance of experimental animals has a choice of either sacrificing the animals as per protocol, or selling them to a wet market to make extra money. The most likely scenario was that someone sold the animal, most likely a bat, to a wet market, which happened to contain a virulent coronavirus strain that then infected humans.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • cycrutchfield 4y ago
    There were no bats being sold in the Wuhan wet markets. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2
    • logicalmonster 4y ago
      > On each visit, vendors were asked what species they had sold over the preceding month and in what numbers, along with the prices (US$1:RMB¥6.759) and origin of these goods (wild caught or captive bred/ farmed). It might be true that no bats were sold in Wuhan wet markets, but this methodology doesn't seem the slightest bit credible. Imagine if you were selling bats (is that legal in China?) from a likely illegal source (probably illegal in China?). Would you give honest information about the animals you were selling, particularly knowing how criminals can be treated in China? You might as well ask suspected drug dealers how much crack they're selling in schools: you'll get the same quality of answer.
      • p0pcult 4y ago
        The amount of pure speculation in this post is surprising, coming from a logicalmonster. Are those activites illegal in China, or just in your mind? If it is not the former, then your point collapses like a two legged stool.
• fakethenews2022 4y ago
  [flagged]
• cookiengineer 4y ago
  No idea if it's possible to still find the source, but the doctor of patient zero also got infected (and died/"disappeared" afterwards like her boss at the wuhan hospital). Patient zero was a virologist that seems to have been censored off the Chinese internet afterwards, and I can't find the links anymore :-/ In the beginning of sars-cov-2 breakout there was an article shared on wechat that later got censored in varying degrees of translations/"hacks" to avoid censorships, they wrote it in emojis and stuff to trick the censorship algorithm. All of them were referencing Ai Fen's video and photo of the diagnostics report of patient zero that she recorded and spread on WeChat to warn others. Maybe someone else has an archive link or screenshots or anything. Impossible to google the source due to the apparent emoji noise. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Fen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Fen
  • mherdeg 4y ago
    Hmmm -- do you mean Li Wenliang?
    • cookiengineer 4y ago
      No, Li was a former study colleague of the boss of the Wuhan hospital and the leader of the research lab, and received the information about it in the afternoon the same day. He got popular with the video that he recorded, but it did not contain the photo of the medical report of patient zero.
  • Izkata 4y ago
    > Patient zero was a virologist that seems to have been censored off the Chinese internet afterwards, and I can't find the links anymore :-/ 10-minute video that includes that plus a few other things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU
  • nabakin 4y ago
    Opposing evidence says she wasn't even working at Wuhan at the time https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/51845/is-huang-yanling-a-wuhan-virology-researcher-the-worlds-first-covid-19-patien https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/51845/is-huang-... https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/h6DBBQKNGJt528lwdOMpnA https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/h6DBBQKNGJt528lwdOMpnA
• khazhoux 4y ago
  Time once again to post Jon Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfejgwbDQ8 I still don't understand how in 2020 people were branded as racist sinophobes for saying that the coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, probably originated from the coronavirus research lab in Wuhan. I know suspicion isn't fact, but that should have always been the leading theory to be disproved. Instead, IIRC Twitter and FB were flagging any post that said "lab leak."
  • csours 4y ago
    That is the nature of a "dog whistle" - it has a legitimate meaning, and some people use the legitimate meaning. That legitimacy gives malicious people plausible deniability. Social media sites cannot tell the difference, and quite often it's very hard for people to tell the difference as well. Social media sprays weed killer on all the discussions because they don't want their app covered in weeds; not having flowers is too bad, but weeds are worse (not my personal view).
    • uonpopular_th 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • slumos 4y ago
        To identify a dog whistle you must merely learn its characteristics and recognize them.
      • paulcole 4y ago
        Or you have eyes and can see somebody putting a whistle in their mouth and blowing.
        • uonpopular_th 4y ago
          [flagged]
  • tzs 4y ago
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  It's a little perplexing to me that we're getting evaluations from spy agencies and the Department of Energy. I know the latter specializes in nuclear energy in particular, and this has experience with proliferation and adversarial information-gathering. They also supervise biological weapons laboratories (presumably for the same reason), but what they're being asked to do here is to validate a premise (natural or engineered?) whereas their actual expertise is in tracking pathogens already known to be weaponized. This may be why they expressed their findings with “low confidence”, which is mentioned in the WSJ report but given less weight than it deserves. A big problem in the pandemic response is that there are powerful strategic incentives for people to express a false degree of very high confidence about this , and indeed many other topics, so as to maximize insecurity and anxiety across a large population, which makes it easier to herd. This was an issue prior to the emergence of COVID-19, and strongly correlated with a drop in vaccine uptake and localized outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles that were previously considered easily managed under existing public health regimes. See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30138075/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30138075/ for a quantitative treatment of this issue.
  • extheat 4y ago
    The DOE (as a research agency) does a lot of biological and genomic research and is well qualified to do this kind of research, as other comments here have pointed out. It's not uncommon for researchers in different agencies to collaborate with each other, all labs have different areas of expertise and it would be naive to say any one from one agency is more "qualified" than another. The moniker at the top is not so meaningful. The "low confidence" has a particular meaning in the world intelligence, and the DOE is also apart of the intelligence community given they run most of the US national research laboratories.
    • educaysean 4y ago
      Appreciate the context. There's so much jargons and different branches of departments that it's hard for a layperson to understand the significance of assessments such as these. I would have been in agreement with OP's reasoning had I not come across this.
• beaned 4y ago
  Considering everything in the current US regime would be pushing against this to be the conclusion and it is still the finding, I suspect the "low confidence" is a managerial stamp based on high level skepticism of likely inscrutable work from lower analysts.
• fullshark 4y ago
  Next step: proving it was created via gain of function research.
• chmod600 4y ago
  Labeling something as "misinformation" is asymmetric: being right 90% or even 99% isn't good enough. Being wrong about a misinformation label, even if there's nuance about confidence levels, or even moving from "misinformation" to "probably wrong, but maybe" does more damage than all help done by all of the other correct labelings.
• Fabeltjeskrant 4y ago
  So much fake news and propaganda out there, who knows what to believe.
  • rvz 4y ago
    Well thanks to ChatGPT which that was the so-called 'supposed' revolution that will change everything, hailed by the media and on HN, without advanced detectors it will be even worse. I guess it is useful to creative liars, bull-shitters and people who are masters of manipulation.
• sourcecodeplz 4y ago
  There has been SO much lost faith in media and authorities because of the coverage, laws and regulations re this, it's so so bad... People not vaccinating their young children with vaccines we know to work and have no side effects for 30+ years. Locking young children inside for years and stumping their social growth. Or teenagers and adults too, leading to unmeasurable mental health problems.
  • SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    Agree, now try and reason that there are a TON of people that have been through the last three years and haven’t come out even a tiny bit more skeptical of governments, media, and authorities.
  • ergocoder 4y ago
    Now adding the Ohio explosion fiasco where authorities and experts insist that the air is safe to breathe. The science crowd who say we should trust authorities have gone silence
• skissane 4y ago
  I don’t know what the truth is here, and I don’t know if I’ll ever know. Ultimately, I don’t think it is that important. What concerns me much more, is that this issue has become overly politicised - not just out of concern for the possible geopolitical implications, or a desire to not offend Beijing, but also by being tied up with US domestic political divides.
• nostromo 4y ago
  The timing of this is interesting, given that China is now considering giving weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine. It seemed that from 2020 until recently, the intelligence community was trying to lower tensions with China. That's shifted now with China's increasing support Russia's war in Ukraine and China's increasing pressure in Taiwan. It's now in the US's interests to try and isolate China geopolitically. So, we're shooting down balloons and blaming them for Covid, rather than turning a blind eye.
  • bmer 4y ago
    I don't think it's against US interests for China to sell weapons to Russia. Post-WW2, the traditional way in which powerful nation states test their conventional (non-nuclear) capabilities has been through proxy warfare. The US would probably love it if China sold some of their weapons to Russia, so that US/NATO equipment can be tested against it. Conversely, the Chinese would probably not mind testing their "on paper" capabilities "in the field". The caveat here being that the US can probably upgrade/adapt to whatever is learned about Chinese equipment. In other words, there is no substitute for actual operational experience, and both sides benefit from selling weapons to the various parties in Ukraine, in order to get said experience.
    • ragazzina 4y ago
      >The US would probably love it if China sold some of their weapons to Russia, so that US/NATO equipment can be tested against it. I think the help from China would be in the form of helmets, gear, and 122mm rounds. Nothing really technologically advanced to test weapons against.
  • dilap 4y ago
    How would the US fare if China cut off exports? Seems like it would at best be extremely disruptive. So how much leverage does US really have to "isolate" China?
    • neoromantique 4y ago
      This cuts both ways though.
• gadders 4y ago
  Alina Chan and Matt Ridley feeling vindicated right now.
• isaacremuant 4y ago
  This has been written about many times, in 2020, very convincingly in 2021 by Nicholas Wade (https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-th...) and now. It will always be dismissed by those who have a political interest in seeing things differently. Authortiarianism and coordinated censorship between govs, big health and big tech made it so that anything countering the mandated narratives was heavily supressed and punished. That's why the online world and the real one varied, no matter how many names and attacks the "mono narrative" mob used against those of us who dissented. There will be no acknowledgement of the atrocities and human right abuses in the name of covid. No admission of guilt or bad faith. Just pretende that "we were wrong for the right reasons" and anyone who was right, if it's even admitted, "did so for the wrong reasons"
  • isaacremuant 4y ago
    The fact that my comment gets downvoted with no reply is par for course. I know that HN etiquette will then complain and say "don't talk about downvotes" but that has been effectively another way to suppress dissent all along. Make dissent hard and when the barrier is still passed, make it hard to view, if you can't outright censor it. Now we also get SNL being able to "slightly criticize the narrative" when they were so for it for such a long time [1] although the link will still call it a conspiracy, the ever so useful label to anything that requires dismissal without arguments. [1] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2023/02/26/woody-harrelsons-snl-monologue-includes-covid-vaccine-conspiracy/11354124002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2023/02/26/wo...
• pelasaco 4y ago
  I wonder how embarrassing should be to all media and people calling other names because they supported this theory since the day one..
• fswd 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • dang 4y ago
    Not sure what you mean but it seems par for the course to me.
    • fakethenews2022 4y ago
      [flagged]
    • fswd 4y ago
      I should clarify, I'm not suggesting you are censoring, or "site sponsored censorship", rather censorship from users via downvotes. They both accomplish the same thing I could understand why somebody might misunderstand me that you are censoring. The Nordstream 2 thread was also interesting, with tons of users trying to appeal to you specifically to do site censor the story, or tone policing. I remember you stuck to your guns.
      • rocketbop 4y ago
        It seems like more than a stretch to say downvoting is censoring, as the comments are still visible. Flagging, perhaps.
• charles_f 4y ago
  This is such a politically loaded question that I doubt we'll ever know. Chinese government won't ever admit to it - even claim it came from somewhere else per the article - and other governments want to be able to pin it
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• jrm4 4y ago
  Don't get me started on how stupid and racist "wet market" ALWAYS was. The question would be "why now?" There have been markets like this for, what, thousands of years? Why was this one special (unless, you know, it was near the lab where they made the viruses) 100% percent plays on "lololol look at the backwards bat eaters." So dumb.
  • padjo 4y ago
    While I agree with the sentiment that the term wet market is quite pejorative, the sequence of events is very common and is what happened with the first SARS. New viruses make the leap to humans all the time. It’s evolution baby.
    • jrm4 4y ago
      But, if I'm understanding it correctly, "very common" cuts both ways here? Namely, zillions of "wet markets" and virus jumps and "evolution" takes care of killing the other viruses as well?
• csours 4y ago
  I have extremely low confidence that we will ever be satisfied about the pathway that led to the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic. I feel strongly that it was not tied to malicious intent, but other than that, I don't have strong feelings. Malicious intent would require significant actual evidence to convince me.
• fasteddie31003 4y ago
  Someone linked me this website last year https://peterdaszak.com/ https://peterdaszak.com/ . I thought it must have been run by a crazy person at first, but it's turning out to be more and more correct. I'm not sure of the whole Nazi angle, however.
• nibbleshifter 4y ago
  The fucking article says the DoE has low confidence in the report.
  • extheat 4y ago
    Look at the other intelligence community reports are rated as and what "low confidence" means in intelligence community assessments. The fact that the DOE is taking the time to revise their previous stance is a very big deal in our quest to understand the origins of the new coronavirus.
• NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
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• darkhorn 4y ago
  This article is from 2015. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787 "Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research"
• kakadu 4y ago
  Odd timing to announce this, in the eve of the Chinese siding with the Russians.
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  • SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    Agreed, there is one issue of release. That we can never prove. China, not China. Intentional, not. GoF funded with US dollars or not. There is imo a bigger issue with response. And if ANYONE thinks the response was even remotely correct or good then they need to put their screen down for a good long while.
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• MKais 4y ago
  I still don't understand why the expert's opinions are ignored on this issue. This one for example is a professor in virology, working in BSL-3 lab. Politics? https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1629956279446691840 https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/16299562794466918... https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1551937826580824070 https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/15519378265808240... I mean, if you have a toothache, you probably do see a dentist, not your butcher right? If we take a plane, we won't choose one of us to fly it, right?
  • lgvln 4y ago
    Some others have pointed out, the reason might be geopolitics.
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• chitowneats 4y ago
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  • conception 4y ago
    The world has always been joyfully ok with a country killing its own people.
    • chitowneats 4y ago
      Muslims in Xinjiang are not Han Chinese. You're buying into the propaganda. In any case, the world should not be okay with this.
      • hotpotamus 4y ago
        If you want the US to care, it's probably better not to mention that they're Muslims though. I've noticed they just call them Uyghurs and suspect that's the reason.
        • deleted 4y ago
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  • trilbyglens 4y ago
    Right since covid only effected western countries. If it were "ethnic genocide" it was a pretty shitty one.
    • tharne 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure the person referencing "ethnic genocide" was referring to China's internment and genocide of their Muslim population in western China, not COVID. I think their point is that if genocide wasn't enough to motivate us to change our relationship with China, then a revelation about COVID originating from a Chinese lab probably isn't going to do much to move the needle either.
• drusepth 4y ago
  As an off-topic side note, I saw this trending on Twitter and just assumed it was the latest conspiracy on the site. Seeing it on HN lends it a lot more credibility. I used to watch Twitter for a source of breaking news. It's a shame that it seems like 90% of trending stories there need verified with a second source now, and that the nuance you get from doing so (for example, the "low confidence" expressed by the US) seem to still be entirely missing from Twitter's trending discourse.
• Glyptodon 4y ago
  What annoys me is how many people seem to think "lab leak" is the same as "man made virus." Though maybe I'm reading too much into things people say on social media.
  • macinjosh 4y ago
    Why? It’s a distinction without a difference. It is a man made pandemic whether they “made” the virus themselves or not. It is of very little consequence at this point if it was engineered or not.
• bushbaba 4y ago
  Annoying that early on even suggesting this as a possibility labeled you as a crazy, racist, conspiracy freak. Hopefully in the years to come people are more open minded.
  • lucb1e 4y ago
    It may not be that we now love conspiracy freaks (as you put it) because they're so open minded, but that now it doesn't matter anymore to sidetrack the conversation from "how can we fix it" to "whodunnit". Different period in the pandemic, rather than a shift in mindset from whether pointing fingers without evidence is helpful.
  • tim333 4y ago
    It may well turn out that the main promoters of that idea, Daszak, Fauci and associates may have been responsible for funding the research. When I first heard that idea I thought is was a conspiracy theory myself but then things like the Defuse proposal leaked out. (https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-grant-darpa/ https://theintercept.com/2021/09/23/coronavirus-research-gra...)
• somewhereoutth 4y ago
  Watering Can oppositionist denies Cloud Theory.
• b3nji 4y ago
  To think, numerous respected scientists we mocked, ridiculed and canceled when they pointed this out this was likely, years ago.
• mrwnmonm 4y ago
  "U.S. agency’s revised assessment is based on new intelligence" What is that intel?
• mbgerring 4y ago
  Why is this story referring to the Department of Energy as the “Energy Department”? And why is that agency performing this investigation? This doesn’t make a lot of sense.
• throwawaylinux 4y ago
  Sadly I doubt this will lead to any contrition, apologies, humility, self-reflection, or change among certain "experts", government officials, or the throngs of sheep and parrots who were led along by them.
• wnevets 4y ago
  Why does the HN title say "US agency" but the NY Times headline says "Energy Department"? Did the NY Times change their title or was the OP trying to obscure the Energy Department part?
  • IAmGraydon 4y ago
    The WSJ changed the headline: https://web.archive.org/web/20230226121213/https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a https://web.archive.org/web/20230226121213/https://www.wsj.c...
• rvz 4y ago
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• jokoon 4y ago
  I've read that some american scientists were working or were distantly involved in research projects at this lab. I still entertain the conspiracy theory that Trump, since he hated China, could have had the capacity to ask the CIA to "cause problems in China", and this lab would have been one way to do harm. Of course the US would not be really held responsible as long as chinese lab workers were pushed to be negligent, for example to manipulate virus in lower security lab settings, and no scientist was really able to know it would cause a pandemic. Of course it's impossible to prove, which is why it's a conspiracy theory. Of course the cause was negligence. I'm just ashamed to have this theory in my head, but there are still legitimate scientists who have unanswered questions. It is still quite puzzling, when you read about the subject, to read that they searched for "gain of function", because there was nothing really good to learn, and it was always a pandora box which was very risky to explore. I guess governments could ask China for financial reparations for this negligence, but I don't think it is worth the drama.
  • seizethecheese 4y ago
    If this were likely, the US would have shut borders way faster. It was a statistical likelihood it would arrive quickly given the number of China to USA travelers.
• 0max 4y ago
  Some folks think that the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada dipping to Beijing for a quick minute in 2020 was sus.
• bhartzer 4y ago
  So if it wasn’t a lab leak, then where did it come from? Are there any theories that explain that it could NOT be a lab leak and something else entirely?
  • kerpotgh 4y ago
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• jdlyga 4y ago
  Don’t take this too seriously, this has been a Rupert Murdoch position that his papers have trumpeted for a long time now. Don’t forget that the WSJ is just as much under his umbrella as the New York Post is.
• coding123 4y ago
  It is funny to watch the media finally get on board as relations with china has nosed dived since the last time this came up.
• at_a_remove 4y ago
  A lot of people will be "awww, shucks, it's too late now, what does it matter? What would we do different?" Well, for one, we should remember to completely crucify the oh-so-helpful people who wanted to censor anything as misinformation or disinformation. They were wrong. They'll need to be reminded that they suppressed the truth, and they'll need reminding constantly, for at least a decade. "Hey, remember that time when everyone banded together to suppress the truth?" More reminders would be in order: everyone who immediately started gibbering about racist xenophobes is gonna have to walk that back. Anyone who wanted to have word games about what "gain of function" really means needs a long and grinding reminder. We should assess our remaining faith in the WHO in light of their repeated mistakes, spoken with that total confidence. You know what I am talking about. "Mere mortal, you are not an epidemiologist, we told you that this wasn't airborne." The people who over-confidently tried to control the narrative, beat others down, shut them up, and so forth? Jostling them with the truth of their mistakes, again and again, might help for it not to happen next time.
• fwungy 4y ago
  On the upside, we advanced mRNA vaccine technology faster than it ever could have been done under the normal overly cautious test protocols. This technology is going to save countless lives and healtcare dollars in the future, so it was for the best, even if it was an accident.
  • weaksauce 4y ago
    > On the upside, we advanced mRNA vaccine technology faster than it ever could have been done under the normal overly cautious test protocols. that's not quite true. they didn't change anything fundamental in the test protocols they just compressed them a bit and cut out some red tape by submitting some things early instead of at the end of the trials like it would normally be done. it also reached the endpoints faster because they could get significant data because the virus was so contagious; it's not like some other virus that spreads much slower like say aids.
    • fwungy 4y ago
      The FDA is filled with antivaxxer sympathizers who throw lots of blocks and hurdles into vaccine testing. Many of the procedures can be shortened with absolutely no loss of safety. A lot of amazing vaccines have been killed under these protocols.
  • fasteddie31003 4y ago
    Wow we are really never going to learn anything from the pandemic. Listen to yourself, "done under the normal overly cautious test protocols". The lesson we need to learn from the pandemic origin is that we need to be "more" cautious with bleeding edge medical research. The cost/benefit is not there for a lot of research if there is a tiny chance a mistake can kill millions people unintentionally.
  • jaharios 4y ago
    Yeah I am also glad the WW2 happened so we can sent a man to the moon.
• odo1242 4y ago
  To be clear, the confidence is “low,” and many other US agencies disagree.
• dahfizz 4y ago
  Remember when the lab leak theory was a far right extremist conspiracy?
• tohnjitor 4y ago
  It seems more likely to me that it was intentionally released and not an accidental leak.
  • KETpXDDzR 4y ago
    It's definitely an effective way to tackle China's emerging age pyramid problems. However, it's hard/impossible to prove that. I think it's easier to argue that the Chinese government is guilty of interfering with investigations, destroying evidence, and have a too lax security policy for their virology institutes.
• KETpXDDzR 4y ago
  Once the evidence is public, does that mean we could start a worldwide class-action lawsuit against the Wuhan laboratory's owner?
• lsh123 4y ago
  There are two theories: - the covid19 was created naturally and just happen to happen near the only place on Earth (or one out of two or three places?) that study covid19-style viruses; - the covid19 was created in the lab and leaked outside because of negligence and/ or sloppy procedures. Your choice which theory you believe. But a lot of powers in this world have vested interests to make you believe in “nothing to see here theory”.
  • andrecarini 4y ago
    AFAIK part of the reason the lab is there and studies this type of virus is because it's naturally found in the region. correlation != causation
    • lsh123 4y ago
      Except that coronaviruses are wide spreader on all continents. But even if we look at the closest known relatives of covid19, we are literally looking at half of Asia (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2).
• tlear 4y ago
  They have not found the origin of the virus after testing every animal they could possibly test.. what was being done in the lab is still hidden => most likely it came from the lab. So the deadliest epidemic since Spanish flu has been caused by gain of function research supported in part by US, with people responsible in control of fighting the pandemic when it started. Said people then labeled leak theory a conspiracy theory and tried to suppress it. If there is any justice in the world they should all be dragged in front of the judge and spend rest of their life in a cell. But there isn't and they attached themselves to useful political masters who will protect them.
• hexage1814 4y ago
  Well, well, seems like.. all those crazy "conspiracy theorists" were right.
• brigandish 4y ago
  I would say the most important aspect of this news, as it will almost certainly never be solved one way or another, is for how research is conducted going forward. Clearly, the general population will be averse to this kind of research being conducted, let alone funded, by their own governments. However, said governments and others want to continue this kind of research, so I think the lack of transparency we've seen these past few years will only increase. For example[1]: > an NIH official said EcoHealth Alliance had not been able to hand over lab notebooks and other records from its Wuhan partner that relate to controversial experiments involving modified bat viruses, despite multiple requests. [1] https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/nih-to-terminate-ecohealth-alliance-grant-after-its-wuhan-partners-refuse-to-deliver-information-on-coronavirus-studies/ https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/nih-to-terminate-ecohealth-a...
• hedora 4y ago
  People like to focus on China’s handling of this, but it is important to remember that the source of the possible leak was research done in collaboration with the US. Westerners (including, but not just Americans) should be holding their own governments responsible for reckless biological weapons research. Think globally, act locally, and all that.
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• benlivengood 4y ago
  Does it matter? Is it possible that a worldwide pandemic was created in a laboratory and we were powerless to stop it? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes! Is it possible that a novel animal virus became viable in humans and became a worldwide pandemic that we were powerless to stop? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes! The best outcome is: figure out how to combat both the origin of novel viruses under any cases and how to eradicate them under any conditions. We can't prevent future pandemics by chasing after only a single root cause.
  • ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
    The problem is China as a country caused irreparable harm. It needs to be punished.
    • fallingfrog 4y ago
      This would be counterproductive.
      • ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
        Why? We should santion them worse than Russia.
        • timbit42 4y ago
          Yes, we should, but not for that reason.
        • fallingfrog 4y ago
          When you “punish” a nation, you are primarily punishing its most vulnerable people. Who then hate you and turn to their leaders for protection. Meanwhile and especially in China, the leadership has to save face and look like they’re doing something, so at minimum they will retaliate in kind. The larger issue too is that the west seeing themselves in a superior position where they can punish a nation as big as China like it was an unruly child is the attitude of someone whose understanding of international politics is 40 years out of date. It ain’t like that anymore.
• iaseiadit 4y ago
  This is what happens when an incident is intertwined with politics, and people have made political allegiance a core part of their personality: all sorts of mental gymnastics to split hairs, discredit scientists, and backpedal so they can cling to their beliefs. It seems liberals will do the exact same things they criticize conservatives of, and without any sense of the irony.
• ionwake 4y ago
  I think the problem you should all be addressing is not which theory was correct but why people who mentioned this possibility as a theory were downvoted on this plat form. Regardless of which theory is correct this behaviour affects everyone negatively.
• fallingfrog 4y ago
  In my mind, the lab leak theory is tipping over towards being the more likely explanation. I was never dismissive of it, but initially I gave it fairly low probability- now I give it fairly high probability. One interesting question is, however: if that was one random virus the Chinese government was mucking around with, what else have they got in those labs? And, what greater monstrosities have we got in our labs? I feel pretty sure the United States government has viruses in their labs that would make covid 19 look like hay fever.
• twblalock 4y ago
  Putting aside all the speculation here: What is the biggest possible gain we can get from gain-of-function research? Does it outweigh the possible downside of a gain-of-function experiment escaping a lab? I’m seriously interested in seeing a defense of this kind of research.
  • Arn_Thor 4y ago
    It has given a head-start on understanding the way certain viruses spread and change, and provided a basis for developing treatments and vaccines. If Sars-COV-2 really spread because of a lab leak, the irony of ironies is that treatments and vaccines could be developed so fast precisely because this type of virus had been studied.
    • twblalock 4y ago
      How is the vaccine timeline any different if it was from a lab leak? We can assume a lab leak would not be admitted for some time (if ever). So I reject the idea of a head start. If such a thing happened, the perpetrators would not give you a head start, as that would confirm their guilt!
• tehjoker 4y ago
  Without showing their work, their opinion is literally worthless. Never trust IC agencies when they hide their decisions behind a wall of secrecy.
• onetimeusename 4y ago
  I personally am willing to wait and hear out alternatives. I think the "smoking gun" evidence is long destroyed if it ever existed. But maybe the truth is out there. On the other hand, it seems like there are people who not only insist the Lab Leak Theory could be wrong, they don't WANT it to be right. Why is that? Why are they so concerned the theory might be true and what is the implication?
  • imiric 4y ago
    > Why is that? Why are they so concerned the theory might be true and what is the implication? That's a very naive question. Most governments don't like to admit they made a mistake or were wrong. The Chinese government especially, since saving face and avoiding embarrassment is crucial in Chinese culture. All their energy is spent in making sure this never happens domestically or abroad, and they will do anything in their power to suppress any information that would imply otherwise. Having a totalitarian government is convenient in that sense. On the other hand, a lab leak would also hurt US' reputation, given the NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, and could be directly involved in the incident. So, at the end of the day, it's all about optics and politics. There are many political and economic reasons for those involved to deny the allegations.
• MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  Can someone please explain, why the department of energy is dealing in genetic research? I thought they are mainly dealing in nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. What is the overlap between things nuclear and genetic research? The USA doesn't have a biological weapons program since 1972, says wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapons_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapo...
• fakethenews2022 4y ago
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• nickstinemates 4y ago
  Has anyone asked what Ja Rule thinks?
• fakethenews2022 4y ago
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• tristor 4y ago
  So, I generally lean towards the lab leak being the most likely cause. That said, why does anyone give a shit what the Department of Energy thinks about this? What makes this department qualified to even put forward a hypothesis?
• j16sdiz 4y ago
  I am just confused on how the narrative changes. Not too long ago, lots of people said it is impossible theory, and calls everybody else bad names. How hard could one say “I don’t know” when he actually don’t know?
• yellowapple 4y ago
  Why is this conclusion coming from the Department of Energy of all places?
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  I feel like it doesn't matter how it happened, China caused it either by incompetent lab operation or incompetent food hygiene operation. This has happened multiple times now. And at this point it's predicable, so it's not a matter of debate. So it's time to hold China accountable or at least take some preventative action like limiting direct flights and screening people whole been to China more closely.
• nikolay 4y ago
  The wild variant was a lab leak with an extremely high probability, and the only question left is if it was deliberate or accidental. Meanwhile, I personally am almost certain that Omicron was purposely engineered and released to replace Delta.
• too_much_churn 4y ago
  I always wondered why there is is much resistance to the idea of lab leak and why the origin of a virus is this political. My conclusion is that this topic happens to go to the root some very important disagreements we are having as a culture. At the core I see this as being about individual freedom vs big government. If your attitudes are pro-government you really want the most destructive virus of all time to have "spilled over" from nature. Finally, a job only a state can do. "We" need to protect habitats! Fight Climate change! Lock people in their homes and force injections to "protect" everyone. "Well you know, it's not like we WANT to do this but this virus is forcing our hand". If this is lab leak than it means that your government (not only the Chinese government, US government is implicated here as well) is murderously incompetent to start with and then covered it up with constant lies and gas-lighting and then took all your civil liberties, got everyone who disagreed banned from social media (and I hope that was the worst they did). All the while getting people deeply scared with targeted propaganda and making anyone who just wanted to lead their lives normally out to be a stochastic granny killer. But of course, if lab leak turned out the be the truth, we would still not see even 1/1000000th of the vitriol directed at anti-maskers be directed at the people ACTUALLY literally responsible for all these deaths as well as the health-, social- and economic mass destruction. It's always been this way: when government does it, millions of corpses is just so much spilled milk on the way to Utopia.
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• PortleyFool 4y ago
  Almost all of you were wrong about this, and almost none of you can admit it. I hope many of you will take this opportunity to ask yourself what other stories you’ve taken from the press that have left you misinformed or lied to. The conspiracy theorist, aka skeptics, followed a simple formula, question everything. The NPC’s followed another, trust the experts. Many of you write like experts on this forum. You should know better than most that title is baseless.
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• RagnarD 4y ago
  Only those completely ignorant of modern biology labs - and particularly the capabilities of such labs with state scale funding - can be indignant or surprised at such an obvious finding. Viruses are manipulated in countless labs around the world on a daily basis, and have been for years. Gain of Function research, as dangerous as it is, has been part of that. This isn't guessing or surmise, it's absolute fact that's trivial to check.
• raitchev1 4y ago
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• randm_sequence 4y ago
  I love the quote in this discussions about finding unicorns next to the unicorn factory. In addition to that argument, I find the following points in support of the lab leak hard to refute. Biologically - (1) The earliest available copies of SARS-CoV2 from 2019/2020 are incredibly stable genetically. When a virus makes the jump from one species to the next it tends to undergo rapid evolution as it adapts to a new host. We have zero evidence that this happened as if it sprung forth already adapted to the supposed new host, humans. (2) This "novel" virus infects an unbelievably large number of different cell types in the human body across *all* major organ systems. Thus, this "novel" virus jumped to humans perfectly adapted to infect dozens of different cell types across every main organ systems via multiple receptor paths via random chance? Sure. Couple those two facts with the following ... (3) WIV has been studying coronaviruses for 20 years in case of a pandemic. When one such pandemic arises, do they rise to the occasion? Do they jump in with their research? Do they help develop new therapeutics? Nope, they go completely dark and destroy evidence. If China were trying to vie as a superpower on the world stage, this was the exact wrong step to take. (4) The WIV lab in question had been part of a team that submitted a DARPA proposal in 2018. WIV's role in the proposal was to generate new chimeric Coronavirus backbones, insert different types of spikes, and trial furin cleavages in those spikes. They would then passage them through humanized mice, collect the ones that successfully reproduced, and sequence them. My jaw hit the floor when I read the proposal, which is floating around the Internet to be read by all. One might object and say that you can't trust everything on the Internet, which is very true. I came from this world. My friend is at DARPA and was on the team who reviewed (and rejected) the proposal. Please note that typically one proposes research that is not only possible but has already been successfully completed. Note that there are dozens of other facts that also support this position that I won't regurgitate here. Why does this matter? Beyond crimes against humanity and preventing this from happening again, you really need to consider how events unfolded to understand the impact this grand lie had. SARS and MERS were scary but not very good at spreading; therefore, past outbreaks were quickly extinguished. If the public had been told that this virus was likely engineered to infect people, one could imagine that the entire response to the pandemic would have been quite different. ps longCOVID is simply a persistent coronavirus infection and most of the infections appear to be persistent (some are asymptomatic until they aren't).
• wry_discontent 4y ago
  > U.S. officials declined to give details on the fresh intelligence and analysis that led the Energy Department to change its position. Definitely truthful information coming from the US government and their very normal and friendly relationship to China.
• manuelmoreale 4y ago
  Just to add to the conversation, I found this episode on the subject particularly interesting https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/311-did-sars-co-v-2-escape-from-a-lab https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/311...
• 2devnull 4y ago
  Lots of cringy posts here. It was obvious a lab leak was the most likely. It’s useful that so many people discredited their intelligence by making outlandish assertions to the contrary, often going so far as to accuse anyone who disagreed as being in various ways substandard persons. These people seem to want to double down. A foolish consistency is what I expected, but it’s still pretty funny to read these comments and see the mental gymnastics.
• healthyusa 4y ago
  I’ve been in a virology lab leak, I’ve been in a lab hood explosion, I’ve been in a radioactive leak. This is on the island of Manhattan. Stuff happens. Some lab techs, it’s their first week in the lab, the person next to them? Decades of experience. Accidents happen lots in laboratories. It not something we called the NYTs about. We cleaned it up, made sure safety protocols were in place. And went back to work the next day.