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CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
- doctaj 2y agohttps://archive.ph/DaBme https://archive.ph/DaBme
- fgna 2y agoWas thinking this would be due to the inauguration or decree spree, however the analysis was started under the biden administration
- mmooss 2y agoYes, but we can assume - Trump and his people have openly communicated, planned, and followed through on it - that the actions of executive branch agencies are politicized. Here we are told that the "C.I.A.’s new director, John Ratcliffe, ... wants the agency to get “off the sidelines” in the debate."; that he's long favored the lab-leak theory (which is a politicized issue); and of all the things a brand new new CIA director must do, we see that this was Ratcliffe's first priority. We know that the CIA did not choose to release the report before the Trump administration. I think the overwhelming evidence is that it's a politicized action. Would Trump or his team lie or mislead? Of course. We can't give them the benefit of the trust until proven false; they have embraced deceit. Unfortunately, even though they weren't always credible before, I think that means that these things are now meaningless, other than as clues to Trump's and others' intents: Why prioritize this messaging? Whose idea was it? And always, cui bono - who benefits?
- MilnerRoute 2y agoThe Times also includes this unusual sentence. "There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift, officials said." And right below the headline on the Wall Street Journal they even stressed that the CIA says it had 'low confidence' in its finding... https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/cia-now-favor https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/cia-now-favor...
- ironyman 2y agoSenator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the following statement about the CIA’s findings on the origins of the Coronavirus: “I’ve said from the beginning that Covid likely originated in the Wuhan labs. Communist China covered it up and the liberal media covered for them. I’m pleased the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab-leak theory is the most plausible explanation of Covid’s origins and I commend Director Ratcliffe for fulfilling his promise to release this conclusion. Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.”
- mmooss 2y agoWhat do you think of Cotton's statement (that is, why in particular are you posting it)?
- jjtheblunt 2y agoMaybe because your first sentence above mentioned politicizing. (?)
- scintill76 2y agoHaving no other information, the fact he went out of his way to associate it with Biden makes it seem actually politically driven by Trump/Republicans.
- netsharc 2y agoHe wants to give it a "it's a bipartisan conclusion, so it's sane!". Considering it's "with low confidence", someone else could've published the findings focusing on the low confidence rather than the fact that their needle is pointing more towards "lab leak".
- jfengel 2y ago"Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.” Is that really true? Even supposing it was a leak from a lab, is punishing China really our top priority? What does it accomplish? What does it look like? That sounds like the goal isn't to find the actual cause, but to seek excuses to justify whatever it is he wishes to inflict on China.
- shadowgovt 2y agoIt was started under Biden, but the decision to publicize it is the new director's decision. Worth noting is that this is a low-confidence report. I'm not accusing the director of divulging a low-confidence report under the belief that the public will accept it as categorically true because they have no sense of how CIA confidence levels work, but they're willing to believe the director wouldn't publicize it if it wasn't true. ... you should have low confidence in the truth of my last statement.
- gtgvdfc 2y agoActually under the original Trump administration. The intel community never dismissed the lab leak theory. The discrediting of it was 100% a psyop
- gtgvdfc 2y agoSpecifically, we now have internal emails dating to 2020 from the CDC (NIH? Who remembers, it's been literally two years since this came out) about how it was probably a lab leak and then about the importance to bury the lab leak theory.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- caycep 2y ago[flagged]
- ajsnigrutin 2y agoWasn't this one of those "forbidden" conspiracy theories, censored from most social media, while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?
- ImHereToVote 2y agoIt was malinformation. Whether it is misinformation or not is irrelevant.
- Vecr 2y agoI'm assuming this is satire?
- ImHereToVote 2y agoYes.
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoAre they really anti-china? Or are they just trying to shake down China for some cash?
- nradov 2y agoThere is now a broad consensus across the national security establishment and the leadership of both major political parties that China must be treated as an adversary. Attempts at constructive engagement failed so now we have to pivot to containment in Cold War 2. This is a strategic issue that transcends money.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- mmustapic 2y agoSo there’s a new president and the main intelligence agency changes its position radically in alignment with the new government. Why should we be confident in any other claim they made in the past?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> the main intelligence agency changes its position radically When did the CIA come out against lab leak? Everyone's been spitballing low- and moderate-confidence guesses.
- wkat4242 2y agoYes that's what I thought but it does say it was an analysis project started by Biden. The timing is suspicious, true. But yeah this topic is extremely politicised (not just by the US mind you, but also by China). So it's hard to say what's the truth. I doubt we'll ever find it. The lab leak theory does make sense though IMO. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. But yeah, I take this at face value. And to be honest I'm just really happy that this is all behind us.
- layer8 2y agoWe shouldn’t be confident in this specific assessment because the agency making it isn’t either: > The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
- hansjorg 2y agoSo what you're saying is that we shouldn't put our trust into people who pride themselves on being master manipulators and deceivers?
- rightbyte 2y agoThe head of a underpants subscription telemarketing firm is probably trusting his underlings more than the head of the CIA.
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- drewbug01 2y ago> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete. I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain. --- One thing that is, however, quite certain: there are very real political reasons to favor one theory or another. For example, Sen. Tom Cotton is quoted as saying: > “Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Mr. Cotton said. So... I'm not certain this is a development worth trusting. Maybe it really did originate from a lab! But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.
- indy 2y ago[flagged]
- Throw84949595 2y ago[flagged]
- smegsicle 2y ago[flagged]
- eightysixfour 2y agoI had a pretty long post about this here before, due to the politicization of the issue it is highly unlikely any of us will ever know “the truth” without a surprise smoking gun. There are good reasons to believe the natural or the lab leak hypotheses. I think you have to accept it is now unlikely we normies will ever know the truth. The post, and its comments, are worth reading still IMO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26750452#26751943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26750452#26751943
- rufus_foreman 2y ago[flagged]
- shadowgovt 2y agoIf I ask "what happened?" whatever you answer will be disagreed with by about half the observers of the question.
- rufus_foreman 2y ago[flagged]
- n4r9 2y agoThere's a certain sort of fanatic who believes that everyone has the same opinions as them under the covers, but are disagreeing purely for performance purposes.
- nunobrito 2y ago[flagged]
- timewizard 2y ago> without fear of downvotes That this even exists is a fundamental part of the problem.
- chimprich 2y agoThe CIA is not a neutral party in this. Discrediting China may well be their goal here. A lab leak is not impossible, but there are good reasons to suspect a natural spillover event. There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests that the Wuhan wet market was the origin. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2 https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2
- tcdent 2y agooverlaying an additional conspiracy theory in skepticism of the current conspiracy theory
- wkat4242 2y ago> There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests the Wuhan wet market was the origin. Those are not mutually exclusive theories. It could have been a lab leak that was then superspread by the visit of an affected lab worker (or someone they came into contact with) at the wet market.
- chimprich 2y agoThat is possible, but the evidence doesn't suggest that. E.g. if I am reading the paper correctly, they say that there is evidence of two distinct spillover lineages, which wouldn't be consistent with a simple visit from a lab worker.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y agoThey really are mutually exclusive theories. The current evidence points to at least two different spillover events (of slightly different variants) at the market, followed by spread of the virus in the communities surrounding the market, eventually radiating out to the rest of Wuhan. There is solid evidence now for each of those statements. If you try to reconcile that with the lab leak theory, you end up with an ever more implausible theory: two different scientists got infected in the lab with different variants (of a virus we have good evidence never existed at the lab in the first place), then both of them went to the market (where the same types of wild animals that caused the original SARS outbreak in 2002 just happened to be sold) and infected people, but somehow they didn't infect anyone else at the lab. It's just one implausibility stacked on top of the next, all with the goal of avoiding what the data is obviously saying: the outbreak began at the market.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoPretty safe to say this is a politicized nothingburger: The announcement of the shift came shortly after Mr. Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency “on the sidelines” of the debate over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.... Another senior U.S. official said it was Mr. Ratcliffe’s decision to declassify and release the new analysis. There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift. Rather it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing over for months..... To boost the natural origins theory, intelligence officers would like to find the animal that passed it to a human or find a bat carrying what was the likely ancestor of the coronavirus that causes Covid. Similarly, to seal the lab leak, the intelligence community would like to find evidence that one of the labs in Wuhan was working on a progenitor virus that directly led to the epidemic. Neither piece of evidence has been found.
- kryogen1c 2y agoIt's wild to me that everyone is calling lab leak a politicized theory. I suppose flat earthers make heliocentrism and the laws of physics politicized theories too, then.
- m0llusk 2y agoThe thing is that unlike political science, virology is an actual science. Scientists have found little evidence of coronavirus at the labs and there is record of them failing even to culture the virus which would be required for any research including gain of function research. In dramatic contrast samples from the wet market were easily cultured into multiple related strains which strongly points to the wet market as the source.
- int_19h 2y agoAll theories regarding COVID-19 origin are politicized simply because the question itself became a prominent political matter.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago+1, the question of origin in general is politicized. I don’t think individual theories are taboo, it’s just very difficult to truly evaluate the evidence at this point, unless perhaps you are an expert and can do all the fact checking yourself.
- jfengel 2y agoHeliocentrism was politicized. The Galileo affair had a lot more to do with Church authority during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation than about cosmology. Galileo went out of his way to antagonize certain key players, and his punishment was primarily a political matter, not a scientific or even theological one.
- andy_ppp 2y agoWe can conclude nothing, except that humans do stupid stuff and usually conspiracy theories are incorrect. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Do we actually know if NIH was doing gain of function research (on Corona viruses) in the Wuhan lab? It sounds like another right wing conspiracy theory but if people have high quality sources for this being true I’ll happily change my mind.
- frankharv 2y agoThey subbed it out to these guys because it was illegal to do Gain of Function research: https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2024/06/ecohealth-alliances-response-to-recent-allegations https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2024/06/ecohealth-alliance...
- DiogenesKynikos 2y agoThe demonization of the Ecohealth Alliance is one of the more depressing aspects of the response to the pandemic. EHA has been warning for decades that a coronavirus pandemic is likely, and that governments should be taking steps to prepare for it and to make it less likely. Then, they're proved right, but instead of society thanking them, they're subject to a politically motivated witch hunt, with the aim of distracting from the US government's disastrous pandemic response.
- stvswn 2y agoIt's begging the question to claim they were proven right. Sure, they were proven right in some respect, but if the research itself caused it (and let's be real, it did) then they were proven right in a manner that doesn't really speak well of their record. And yes, they were influential in arguing for continued grant money to study coronaviruses. They were also influential in arguing against the Obama administrations restrictions on gain of function research and seem to have sought ways around the restrictions (we know from comments on the DEFUSE paper). They didn't publicly disclose the DEFUSE paper, a whistleblower in the DoD had to leak it. It is relevant because it suggested adding a FCS to natural coronaviruses to make it more virulent to humans. It seems like as soon as a virus with FCS appeared on the scene, their first reaction should have been "oh no, did someone do that research we proposed somewhere? We have to tell someone!" -- but, alas, no. Let's keep crying that they're being demonized, though.
- buyucu 2y ago[flagged]
- steveBK123 2y agoIt was never an implausible theory so the censorship over it was foolish. Of course the immediate jump to conclusion in the first few months by some who found it politically expedient was no better either. People need to be more comfortable saying I don’t know but we are looking into it.
- nxm 2y agoBack then anyone who suggested the lab leak theory was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist by main stream media.
- Johanx64 2y ago[flagged]
- gejose 2y ago[flagged]
- starspangled 2y agoMany.
- steveBK123 2y agoYes and I’m saying that was bad.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gigatree 2y agoHopefully this helps people realize how meaningless it is to be labeled a conspiracy theorist.
- PoignardAzur 2y ago
- calibas 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance#Project_DEFUSE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance#Project_DEF...
- frankharv 2y agohttps://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/110145 https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/11014...
- shadowgovt 2y agoI simply cannot use this as signal to update my priors on the theory given how politically charged this issue is and the new administration. We cannot ignore the timing or the fact that the release appears to be the direct consequence of the previous director not believing the information he had passed the evidential bar and the new directory believing it does. It's new signal on the question, which is always nice-to-have, but I'll be digesting it with a huge grain of salt given its pedigree.
- jfengel 2y agoI don't think anyone is updating their priors. It's just a loud restatement of existing priors.
- ricksunny 2y agoSociety is like a meta-brain. One neuron may believe something to a different degree than the others - i.e. different priora. Highly-reported channels like this are the society brain updating its priors at large.
- rhansgrt 2y agoFauci has been preemptively pardoned for gain of function research (lying or funding), so the bureaucrats can now pander to Trump. Anyway, we have always been at war with Oceania and China is now our enemy! Next week the NYT will use the term "Wuhan Virus". This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now? I feel like I'm watching The Godfather.
- shadowgovt 2y agoFWIW, the pardon doesn't mention gain of function research. (https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/dl https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/dl). This pardon applies every bit as much to him parallel parking while attending a Chief Medical Advisor meeting as it does to gain of function research. > This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now? No; this is 100% new. This is in no way a normal Presidential transition of power.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoFauci’s pardon curiously goes back to 2014. What do you suppose he needed cover for that long before Covid?
- jpcookie 2y ago[dead]
- jpcookie 2y ago[dead]
- ndr42 2y agoI found this recent interview with Christian Drosten [1] very interesting, he explains very good scientifically why it is much more probable that the origin is not from a laboratory. A quick summary of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av2Hax3Bg1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av2Hax3Bg1U (1) The area where the Nyctereutes spec. (german: Marderhund, I have no idea how it is called in english) where kept, there where a lot of DNA of Nyctereutes and a lot of nucleinacid of SARS II. (2) From the beginning there a two lines of the corona viruses laboratory-confirmed. From the evolutionary speed of virus mutation it is nearly certain that the separation had to be taken place months before. About 8 times a corona-variation had been aquired by man. From this infection chains 2 virus-types had survived to be confirmed in Wuhan. A person who works in the laboratory would have been working with a clonal virus that is not mutated in that way. (3) The market is the center of all infections even if you take out everybody that is known to be at the market, not the laboratory. (4) For the animals at the market a analysis showed that they had been ill/infected (not specifically corona) These are all separate published aspects that points to the same thing. The part starts at 2 hours 23 minutes 30 seconds - you have to use auto-translated subtitles which are unfortunately not very good (german language) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten edit: grammar
- throwawaymaths 2y agothere's a 23? bp sequence that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent (which preceded covid-19 by a decade). now an exact match of that length isn't impossible, but which is more likely? that this managed to be exactly correct on accident? or some grad student was told to just copypasta every furin cleavage site in the database into a GOF library and surprise surprise the most virulent form that became a pandemic came from the sequence that is engineered to be efficient. any scientist that has any molecular biology wet experience will tell you this is exactly what they would have done (though us researchers would probably not have pulled from the patented BLAST sequences, since that selector is turned off by default by the NCBI)
- cakealert 2y agoCan you estimate the entropy of the sequence? Maybe by walking to it from other known sequences?
- dist-epoch 2y agoThe virology research in Wuhan was done with US money and US experties (Ralph Baric, ...). The US has absolutely no interest in prooving that the virus leaked from there.
- jfengel 2y agoIt very much does. China is a political opponent, and casting blame on China allows the US more freedom to act against them. American involvement is barely an inconvenience. For those most eager to blame it on China, it was the fault of one American. They would like to punish him, too, but he has received a preemptive pardon. (Either to avoid political persecution of an innocent man, or to cover up the dastardly deeds of their domestic political opponents; take your pick.)
- sumek83 2y agoand the people that believe it tend to be also very happy to be exposed to biological weapons running wild
- nxm 2y agoBut the fact checkers back in 2021 labeled the lab leak theory as false/misinformation. Meanwhile anyone who suggested it was labeled a conspiracy theory by the main stream media.
- stvswn 2y agoIt's pretty wild to me that a good portion of commenters here seem to think that only one side can politicize Covid's origins when the cited article itself says that the conclusion predates the new administration. The natural origin bitter-clingers are still citing papers that claim to lean towards natural origin with the thinnest possible evidence. I admit I'm not a virologist, but I am a bit skeptical that this community would be completely forthright with us. I can't shake the feeling like there might be fire where there's smoke: the Chinese government has not provided access to the WIV's data, for instance. The Chinese government deleted the virus's genome sequence from GenBank before later releasing it publicly. The closest relative to Covid-19 in known databases is RatG13, a virus from bats that was discovered in caves thousands of miles away, a complex that the researchers at WIV had used to collect samples. Peter Dasnak of EcoHealth alliance had previously submitted a plan to the DoD to introduce furin cleavage sites to existing coronaviruses to do gain-of-function research (or some euphemism for GOF to evade restrictions), a proposal that was declined, but within which there are still comments extant where they discuss outsourcing the riskiest research to China. Peter Dasnak led the delegation from WHO to China but never publicly disclosed that he had, only several years earlier, been interested in research that would have produced a virus that very specifically resembled Covid. A small group of influential scientists and bureaucrats were discussing via email that it certainly appeared to be a lab leak to them until they met in person to speak with Dr. Fauci in February 2020, after which they abruptly stopped discussing the possibility of lab-leak and worked to submit the Proximal Origin letter to Nature that claimed a consensus among scientists that it must be natural origin -- based on the airtight logic that if a lab wanted to make a coronavirus it probably would have done it differently. Those authors did not disclose the influence of Peter Dasnak and Dr Fauci in drafting the letter. Subsequently, the US government used the existence of the letter as authoritative evidence of a natural origin in order to lean on social media companies to censor speech about the potential of a lab leak. Meanwhile, the fact remains that in order for Covid to have made a jump from an animal species, it would have to be extant in the population of an animal species -- or a variant clearly one mutation away would need to be. It's been 5 years and we haven't found an animal with Covid. Of course we'll never get the smoking gun because the data you'd need -- the experimental data from WIV -- is likely gone forever. Why would that be? Why wouldn't a leading research center on coronavirus virology -- perhaps the foremost in the world -- hide its records when the big event that represents its entire reason for existence -- a coronovirus pandemic -- has shown up in the world, conveniently on its doorstep? Shouldn't that be their time to shine? Are you going to blame that on Trump's rhetoric? Why hasn't all of Baric's data from UNC been released to the public yet, then? It is really pretty amazing to me that many people will likely go to their grave thinking "oh, no, no scientists released a paper that says the natural origin is still a live theory, I don't have to listen to any of this conspiracy nonsense" simply because they can't live in a world where Trump was right.
- p0w3n3d 2y agoI have some opinion on this: despite whatever was the source, the reaction that was made by countries (i.e. complete global lockdown of population) means that they were scared as hell. And I haven't seen any govt scared so much on any flu that came out in my life, however some of them were baddest in my life (not mathematically speaking, I know that every set has a supreme element, what I mean that flu can be dangerous to people incl me, with asthma) Based on their reaction we may know that they either knew something very bad (i.e. failed experiment) or were suspecting something so bad that could, at least in their theory, kill the population or massively decrease it. In other words something was fishy and they overreacted.
- notRobot 2y ago> were suspecting something so bad that could, at least in their theory, kill the population or massively decrease it. Yeah, a really bad virus.
- jmyeet 2y agoIt's crazy for a Trump loyalist to complain about "politicization" of this process when declassifying and releasing a report with no hard or new evidence is quite clearly a political decision. The US is clearly setting up China to be the next Big Enemy, the USSR 2.0. The US establishment expects--and arguably is fomenting--economic and possibly eventual military conflict with China. The "lab leak" declassification neatly fits into that narrative. We may never know the truth or it may take decades to find out. There's really only two likely theories here: zoonotic origin and lab leak. There are many variants of "lab leak" but the most likely is that it was accidental. It's more fringe to claim it was intentional. This sort of thing has happened before [1]. There is circumstancial data for this like China not cooperating with a WHO investigation back in 2020 and 2021 and a Wuhan Institute of Virology virus database in SEptember 2019. To my knowledge, that has never been recovered or examinted by external parties. My theory is, like every government (including the US), China doesn't want to know the answer to this question. There's literally no upside. Would you want to be the official who oversaw a leak like this? Would you want to be in charge of the government at that time? Nobody wants that. Governments love ignorance. The zoonotic origin is still more likely but it has the obvious problem that we haven't (yet) identified the host animal. Also, Wuhan is quite far from the bats that might be the likely source. It might be a complicated origin, such as a person or animal being infected with multiple strains and a replication error creating the virus from multiple sources. But the main point here is we're going to see a lot of anti-China sentiment being drummed up by the US in coming years. This is bipartisan too. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
- CMay 2y agoThings that are true: "Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time." The Department of Energy concluded with low confidence that it was a lab leak. The FBI concluded with moderate confidence that it was a lab leak. The CIA's new report also concludes that they have low confidence that it was a lab leak. It's important to note that low confidence is a positive number, not a negative number. The wet market theory loses some credibility given some data points, but the lab leak theory remains plausible. China has had lab leak origins in the past, so this would not have been unprecedented. China obstructed and delayed the investigation. Whether it leaked from a lab or not, China covered it up. China covering it up is not necessarily evidence that it was a lab leak. If there was any truth to it (which they may not even know), they probably wouldn't want it reflecting poorly on the state. China is big on "social harmony", so you don't have the right to know. Whatever happened wasn't necessarily intentional. China made some deeply embarrassing and shameful decisions around this time and they won't want to promote them, but they were also not alone in making mistakes. If China concluded it was a lab leak internally and shared that, there wouldn't have been as much need for the world to speculate, analyze and investigate so much which only hurt China's reputation more. Coincidences occur, serendipity occurs. Most people have experienced one. As a result, proximity to the lab is not solid proof, but it is not the only datapoint either. If China was more transparent and cooperative, there could have been more information to make higher confidence conclusions with.
- RajT88 2y ago> "Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time." Officials are saying that, true. I have "low confidence" it actually is true. Everyone since the election has been scrambling to kowtow to the new boss to avoid his wrath.
- mrandish 2y ago> Officials are saying that, true. I have no idea if the report's conclusions are correct, but I doubt a report like that was created in three or four days. Tasking expert analysts, reassigning the manpower necessary and going through legal and secrecy review in 96 hours would be extraordinary for a large bureaucratic agency. Sure, it could happen but that kind of all-hands, crisis urgency is hard to keep quiet. It's something we'd hear about from insider leaks. I think it's more plausible that the report existed (because we know the CIA did look into it multiple times already) and the previous director had decided not to release it. And now the new director decided differently. Both of those decisions (not release vs release) were probably politically motivated to some extent but we don't have to jump to assuming an entire new report was fabricated with different conclusions practically overnight. After all, most government agencies that looked into it already concluded with low or medium confidence that it was a lab leak. It's not like the CIA report conclusion is an outlier here.
- juliushuijnk 2y agoApart from directing anger for political reasons, I don't see the big importance. It's like wondering why a single building caught fire, when the shocking thing was that the whole world caught fire. Surely the lessons to learn are with 'how to deal with a spreading fire', and not with 'how to prevent a fire'.
- tensor 2y agoThe biggest irony in this is that apparently the lesson the current US government learned was "let's cancel all the fire stations and fire all the fire fighters!"
- Khaine 2y agoThe NIH under Fauci may have been funding gain of function research in China in violation of an Executive Order (EO), and this research may have caused the pandemic. If so, I think it's pretty important to investigate, how the NIH could violate the EO without appropriate oversight, and to hold those who made those decisions to account. From: https://unherd.com/2025/01/the-criminal-pardoning-of-anthony-fauci/ https://unherd.com/2025/01/the-criminal-pardoning-of-anthony... "Fauci claims — in a curious echo of Trump — that he is the victim of partisan threats of investigation and prosecution. “Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he said in response to Monday’s news. Yet it was noticeable that the pardon is backdated to 2014. This is, coincidentally, the same year that the US three-year ban on gain-of-function research took effect and also the start date for an NIH grant to Wuhan that biosafety experts such as Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, believe is linked to the “reckless” research that sparked global pandemic. “The pardon is a travesty,” he told me. The evidence has shown clear efforts to avoid such scrutiny. One memo disclosed that “Tony” had told David Morens, a senior adviser to Fauci, how to avoid requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), suggesting that he stop using government-issued phones for his gmail accounts. A leaked email indicated that Morens was coached on evasion of FOIs by Margaret Moore, Fauci’s long-serving assistant — who pleaded the fifth when asked to testify. “I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” he wrote. Another senior aide to Fauci misspelled key conspirators, presumably to avoid searches intended to fulfil FOIA requests."
- Workaccount2 2y agoWe will probably never know what happened unless the CCP collapses and all the documents leak out. China had a bit of a freak out when the pandemic first started and pretty much silenced everyone close to the lab and kept everyone else out. It was until months/years later that China started allowing chosen data out, and who knows the truthfulness of it. Authoritarian regimes, especially China, are the furthest thing from transparent.
- snowwrestler 2y agoI think it’s important to note that there are really two “lab leak” theories: One in which the virus developed naturally, was collected in a remote location, and was being studied in a lab when it leaked from the lab into nearby human society. One in which it was not a dangerous virus originally, and it became dangerous in the lab through human agency, either maliciously (e.g. bioweapons research) or accidentally (e.g. gain-of-function research). Note that in the first theory, the virus has a natural origin, but the pandemic originates in the lab leak. These two theories get mixed up constantly, either by accident or on purpose, who knows. For example look at this CNN story: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/25/politics/covid-19-lab-leak-cia-ratcliffe https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/25/politics/covid-19-lab-lea... First paragraph: “The CIA now assesses the virus that causes Covid-19 more likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China, rather than occurring naturally” Deeper in the story: “Every US intelligence agency still unanimously maintains that Covid-19 was not developed as a biological weapon” and “almost all American intelligence agencies also assess that the virus itself was not genetically engineered.” So it didn’t occur “naturally” but also wasn’t developed or engineered. Makes no sense.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> These two theories get mixed up constantly, either by accident or on purpose, who knows I'm struggling to see the practical difference. Ebola naturally evolved. I'm not sure I'm be more incensed if an American lab released natural versus artifical Ebola into the population.
- nickburns 2y agothe "practical difference" is that zoonotic spillover and lab leak may not be mutually exclusive theories.
- crazygringo 2y agoOne way to look at the difference is that a "natural Ebola" almost certainly would have spread at some point anyways, and so it wouldn't affect the total number of world deaths in the end, just make them happen some number of years sooner. Whereas an "artificial Ebola" would never have existed without it being intentionally created, so all the deaths aren't just time-shifted, they wouldn't have happened otherwise. They're new.
- WillyWonkaJr 2y agoI suspect that most people are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because they've been infected by Covid, probably multiple times, and have decided to stop taking precautions. To accept that you've been infected with a bioweapon is a pretty upsetting prospect.
- mandmandam 2y ago> I suspect that most people are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because they've been infected by Covid Sorry, but that borders on historic revisionism. People are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because millions of posts regarding it on social media were suppressed and blocked across Facebook, Twitter, and others; and because high-level US officials pressured scientists to claim that it was more likely natural origin than a lab leak despite their actual beliefs; and because a vast section of media and academia blithely swallowed and pushed Daszak's paper in The Lancet despite obvious flaws and massive conflicts of interest. Dissenting views and evidence were heavily suppressed, no matter how convincing or reputable. The narrative was so forcefully shifted that any discussion of a lab leak was often met with hatred. And all that was well before most people were infected multiple times.
- maeil 2y agoYour memory is accurate. Yet elsewhere we have an infectious disease researcher claiming > At the same time, I've come to distrust many of the voices who push the lab leak hypothesis, either because they're obviously doing so for geopolitical reasons, or because they've become addicted to being "the lone voice in the wilderness", despite it not being a risky position to take. It's an incredible phenomenon, the collective memory blackout that seems to have taken place regarding the vibe in 2020-2021. Never before, or even after (so far), have we seen a more strictly coordinated ban on discussion of a specific topic across all major US social networks. It even reached as far as Wikipedia. Here's what Yishan Wong (ex-Reddit) has said about it > Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic because the "debate" included ...massive amounts of horrible behavior, spam-level posting, and abuse that spilled over into the real world - e.g. harrassment of public officials and doctors, racially-motivated crimes, etc. There are many problems with this reasoning, but the biggest one is that if true, it should have rightfully caused mob behaviour. Gaza War (2023-present): <100k deaths Ukraine War: <1 million deaths Korean War: 2-3 million deaths Vietnam: 1.3-3.4 million deaths Covid: 6+ million deaths
- draw_down 2y ago[dead]
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- ocschwar 2y agoIt's not like we will ever have a chance to do a useful reassessment of what happened in Wuhan when everyone involved is scared of being designated the scapegoat and executed. And I do mean executed. If the CCP feels that it's useful for the state to find someone there and give them a lethal injection, they'll do it. So it's ridiculous to expect any cooperation from anyone there. And ultimately it doesn't matter. If a contagious virus is coming to your country, your best response is independent of its origins. And if your response was a complete shitshow, finding a scapegoat in Wuhan won't make your response any less of a shitshow. The US's response to covid under Trump was a ridiculous shitshow. Nothing more to it.
- jmull 2y agoDoes this matter? This is the CIA, which will make any kind of claim, true or false, if it suits their aims. Well, it does signal their aims.
- ychan268 2y agoI mean which country benefited from COVID? China controlled the virus first then lost a lot from strict lockdown, western had many death cases not to mention developing countries. If some Bie Inc made COVID, I don't think they have the courage to piss all governments.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoThe country with the population that has the most incompatible ACE2 receptors benefitted the most.
- foobarbecue 2y agoOne thing I've always wondered is: how many labs are there in the world doing gain-of-function research on coronavirus, as the Wuhan Instutute of Virology was? Intuitively, it seems to me like there aren't that many, so it's a pretty interesting coincidence that the virus started right next to such a lab. However, if coronavirus labs are common, then it's not an coincidence. Can anyone point to research that answers this question? From a political and public safety standpoint, I think the US government and WHO probably felt they had a moral obligation not to point the finger at China during the height of the pandemic. And now we have the opposite -- a cult of hate has taken over the US government, and they have much to gain by preaching hate against China (Trump was in power in 2019, but he only had presidential powers. Now he has absolute power.). So, in either case, it's quite hard to get undistorted information.
- chadcmulligan 2y agoWhen you say it that way it was an incredible coincidence
- tripletao 2y agoI'm not aware of teams other than Dr. Baric's at UNC and Dr. Shi's at the WIV proposing to enhance sarbecoviruses by genetic engineering. If anyone knows of more, then I'd appreciate a link. SARS-CoV-2 might also be a naturally-evolved virus collected and accidentally released by researchers. The field for that is a little wider. I believe the WIV had the world's biggest collection, and the closest relative published before the beginning of the pandemic; but the BANAL viruses collected by the Institut Pasteur du Laos are now closer. I think there's a few more teams, though with smaller volumes of work. Naively, I'd think "an American-funded lab in China with American collaborators had an accident" blames China less than "Chinese wildlife traffickers supplying Chinese tastes for exotic wildlife had an accident". The political perception is generally not too tethered to reality, though.
- breadwinner 2y agoAmericans had a role to play here as well: In 2014, Obama administration halted the so called "gain of function" research because of laboratory accidents. In 2017, Trump administration restarted the research. See links below. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/white-house-to-cut-funding-for-risky-biological-study.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/white-house-to-cut-fun... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih... The U.S. government, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provided funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, an American non-profit organization focused on studying emerging diseases. The EcoHealth Alliance, in turn, provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for researching bat coronaviruses.
- paul_h 2y agoThis was published 17 Jan 2017 - https://www.science.org/content/article/after-criticism-federal-officials-revisit-policy-reviewing-risky-virus-experiments https://www.science.org/content/article/after-criticism-fede... - before Trump's inauguration. The process to reconsider the ban started under Obama.
- breadwinner 2y agoDate on the article you linked is 24 Jan 2020.
- arghandugh 2y agoThere is no evidence or plausible scenario to support this, but it’s an incredibly useful story for the incoming regime to promote for the purposes of hampering consensus reality. It also gives conspiracy theorists and low-trust communities a bone to chew on, since UFO hysterias are proving to have an increasingly short shelf life.
- Vecr 2y agoWhat do you mean by "no evidence"?
- arghandugh 2y agoThere is no evidence. Period. Just a dozen contrived situations that “might have been” being aligned for political ends. Meanwhile in reality they’ve all but named the goddamn specific animal that brought it from the zoonotic pool and introduced it to mankind. Handwringing about the existence of a somehow malign bio lab in a city LARGER THAN NEW YORK that has DOZENS is preposterous. There’s no evidence, no scenario, no whistleblower, no documentation, nothing. It’s a chew toy for low-information busybodies who need this to be an evil foreign plot. And it’s boring and sad, particularly when America’s first dictator is installing a profoundly corrupt lunatic who is here to overturn germ theory. Have some dignity.
- m348e912 2y agoCurious if this lends credibility to the Indian research that was dismissed early 2020. The paper claimed the covid19 virus was man-made. https://sundayguardianlive.com/news/fauci-described-indian-research-man-made-covid-outlandish https://sundayguardianlive.com/news/fauci-described-indian-r... "...Indian researchers wrote that the composition of the 'inserts' in the Covid virus was similar to one found in HIV-1."
- ak217 2y agoNo. The paper by Pradhan et al. was withdrawn and its methodology refuted in https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00129 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00129. Spike protein sequences in SARS-CoV-2 don't have any unique similarities to HIV-1. > Putting these together, we believe that there is a close evolutionary relation between 2019-nCoV and bat coronavirus RaTG13. The four insertions highlighted by Pradhan et al. in the spike protein are not unique to 2019-nCoV and HIV-1. In fact, the similarities in the sequence-based alignments built on these very short fragments are statistically insignificant, as assessed by the BLAST E values, and such similarities are shared in many other viruses, including the bat coronavirus. Structurally, these “insertions” are far away from the binding interface of the spike protein with the ACE2 receptor, as shown in Figure 2, which is also contradictory to the conclusion made by Pradhan et al.
- seaourfreed 2y agoFrom xAI: Gina Haspel (Director of the CIA) who was the, allegedly authorized bonuses for six CIA officers to change their assessment from a lab leak to a non-lab source for the origin of COVID-19. Sources documenting this: National Review, New York Post & Daily Express US. US government lies, and then calls "misinformation" on people who call out the truth. Now they are being held accountable to go back to the truth. Which is why the CIA is now switching 180-degrees from a Lie to the truth (non-Lab to Lab).
- cyanydeez 2y agoDoes thw presodent get classifief EOs caise, thays thos
- whoitwas 2y agoHasn't this always been the most likely cause? I thought practically all evidence pointed to that. I haven't even heard a competing theory.
- lolinder 2y agoThe competing theory is that it was transmitted from living animals sold at a wet market in Wuhan. Either story isn't a great look for the CCP: either they failed to maintain sufficient health protocols to keep diseases from spreading in wet markets, or they let a dangerous virus leak from a lab. There's no theory for its origins that have the CCP looking competent, so I'm not sure why it's such a politicized topic.
- wordofx 2y agoA lab leaking wouldn’t do any harm to the CCP. The harm they caused themselves was a mixture of lying and trying to cover up the whole thing. Downplaying it. Etc. The WHO says any unknown phenomena must be treated as airborn until proven otherwise. But they followed the CCP in telling us it was fine, it wasn’t transmissible.
- whoitwas 2y agoI thought that was baseless speculation and the lab leak more likely explained it because it was in close proximity to the market.
- lolinder 2y agoThat's still highly contentious, hence the "low confidence" the CIA assigned to their conclusion. There's apparently a lot of evidence for the zoonotic original, though I personally don't understand said evidence.
- maeil 2y agoIt has, since day one. The fact that the WIH was one of only 6 institutions in the world that had been conducting GoF research on bat-related pathogens before the pandemic gives such strong statistical evidence towards it that any theory holding the WIH is unrelated, would require very strong evidence. At no point has there been such strong evidence.
- lolinder 2y agoCan someone help me understand why a lab leak looks worse for China than zoonotic spillover? Why would Senator Cotton need it to be a lab leak to give him more leverage? From what I understand, one theory is that China has for decades tolerated unsanitary wet markets that allowed dangerous diseases to evolve, get stronger, and eventually transmit to human hosts. They'd been warned about this over and over again and had failed to implement the required policies, leading to a preventable pandemic. The alternative theory has China accidentally letting a disease leak from a lab. From my perspective, if anything the lab leak theory is the one that makes China look better: at least it emphasizes that it resulted from China's scientific pursuits and not their lack of health codes! Why would the China hawks need a lab leak in order to China hawk?
- davesque 2y agoThat's one way to look at it. Another is that a lab leak makes the government seem much more culpable, since they would presumably have more direct control over the activities of government funded scientists. In any case, I think world governments have been reluctant to endorse theories that place more blame on the Chinese government for fear of forcing them into a defensive posture and risking a larger confrontation. But there are also those who desire such a confrontation. That makes it hard to trust the motives that any given party might have for promoting one theory or another. At the end of the day, all that any sane person should care about is preventing another similar pandemic.
- lolinder 2y agoIt may be true that other states don't want to antagonize them, and that may also be why we don't see enough emphasis placed on how absurd it is that China has allowed these wet markets to exist so long. Imposing a basic set of health codes is a very fundamental task of any government, and their inability or unwillingness to do so does not reflect well on them. If anything, one reason why the China hawks may prefer the lab leak theory is because it makes China look more threatening than the alternative: the we-couldn't-enforce-basic-health-codes version of the story doesn't mesh well with the image we have in the West of the CCP as an all-powerful Big Brother that has complete control over every aspect of their citizens' lives. It instead projects a CCP that can barely perform the minimum functions of a state, which is harder to be afraid of.
- vcdimension 2y agorootclaim gave the lab leak theory an 87% probability using Bayesian analysis back in 2020: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COVID-19-SARS-CoV-2 https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...
- defrost 2y agoWhich means what? "Rootclaim" then bet $100,000 on being able to back that claim in a independant structured 18 hour long debate of their own devising .. and lost the $100,000. The Rootclaim assessment was worthless. See: https://protagonist-science.medium.com/lableak-truther-loses-100-000-in-his-own-debate-0c3930ccd443 https://protagonist-science.medium.com/lableak-truther-loses... Or watch the entire 18 hour debate in which that claim was shredded. Given your user profile about: it's easy to see why you might give weight to Saar Wilf's Rootclaim project .. championing this particular result while ignoring its full history seems professionally questionable.
- vcdimension 2y agoWhich means this; it gives further weight to the lab leak theory, and shows the reasoning behind it. I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate or read all of that article (which makes some misrepresentative statements, and like your response, is rather venomous in tone), but here is the response from rootclaim about the debate outcome: https://blog.rootclaim.com/covid-origins-debate-response-to-scott-alexander https://blog.rootclaim.com/covid-origins-debate-response-to-... I also know from experience that scientists, and people in general, are often not well trained in the kind of probabilistic reasoning that is required for combining and weighing up multiple sources of evidence.
- defrost 2y ago> I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate It was 18 hours. Three blocks of six hours. Plus preparation time by both parties and the multiple judges who were chosen to have the kind of expertise to weigh up arguments. Both parties were invested in making a case, and each put up $100,000 in escrow to add weight to the debate. The case that you put forward lost. It was debated by the person that put it forward. He lost.
- jdietrich 2y agoIf we actually care about public health, we should act as if both the lab leak and zoonosis theories are correct. We should take laboratory biosecurity, wet markets, the bush meat trade and intensive livestock management equally seriously as threats. We should do this because we have no idea where the next pandemic - and there will be a next pandemic - will come from. It seems fairly clear to me that a lot of people are much more concerned about finding someone to blame for the last pandemic than about preparing for or preventing the next pandemic.
- decremental 2y ago[dead]
- npunt 2y agoAgree, that's the only sane way to approach things. I worry that it's already relatively rare for people to realize that problems in general can be multi-causal, let alone that we can approach problems as probabilistically multi-causal. Placing blame, on the other hand, is something everyone understands.
- amarant 2y agoThe blame game is kind of like a variation of a bikeshed discussion, except it might lead to war. War happens to be my least favourite colour for a bikeshed...
- jtc331 2y agoThe problem is that the two theories can have competing indications as to how to prepare. Specifically: should we do gain of function research, or is that foolish — depends on how you read what happened in 2020.
- Retric 2y agoThe actual future risks don’t change based on which specific origin happened. The correct response is likely to spend significantly more on doing actual research and a great deal on making sure everyone is well contained. It’s likely a good idea to locate such labs outside of highly populated areas as part of a defense in depth strategy.
- Fomite 2y agoMy present take: As an infectious disease epidemiologist whose expertise lies in the dynamics of infections a week or so after an initial spillover event, I am much more cautious with my opinions on the lab leak hypothesis than a lot of people who took a single biology class as a distribution requirement in undergrad.
- morepedantic 2y agoAre you equally cautious with your opinions on zoonosis? The problem is that huge swathes of the medical community politicized the pandemic for a specific political purpose, especially in the USA. For example, the Moderna vaccine trials were delayed 2 weeks to change the protocol to appease a political activist in the medical community accusing Trump of trying to ram an unsafe vaccine through. Naturally the trial results were available immediately after the election. I have a question for you: do you trust the provenance, integrity, and completeness of data from the earlier stages of the outbreak in Wuhan?
- Fomite 2y ago"I have a question for you: do you trust the provenance, integrity, and completeness of data from the earlier stages of the outbreak in Wuhan?" Nope. And yes, I am equally cautious with my opinions about it being a zoonotic spillover event. I consider it the more likely of the two explanations, but far from definitive.
- mike_hearn 2y agoGiven that epidemiology features no biology whatsoever, being these days purely a matter of playing with statistics, why would you feel qualified to discuss anything related to labs, leaks, or GoF research?
- Fomite 2y agoBoth because I hold a microbiology degree as well, and also because that's not actually how epidemiology works either.
- Fomite 2y agoSide note: The CIA can publish this, but the CDC can't put out the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Because that's where we are.
- macinjosh 2y agoI don’t know why it isn’t obvious to everyone how this happened. The lab leak theory is true the outbreak started in force in the market where lab employees sold animals used for testing. They probably didn’t know the animals were infected. Earliest cases were among lab employees. Likely the ones who handled and sold these animals.
- djkivi 2y ago"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981) - https://naacp.org/articles/spread-disinformation-and-how-we-respond https://naacp.org/articles/spread-disinformation-and-how-we-...
- pharos92 2y agoIs it realistic to expect that the people who have surveillance across the whole planet don't know the origins?
- suraci 2y ago[flagged]
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoChy-nah
- willmadden 2y agoThe furin cleavage site in the virus was synthetic. The peak prosperity guy blew the lid off of this in early 2020. I guess that was a "conspiracy theory" though? https://peakprosperity.com/more-evidence-covid-19-may-not-be-natural/ https://peakprosperity.com/more-evidence-covid-19-may-not-be...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoFind me a conspiracy theory that was found to be true AND was pushed by the left. I haven’t seen one yet.
- steele 2y agoAnything to deflect incompetent leadership, I guess
- etc-hosts 2y agonot this again
- Beijinger 2y agoIt is close to my degree, and it was always the most likely explanation. I am not saying there was purpose, I am not saying there was gain of function, but the connection to the Wuhan lab was obvious. Don't suspect maliciousness if something can be explained by stupidity! This was a likely source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8490156/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8490156/ There was a Chinese master thesis found on the web about this incident that was translated. I can't find any sources now anymore. Maybe it was this one: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/a-chinese-phd-thesis-sheds-important-new-light-on-the-origin-of-the-covid-19-coronavirus/ https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/a-chinese-phd-... Nope. This one: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/masters-thesis-analysisofsixpatientswithunknownviruses2/243430501 https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/masters-thesis-analysis... There is even a girl that worked in the Wuhan lab and has likely died from this Virus. https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/20210117/281651077754920 https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/20210117/2...
- gtgvdfc 2y agoWhat I never understood about the politicization of the lab leak theory is this: How is it more racist and Sinophobic to support the lab leak theory vs the wet market one? The lab leak theory has single individuals messing up. The wet market theory judges an entire nation's culinary habits. Of course racism has nothing to do with the Truth of COVID's origins. Im was just always perplexed how the lab leak ended up spun as more "racist" than the wet lab one.
- tim333 2y agoI have puzzled about that too. One issue with it being a lab leak is the Chinese very clearly said it's not a lab leak and tried to cover up, hiding databases, banning access to the lab or the area etc, so they would have been shown to be lying and covering up. Also about half the work at the WIV is military stuff and you're not really supposed to be doing military virus research these days.
- gtgvdfc 2y agoI understand why China would spin it. I understand why the NIH (who appears to have funded this) would want to spin this. What was in it for CNN and MSNBC to spin this as racist when, IMHO, blaming COVID19 on culinary habits is far more racist? What was in it for Rachel Maddow to lecture America about the lab leak when she could have more effectively lectured us about financing the whole thing?
- tim333 2y agoI'm not American but there seemed to be some strange Republican vs Democrat thing going on where the Repubs said lab and Dems said natural. Why so I'm kind of puzzled myself. In England where I live covid questions were not especially partisan.
- gtgvdfc 2y agoThe partisan thing was so weird. Im right wing adjacent, and I remember that early on in the pandemic being concerned about COVID19 was a right wing thing. It was all so stupid.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoPerhaps reparations by China could be modeled after the reparations by the US, for the devastating 1918 Kansas/USA flu. Noting that the above statement honors the notion that flu ought to be named after the country of origin.
- JohnnyLarue 2y agoAnd there's absolutely no geopolitical reason for the unassailably truthful three-letter terrorist organization to announce this whatsoever.
- Glyptodon 2y agoThat said, "lab leak" still doesn't mean "virus built or engineered by humans for nefarious reasons." I think the conversation about this has been repeatedly horrendous because it seems like people don't really understand that there are lots of degrees between "virus in research lab" and "genetically engineered bio-weapon." Though obviously there's more embarrassment and culpability on China's side (by most standards) with a poorly controlled lab situation than some rando, basically serf by implication, selling bush meat at a bazaar.
- kats 2y agoCan't trust a word out of the New York Times.
- mannyv 2y agoNo natural reservoir of covid has been found. Ergo it's not natural.
- peeters 2y agoI've never seen a polar bear. Ergo they don't exist.
- morepedantic 2y agoDoubt. You appear to be Canadian, and their major zoos all have polar bears. Plus you live in Canada, where polar bears run amok. How do I know you're not looking at a polar bear right now, with their iconic black fur?
- jeffreyq 2y agoHas anybody listened to this podcast episode? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-eqdRSx7Y&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-eqdRSx7Y&t=1s Curious to have a discussion on this with anybody knowledgeable on the topic.
- knorker 2y agoObviously I don't know either way. But remember when saying "lab leak" god you banned from social media? I don't think anybody ever explained why exactly it was "racist" to think that labs can leak in China just like has happened many times all around the world, but wet market theory and the dangers of the Chinese food customs is "not racist". Does anybody know? There were many people online who more than went along with this. Why was it not the other way around? Organisations I understand, they have whatever hidden motives. But normal people in the "lab leak theory is racist" mob, they never explained why it wasn't "wet market theory is racist" instead.
- gizajob 2y agoITT: CCP shills.
- khazhoux 2y ago[flagged]
- morepedantic 2y agoHe sure kept his mouth shut about his theories until the waters calmed.
- rdm_blackhole 2y agoI think this is unfortunately a vindication for the conspiracy theorists and a massive failure for all the journalists/TV show hosts of the mainstream media who openly mocked/refused to investigate this possibility back 2020. The trust in the media was already low before this and I can't imagine that this news will make things better.
- ribcage 2y agoMankind for some reason is blind. Doing CTRL F for the magic word in this Hacker News thread yields no results. There was a political conflict amongst Chinese people which had it's peak at the moment the virus appeared. If not for the virus, that conflict would have ruined China's image for decades and centuries to come.
- thrwyeyeacc 2y agohttps://the-eye.eu/public/Random/wuhan%20coronavirus/ https://the-eye.eu/public/Random/wuhan%20coronavirus/ Just for the people who have forgotten what actually happened. The Wuhan incident was very well documented, it's just that nobody besides the eye kept a record of it and blindly trusted someone else to do it. Take a look at the reports for yourself, don't trust political bias.
- ehehe 2y agoCongratulations US, you speedran all the way to Russia in 5 days.
- squarefoot 2y agoThe new CIA director speaking about this sensitive subject with no less than Breitbart explains everything.
- qrsjutsu 2y ago[dead]
- aucisson_masque 2y agoIf the cia wants to prove something, they do. See the Saddam Hussein weapon of mass destruction that never actually existed. The fact they can't prove it and have low confidence on this theory means it has absolutely zero credibility. I see a pattern in the news these last month of warmongering, from the US to China. Maybe I'm wrong but history has shown that with the us, everytime they want to make a war they first got to brainwash their population into that for a few years and then they find any convoluted reason to get in while pretending they're merely defending them or others.
- MagicMoonlight 2y agoChina wouldn’t have acted the way they did if it was a surprise to them. They were burning bodies and interning people like it was an escaped bioweapon.
- sumedh 2y agoChina did not allow any outsiders to check the lab which means they knew it was a lab leak. China has no credibility here.
- maxglute 2y ago>US did not allow any outsiders to check out Fort Detrick which means they knew it was a US engineered bioweapon. US has no credibility here. PRC maintains covid came from outside of PRC, they have no reason to let their labs be scrutinized by outside actors just because Mike Pompeo / CIA made up antiPRC propaganda. That's want weak idiots do. Reality is PRC already waste effort entertaining WHO, until US reciprocates by openning up US biolabs for international access to entertain PRC propaganda, they nor their narrative or people that endorse them have credibility either.
- sumedh 2y agoHas there been any global virus outbreak from Fort Detrick or the US? US govt funded some research in the lab which leaked the virus in Wuhan, is Chinese govt funding Fort Detrick?
- badgersnake 2y agoBecause Trump told them to.
- tim333 2y agoIt's funny how everyone's opinions have changed now Trump is in power. It just shows how much of what people say is to advance their own interests rather than to say the truth. Personally I'd guess it was almost certainly a lab leak doing research similar proposed by Ralph Baric (the world's leading researcher on this stuff) as described in his testimony to a congressional committee. His work was proposed for US funding and didn't get it but probably the Chinese conducted much the same research themselves and the research pretty much is to make covid for research purposes. One of the viruses he mentions interest in has an insert amino acid identical to covid. Re. what the sensible authorities at the time have to say I give you the head of the CDC at the time and the chair of the Lancet covid enquiry: CDC Redfield: "[The US] contributed to the research that led to it and that's to say is that the US government was very involved in funding the Chinese lab that did this research..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMlhvnMpRU0&t=119s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMlhvnMpRU0&t=119s Lancet, Sachs: "Where do you think Covid came from".. "Covid um the question is which lab and in which way. It almost surely did not come out of nature uh it almost surely came out of uh a deliberate research project ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg&t=6493s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg&t=6493s Also amusingly on of the scientists most active in implying anyone suggesting a lab leak was a crank or conspiracy theorist at the time of the outbreak was Kristin Anderson. Later his slack chats were subpoenaed and he was saying in them “The main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario.” He then got a $7m grant from Fauci totally unrelated to saying the research Fauci funded couldn't have been the problem.
- ic_fly2 2y agoCIA favours lab leak theory after a new head is picked. A person that has always been a vocal supporter of the lab leak theory. No facts changed, just a Trump appointee starting work.
- andyjohnson0 2y agoI understand that this is based on an evaluation that started when Biden was president. But, given the timing and the weak confidence level, what's the likelihood that this being made public is just the CIA signalling their alignment with the Trump administration?
- Havoc 2y agoAnnounced days after new administration...what a coincidence!
- Dig1t 2y agoIt’s not just the CIA https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec... The house oversight committee investigated for 2 years and came to this conclusion. The CIA is falling in line with the rest of the government. >The single most thorough review of the pandemic conducted to date >The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include: >The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. >Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events. >Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels. >Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market. >By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.
- randm_sequence 2y agoFor anyone who believes that the pandemic was a "natural zoonotic spillover," please read the following sections of the DEFUSE proposal, highlight copied below: "Synthesis of Chimeric NovelSARS-CoVQS: We will commercially synthesize SARSr- Cov glycoprotein genes, designed for insertion into SHCO14 or WIV16 molecular clone backbones (88% and 97% S-protein identity to epidemic SARS-Urbani. These are BSL-3, not select agents or subject to P3CO (they use bat SARS-CoV backbones which are exempt) and are pathogenic to hACE2 transgenic mice. Different backbone strains increase recovery of viable:viruses identification of barriers for RNA recombination-mediated gene transfer between strains™. Recombinant viruses will be recovered in Vero cels, or in mouse cells over-expressing human, bat or civet ACE2 receptors to support cultivation ofviruses with a weaker RBD-human ACE2 interface. " In vitro testing of chimeric viruses: All chimeric viruses will be sequence verified and evaluated for. i) ACE2 receptor usage across species in vitro, ii) growth in primary HAE, iii) sensitivity to broadly cross neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies that recognize unique epitopes in the RBD. Should some isolates prove highly resistant to our mAB panel we will evaluate cross neutalzation against a cited number of human SARS-CoV serum samples from the Toronto outbreak. Chimeric viruses that encode novel genes with slower potential will be used to identify SARSr-CoV strains for recovery as full genome length viable viruses. In vivo pathogenesis: Groups of 10 animals will be infected intranasally with 1.0 x 106 PFU of each vSARSr-CoV, clinical signs (weight loss, respiratory function, mortality, et) followed for 6 days..." S2 Proteolytic Cleavage and Glycosylation Sites: ... We will analyze all SARS-CoV S gene sequences for appropriately conserved proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for the presence of potential furin cleavage sites".... Where clear mismatches occur, WE WILL INTRODUCE APPROPRIATE HUMAN SPECIF CLEAVAGE SITES AND EVALUATE GROWTH POTENTIAL IN VERO CELL AND HAE CULTURES." I apologize as the copy and paste from a PDF is not ideal. If anyone ever wanted a smoking gun, this is it. The WIV proposed to build SARS-COV2 in 2018/2019. The key point is that when someone proposes this type of research, they often have already done the work and the funding will be used to generate the next result needed for future funding. Also, one item that the world conveniently forgot was that half of the specialists in this field believed passionately that the only way to prevent the next Pandemic was to create super viruses in the lab (this is in the public record). Given the extensive history of lab leaks and suspected lab leaks, this path is absolute and complete hubris and folly. The same folks who were pushing this agenda (and the DEFUSE proposal is filled with little notes as to how certain rules could be skirted) were the folks who immediately claimed that it was absolutely impossible for this to be a lab leak. This proposal was shopped to a number of different US agencies in 2019. This means that there were likely dozens of individuals in multiple agencies who reviewed this proposal and said absolutely nothing when the pandemic broke.
- th3o6a1d 2y agoThere are animal markets all over China. This isn’t just any market. It’s a market that happens to be near a virology lab that studies bat coronaviruses, which had been investigated for questionable safety practices by u.s. inspectors.
- ikrenji 2y agopro lab leak: 1, WIV being 10 miles from the outbreak area 2, WIV housing dozens if not hundreds of strains of coronaviruses 3, poor bio security / laboratory technique amongst WIV staff 4, previous incidents of accidental leaks in Chinese labs does it conclusively establish that the virus leaked from WIV? no. but i’d say it at least moderately probable…
- pathikrit 2y agoMy favorite conspiracy theory: After Tiananmen, the CCP planned many contingents next time something similar happened. Cue, the [2019 Hong Kong Democracy Protests][1]. The MSS releases Covid19 at the peak of the protests (actually they do pick Wuhan so they can use lab leak as a plausibility if needed) in Sep 2019 and later they use the lockdown laws to completely clamp down the protests. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr...