65 ms·

> 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 r

> 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.

manbart 2y ago
What is clear is that Ratcliff wants the lab leak theory to be true
- rayiner 2y ago
  That’s certainly motivation for releasing it, but he’s been in office for five days so the analysis being released was done under the prior administration.
  - evan_ 2y ago
    or maybe this is one of a thousand studies they performed, and they threw it out because it wasn’t found to be credible
    - rayiner 2y ago
      Could be.
  - Sabinus 2y ago
    And, as per the article, the Biden admin did order reinvestigations.
    - macinjosh 2y ago
      Because they didn’t get the answer they wanted. lol.
- rbcjvuvy6 2y ago
  [dead]
rayiner 2y ago
As the article observes, “the new analysis … began under the Biden administration.” The new administration has been in office a week. There is a political incentive to release it now, but they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days.
- mullingitover 2y ago
  This assumes operatives haven’t been working on this plan long before the regime took office.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days CIA has been in the hot seat for long enough to be politically sensitive. Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce multiple reports for every conclusion. It's not implausible that this happened here. In any case, we're talking about a partian topic with low- and moderate-confidence reports with a President who has zero chance of holding China accountable on it. Parlour talk.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Could be that too. But that’s not a flattering comparison!
  - oneshtein 2y ago
    Investigation of multiple hypothesis simultaneously is the norm, not an exception.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Investigation of multiple hypothesis simultaneously is the norm, not an exception Multiple conclusions, not multiple investigations.
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  Sure they could, they seem to be using chatgpt for executive orders so why not this.
jgalt212 2y ago
> 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. That's fine. The really problem is all debate on such matters was shut down during pandemic. To the benefit of no one (except for maybe Biden trying to cajole to Chinese into something, or other. Or to protect USG's role in this affair by financing Chinese gain of function research).
- eastbound 2y ago
  The real problem is, trying to cover that, they said masks were useless and other elucubrations for which they didn’t have proof, like “Stay inside”. “But they didn’t know it was false” Well, if so, don’t speak.
- jgalt212 2y ago
  [flagged]
pessimizer 2y ago
> 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. There's never going to be any conclusive evidence of the source of covid, and anyone claiming they have certainty (who wasn't a witness to a lab leak) is simply lying to you. What they're doing is going along with everyone else worth listening to, who find the coincidence that we were funding banned research on coronaviruses in a lab a few feet away from the origin of the outbreak unlikely. They also find tales of non-lab origin both speculative and vague, while stories of lab origin are only speculative. It's so strange to demand so much more proof of lab origin than one does of non-lab origin. The obvious reasons for that demand are that millions died, and that everybody involved with that lab can easily be named. Also weird that this observation is covid-skeptic coded, when in reality the worse you think covid is, the greater the crime that a lab leak entails.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I assumed it was a non-lab origin at first because that's how all previous pandemics have started as far as I am aware. A lab origin (and what precisely that means has never been particularly clear to me), but I have to say that I'd say your last observation cuts both ways - if one thinks this is such a great crime, then perhaps one would have encouraged masking, shutdowns/distancing, and vaccines, but those seem anti-correlated. Perhaps we'll do better next time around?
  - rayiner 2y ago
    > Perhaps we'll do better next time around? We won’t, because the judgment of many of our cognitive elites has been impaired. This is a bit of a digression, but I’m reading a tweet thread by a $2,300/hour attorney who is an MSNBC contributor that is making just basic logical errors in discussing the birthright citizenship EO. Not even on the merits, literally in just summarizing the implications of the argument being made on a page of a filing he screenshotted in his tweet. I’m persuaded that if you had these folks take the LSAT with questions that had a political coding, they’d score a 160. We need to get back to prioritizing the institutional and values of the different professions above all else. The public should view our scientific and professional organizations as neutral actors staffed by people who put the institutions above their personal beliefs. They shouldn’t be wondering whether medical organizations would be saying the same things about the “Lab Leak” theory if it had involved Russia instead of China.
derektank 2y ago
Both the FBI and DOE, which have their own foreign intelligence gathering capabilities, had previously assessed that COVID was caused by a lab leak with moderate confidence. So while I agree with you that the truth will likely remain shrouded in some mystery, most of us that believed it originated from zoonosis at first (and I would include myself in that camp) should update our priors both based on the CIA assessment and previous assessments
- mulderc 2y ago
  Are the FBI or DOE assessments public? What I last read in the peer-reviewed public literature seemed to point strongly to animal origin and not from a lab.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Are the FBI or DOE assessments public? Yes (DNI) [1] and no (State) [2]. [1] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Declassified-Assessment-on-COVID-19-Origins.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Declass... [2] https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-department-documents-credibly-suggest-covid-19-lab-leak-wenstrup-pushes-for-declassification/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-departm...
  - adastra22 2y ago
    I think you are confusing “lab leak” with “lab made.”
    - epistasis 2y ago
      No, the academic papers that were published strongly pointed to the origin being the market and from wild animals, not lab animals.
      - otherme123 2y ago
        You are being downvoted, but you are right. Evidence suggest that patient zero was someone in the Wuhan market, around november 2019, and the SARS-CoV-2 genetic "signatures" where all found in wild animals for sale in that market. Even if it leaked from the lab, the first affected people (mainly sellers) were from the market, which is weird. Occam's razor points to what you said. I guess everyone loves a good conspirancy.
giantg2 2y ago
I have family that have worked on developing NBC equipment for the military. The first thing they said when covid was spreading was that it was most likely from a lab. That was before anyone in the news was saying that. So an independent first-look assessment by someone with experience, followed by later finding out that there was in fact a lab there, has me heavily leaning towards it being true. But it doesn't really change anything unless there's hard proof. Even with hard proof, do you think China would pay for anything? I don't think so.
- therealpygon 2y ago
  You should realize experience in a tangentially related field and there being a lab somewhere in the area is not the same as insight and evidence. That’s like saying that if a new flu came out of Atlanta, the fact the CDC is there proves it came from a lab, and must be true because someone’s janitor cousin who worked there one summer said it was true. “Low confidence” means that there is a lack of evidence and the statement is ambiguous; that it could be completely true, or completely false. The only lower confidence would be direct evidence that it is outright false. Given, as you said, how nearly impossible it would be to prove true, wouldn’t you think it equally nearly impossible to prove false? Believe what you want, but even the CIA doesn’t lean on the side of you being right.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    If something very like smallpox, thought eradicated, suddenly showed up in some random town, it might be surmised that maybe some animal reservoir for it somehow slipped through the gaps. But if that random town happened to be Atlanta, home of the CDC, known to have some of the few samples of smallpox to still exist, then the relative chance of a lab leak must be thought higher. That's basic Bayesian reasoning. It doesn't prove anything but pretending the proximity to a relevant lab doesn't shift the odds at all is absurd.
    - ioulaum 2y ago
      Smallpox, yes. But another SARS variant (even a somewhat more aggressive one)... Obviously, it's not impossible. But, there were even RNA samples from Covid found in other countries, months before Covid really spread in China. I imagine the main problem with the superspreader event there was more that enough people ended up in the same hospital, and thus it was easier to identify that Covid was a distinct virus. If it was crawling around in a less dense population, its spread would've been meh, and the hospitals might not even notice the spike much.
secondcoming 2y ago
This is an event that saw a lot of the world effectively under house arrest for two years. I think that trying to finding out the underlying reason behind that is a reasonable goal. Looking for reparations is secondary to that, but maybe not entirely unreasonable either; not that it'll ever happen.
scarface_74 2y ago
> Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world Does COVID being a “plague” jibe with the talking point that COVID is “no worse than a cold”
- hansvm 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    And don’t forget that TikTok should be banned and now it should be saved.
    - NeutralCrane 2y ago
      And also that drug dealers and cartels are terrorists who should be executed, except the kingpin of the largest online drug market and likely hitman client, who should be pardoned
    - dpkirchner 2y ago
      And China should be investigated for phone hacks but now that should stop.
      - bigmattystyles 2y ago
        And we should should subpoena Cassidy Hutchinson but actual no cause some of us sent unsolicited sexual threats/messages.
    - lamontcg 2y ago
      “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
Analemma_ 2y ago
> 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. Yes, the annoying thing is that "the truth about covid" literally only matters to culture war grievances, it has no relevance whatsoever to the actual world. If it was a lab leak, then China needs to improve their BSL-4 safety... but they need to do that anyway[0]. If it was zoonotic, then they need to clean up the wet markets... but they need to do that anyway. The true origin of covid makes no difference at all, and I wish these people would just come out and admit this is all domestic political peacocking. [0]: and so does everyone else, for that matter. The US has also had several close calls with BSL-4 leaks; if covid did originate from a lab leak, the fact that it wasn't from an American lab is just sheer dumb luck.
- wahern 2y ago
  If it were a lab leak then the people especially fearful and distrustful of gain of function research would feel vindicated and try to use that to shut down existing research programs. I don't think that group of people is meaningfully divided along partisan lines, and outside the professional class probably includes everybody. Conversely, if it were a natural outbreak then that bolsters the case for continuing gain of function research as before. Such research is precisely why we were able to identify the threat and within weeks assemble a vaccine, at least on paper. (Granted, the arc began long before 2019 with a through-line of research going back to the 2002 SARS outbreak.) And it's why we've many other advancements. Creation of CRISPR and related technology emerged in part out of gain of function research with viruses. Gain of function is a critical tool in testing hypotheses about how foundational molecular machinery works, and viruses are a convenient research model for exploring and testing ideas in that space. But I'm not sure the origin should matter to that debate. And I'm even more sure it probably won't matter, even if we agreed on a definitive answer.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Whenever you have an institutional failure, you need to do a root cause analysis to fix the problem. That includes Chinese labs. That also includes health organizations who may have put aside their objectivity and tried to discredit a theory merely because they disagreed with the politics of those supporting it.
tzs 2y ago
>> 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. That could backfire in a couple ways. 1. China could say that they'll consider paying for COVID escaping their borders if the US pays for the damage the things that have escaped its borders have caused, such as greenhouse gases. Yes, I know that China currently is emitting more greenhouse gases than the US, but since CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for several hundred or even thousands of years the US is responsible for more of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere than China is. It's 26% US, 16% China, 7% Russia, 6% Germany, 5% UK, 4% Japan, 4% India, 2% France, 2% Canada, 2% Ukraine, 2% Poland, rounded to the nearest 1%. All the rest of the countries round to 1% or 0%. That's a can of worms I don't think the US wants to open. 2. China could say they they'll consider paying, but only up to the amount of damages that would have been reasonably incurred if the US had handled COVID competently. There were several distinct patterns in COVID deaths in the US. First, there were states like Washington that had a fairly linear growth in the cumulative number of deaths per capita from the start through April 2022, and then after that continued with a linear growth but not as steep. Then there were states like New York, which got hit very hard in the first two months, because of a combination of nobody really knowing yet how to treat it and dense populations of especially vulnerable people. New York reached in two months a deaths per capita number that Washington took 22 months to reach. But after those first two months, New York's deaths grew at about the same rate as Washington's, except during the Delta surge and to a lesser extent the Omicron surge. Washington's rate picked up during those surges, but not very much. There were states like Florida. Its curve was like Washington's first 3 months, the switched to growing about twice as fast. By the end of 2021 it had almost caught up to New York. From then it and New York both continued at about the same rate was Washington, with Florida slightly higher so it passed New York in August 2022. Other states tended to be a mix of those three patterns. California was close to Washington up until Delta, which brought it to near Florida, but then after Delta was was similar to Washington. A little better actually. Right after Delta it had about 70 more deaths per 100k than Washington, but by March 2023 was down to 56 more deaths per 100k. Texas was like Florida until Omicron, which it handled better, and after that it was similar to Washington, or even a little better. It had 140 more deaths per 100k than Washington right after Omicron, but only 115 more by March 2023. By March 2023, which is when the data I'm using ends, Washington stood at 206 deaths per 100k population, California at 256, Texas at 322, New York at 396, and Florida at 404. Tom Cotton's state, Arkansas, was basically the same pattern as Florida, except with a higher rate. It ended up at 431 deaths per 100k by March 2023. A good case can probably be made that somewhere from 25% to 50% of the Florida deaths were due to Florida's lax handling of the pandemic. That too is probably a can of worms many politicians would not want to open, especially if their state is one of the ones that China would be arguing should get greatly reduced damages.
westcort 2y ago
I have previously shared this little known, but factual, event on Hacker News. It is simply a Wikipedia article--the 1977 Russian Flu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu). This is not my statement, note this well dang, and read or argue with the editors of Wikipedia if you want (not me), but the following statement stands firm: "Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian flu have prompted many researchers to say that the virus was released to the public through a laboratory accident, or resulted from a live-vaccine trial escape"
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Tangentially, risks like that are why I'm really frustrated-with/exasperated-by certain mRNA-vaccine scaremongers: Ones who act as if older techniques were already fine and sufficient. Ex: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-derived-poliovirus-faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-derived-p...
  - zmgsabst 2y ago
    It can both be the case that old methods have risks and new methods have greater risks, eg, underestimating mRNA distribution in the body, leading to mRNA replication in heart tissue, and higher than expect dangerous side-effects. In general, people prefer understood risks to new risks because the system is better adapted to them — both biologically and politically.
- braiamp 2y ago
  > Reanalysis of the H1N1 sequences excluding isolates with unrealistic sampling dates indicates that the 1977 re-emergent lineage was circulating for approximately one year before detection, making it difficult to determine the geographic source of reintroduction. We suggest that a new method is needed to account for viral isolates with unrealistic sampling dates. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2887442/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2887442/ I will have to have a discussion with the editors of that page.
  - 2y ago
tootie 2y ago
It's also pretty clear in the article that the newly appointed head of the CIA is very politically motivated to endorse this conclusion.
ridkjdr 2y ago
This is a strange take to me. Of course the search for truth is to some degree a search for accountability. It's not a gotcha to say "They just want to hold China accountable". Of course they do if it seems likely it came from poor procedure, it makes it their responsibility.
- drewbug01 2y ago
  > It's not a gotcha to say "They just want to hold China accountable". Sure, it’s not a gotcha if we divorce such a statement from all of its surrounding context. But context in communication is incredibly important, and it’s unwise to analyze these kinds of statements in a context-free manner. I find it occurs on this site fairly often; it seems endemic to engineers. I try hard to avoid it myself, but frequently fail. The relevant context here, of course, is the rabid anti-China sentiment expressed by folks like Sen. Cotton for years, dating back to well before the COVID pandemic. I take no position on whether or not his views are accurate or fair - but a context-informed analysis of the situation suggests that Sen. Cotton (and others) are not simply seeking truth and accountability: rather, they seek pretext to justify their views.
duxup 2y ago
I remember watching the movie War Games (1983 film) and even as a kid when they announced nuclear missiles had been launched and "confidence is high" I thought "That's a really good way to indicate that there are indications that something might be happening, AND indicate how much you believe it when you talk about things that you can't confirm."
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hedora 2y ago
Two things to note: 1) Multiple departments of the executive branch were saying this under Biden too. 2) The US gov’t funded the biological weapons research lab at Wuhan. Mr Cotton has been a senator for 10 years, and therefore was around when the funding was approved. So if he wants to find someone to punish, maybe he should look in a mirror.
- dinoqqq 2y ago
  Sources?
miguelazo 2y ago
What’s most disturbing and highly irresponsible about comments like that and all of the reporting on this development is that there’s almost zero acknowledgement that the lab in question was being funded by the US government and much of the Gain of Function research was being directed by a US nonprofit with ties to the US government.
- oneshtein 2y ago
  There is nothing wrong with that. You should worry about those, who do such experiments secretly. (Russians)
  - miguelazo 2y ago
    There are plenty of experiments done secretly by Americans. You think everything is published in some nice little NIH budget explainer? Ever heard of Fort Detrick?
- macns 2y ago
  Sources for this? Deserves it's own post if data are there to back it up
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    It's been widely known for years. Search for EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszack if you want to learn more. Briefly, under Obama gain of function research was banned for a while. During this time Fauci signed off on illegal grants to fund GoF research, funnelled through a British NGO in order to evade detection and the ban. The NGO didn't do the research themselves, they then sent the money to Wuhan to fund experiments done there. Thus Fauci was using US money to do banned research, which he then lied about under oath to Congress. It's for this sort of reason that he's now been pardoned by Biden, as otherwise he would likely have been prosecuted. Whether you can actually retroactively pardon someone for any/all crimes without actually specifying what for and without that person actually having been found guilty is a bit unclear, though.
  - rixed 2y ago
Animats 2y ago
Right. "Low confidence". Read [1] People who deal with intel data need to work with possibly wrong info. Most spy novels don't get this. Real military planning works more like: "Intel says the enemy is at A or B, most likely at A. How much resources should we devote to A vs B, or hold in reserve until we find out by encountering the enemy? What's our plan if we guess wrong?" Planning has to assume that intel might be wrong. Go watch "A Bridge Too Far" (WWII). Read the story of the Son Tay raid (Vietnam). The many overestimates of Soviet capability during the Cold War. The underestimates of North Korean missile capability. Sometimes uncertain intel really works, as with the attack on the bin Laden compound in Pakistan. Retrospective intel questions may never be answered. It's known that the US atomic bomb program had another Russian spy who is mentioned by code name in VENONA transcripts, but that spy was never identified. There are still arguments over whether the explosion of the Maine in Havana harbor in 1889 was an accident or a hostile act. It's still not clear why Turret 2 of the USS Iowa blew up in 1989. Huge amounts of effort were expended on all three of those questions, all of which were important at the time, and yet they remain unsettled. [1] https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Article-Principles-of-Intelligence-Analysis-Studies65-4-Dec2021.pdf https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Article-Principles-...
- choppaface 2y ago
  It’s also important to weight dramatic changes in the White House this week, too, right? There’s the intel itself, but then there’s also the guy trying to control the news cycle.
  - TypingOutBugs 2y ago
    Also in one article I read the intel or reading hadn’t changed? Just the reporting is open now
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    That's a two sided argument. You could also argue the prior view was being suppressed by the previous White House, for the same reasons.
rolandog 2y ago
Any new theory needs to match evidence for SARS-COV-2 being present in European wastewater during December 2019 [0] [1]. Maybe it leaked from the lab; maybe it was released? As far as I understand (but tbh, I have not kept up as much with immunology news) the alternative theory of the virus hopping from another species hadn't been confirmed, as no reservoir had been found. Does anyone know if that had been the case? [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53106444 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53106444 [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7428442/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7428442/
rob_c 2y ago
Sigh again this is where we were ending up. > 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. 0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books. 1. China reacted asif they'd accidentally released a bioweapon. 2. China did what it does best, shut the F up on the world stage. 3. Everyone saw China's reaction because this isn't the 1950s and the internet exists. 4. The developed nations freaked out until there was data, hence the first set of lockdowns in Europe very quickly. 5. 2-3 years later after media pantomime, sectarian politics, holier than though preaching from everyone, the WHO declared the "emergency" over. Some countries achieved 80%+ vaccination rates, didn't see 20% die. Some only achieved 50% and didn't see 50% death rates. We now have a serious economic tab to be paid because of the BS pushed by developed countries in a panic that might have been less dramatic had there been information available from day 1. China _has_ hidden and or destroyed a lot of "evidence" making certain discussions mute. (Again they are good at this let's not pretend otherwise). Western countries, who, _like china_, jumped on a "who can punch themselves hardest with policy?" approach to this unknown now want someone else to blame. Aka because we can pin a small significance and serious fault on China being a bad neighbour. (Snooze to the sensible this isn't news, china is very private about internal policy and now even more so) We are choosing to blame them for everything to get motivation up to get them to pay the bill... This unfortunately was clear winter of 2020 and is clear now, it's just taken 4-5yr for politics to go through it's "he said she said" cycle. And I'm not referring to the US or UK political cycles this is the slow bi-partizan we all need someone to blame rather than be introspective and realise __"We should have handled this better"__.
- drewbug01 2y ago
  You have some interesting thoughts. But: > 0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books. At the beginning of the pandemic, I found out that my father and his partner had COVID. He lived, at the time, about 12 hours drive from me. Where he lived, his support network was thin (to say the least) - the little family he had nearby needed to keep away because they were responsible for caring for my cousin with a severely weakened immune system. His friends, sadly, also contracted COVID around the same time. I called him twice a day, and each call he was worse than the last. I decided to rent an AirBnB nearby. My partner and I packed up the dog and everything we needed and drove overnight to get there. We masked up, and got supplies at Walmart. We brought them to my Dad’s house and left them on the patio - retreated a safe distance - and my Dad came to retrieve them. He was in an awful condition, and his partner was worse. For the next week I came to their porch every few hours, and called my dad, and we spoke with what little breath he had. He dictated his last will and testament to me. I delivered pedialyte, meal replacement shakes, pulse oximeters, anything to help them make it through. I forced them to get up and move around a little from time to time, and took notes on their condition. They wouldn’t let me in the house. One day, before I arrived with supplies, my Dad told me they had called an ambulance for his partner. They took his partner to the local hospital… and the hospital turned him away because they had no beds. They essentially sent my Dad’s partner home to die. By some miraculous turn of events, they survived. They have issues walking and breathing to this day, but they survived. It’s one of the more agonizing, awful things I’ve ever had to watch. COVID-19 wasn’t harmless; it killed millions. I saw it up close. Especially early on, it was virulent and deadly, and very nearly took my parents from me. It did end up taking a lot of people in my extended social network. They died agonizing deaths. How dare you paint it as “mostly harmless.”
hoppp 2y ago
Just more reasons for a trade war that is not good for anyone
ban-evader 2y ago
Getting to the truth is a valid motivator for a bit over half of the country.

manbart 2y ago

What is clear is that Ratcliff wants the lab leak theory to be true

rayiner 2y ago
That’s certainly motivation for releasing it, but he’s been in office for five days so the analysis being released was done under the prior administration.
- evan_ 2y ago
  or maybe this is one of a thousand studies they performed, and they threw it out because it wasn’t found to be credible
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Could be.
- Sabinus 2y ago
  And, as per the article, the Biden admin did order reinvestigations.
  - macinjosh 2y ago
    Because they didn’t get the answer they wanted. lol.
rbcjvuvy6 2y ago
[dead]

rayiner 2y ago

As the article observes, “the new analysis … began under the Biden administration.” The new administration has been in office a week. There is a political incentive to release it now, but they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days.

mullingitover 2y ago
This assumes operatives haven’t been working on this plan long before the regime took office.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days CIA has been in the hot seat for long enough to be politically sensitive. Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce multiple reports for every conclusion. It's not implausible that this happened here. In any case, we're talking about a partian topic with low- and moderate-confidence reports with a President who has zero chance of holding China accountable on it. Parlour talk.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Could be that too. But that’s not a flattering comparison!
- oneshtein 2y ago
  Investigation of multiple hypothesis simultaneously is the norm, not an exception.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Investigation of multiple hypothesis simultaneously is the norm, not an exception Multiple conclusions, not multiple investigations.
Hikikomori 2y ago
Sure they could, they seem to be using chatgpt for executive orders so why not this.

jgalt212 2y ago

> 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. That's fine. The really problem is all debate on such matters was shut down during pandemic. To the benefit of no one (except for maybe Biden trying to cajole to Chinese into something, or other. Or to protect USG's role in this affair by financing Chinese gain of function research).

eastbound 2y ago
The real problem is, trying to cover that, they said masks were useless and other elucubrations for which they didn’t have proof, like “Stay inside”. “But they didn’t know it was false” Well, if so, don’t speak.
jgalt212 2y ago
[flagged]

pessimizer 2y ago

> 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. There's never going to be any conclusive evidence of the source of covid, and anyone claiming they have certainty (who wasn't a witness to a lab leak) is simply lying to you. What they're doing is going along with everyone else worth listening to, who find the coincidence that we were funding banned research on coronaviruses in a lab a few feet away from the origin of the outbreak unlikely. They also find tales of non-lab origin both speculative and vague, while stories of lab origin are only speculative. It's so strange to demand so much more proof of lab origin than one does of non-lab origin. The obvious reasons for that demand are that millions died, and that everybody involved with that lab can easily be named. Also weird that this observation is covid-skeptic coded, when in reality the worse you think covid is, the greater the crime that a lab leak entails.

silverquiet 2y ago
I assumed it was a non-lab origin at first because that's how all previous pandemics have started as far as I am aware. A lab origin (and what precisely that means has never been particularly clear to me), but I have to say that I'd say your last observation cuts both ways - if one thinks this is such a great crime, then perhaps one would have encouraged masking, shutdowns/distancing, and vaccines, but those seem anti-correlated. Perhaps we'll do better next time around?
- rayiner 2y ago
  > Perhaps we'll do better next time around? We won’t, because the judgment of many of our cognitive elites has been impaired. This is a bit of a digression, but I’m reading a tweet thread by a $2,300/hour attorney who is an MSNBC contributor that is making just basic logical errors in discussing the birthright citizenship EO. Not even on the merits, literally in just summarizing the implications of the argument being made on a page of a filing he screenshotted in his tweet. I’m persuaded that if you had these folks take the LSAT with questions that had a political coding, they’d score a 160. We need to get back to prioritizing the institutional and values of the different professions above all else. The public should view our scientific and professional organizations as neutral actors staffed by people who put the institutions above their personal beliefs. They shouldn’t be wondering whether medical organizations would be saying the same things about the “Lab Leak” theory if it had involved Russia instead of China.

derektank 2y ago

Both the FBI and DOE, which have their own foreign intelligence gathering capabilities, had previously assessed that COVID was caused by a lab leak with moderate confidence. So while I agree with you that the truth will likely remain shrouded in some mystery, most of us that believed it originated from zoonosis at first (and I would include myself in that camp) should update our priors both based on the CIA assessment and previous assessments

mulderc 2y ago
Are the FBI or DOE assessments public? What I last read in the peer-reviewed public literature seemed to point strongly to animal origin and not from a lab.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Are the FBI or DOE assessments public? Yes (DNI) [1] and no (State) [2]. [1] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Declassified-Assessment-on-COVID-19-Origins.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Declass... [2] https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-department-documents-credibly-suggest-covid-19-lab-leak-wenstrup-pushes-for-declassification/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-departm...
- adastra22 2y ago
  I think you are confusing “lab leak” with “lab made.”
  - epistasis 2y ago
    No, the academic papers that were published strongly pointed to the origin being the market and from wild animals, not lab animals.
    - otherme123 2y ago
      You are being downvoted, but you are right. Evidence suggest that patient zero was someone in the Wuhan market, around november 2019, and the SARS-CoV-2 genetic "signatures" where all found in wild animals for sale in that market. Even if it leaked from the lab, the first affected people (mainly sellers) were from the market, which is weird. Occam's razor points to what you said. I guess everyone loves a good conspirancy.

giantg2 2y ago

I have family that have worked on developing NBC equipment for the military. The first thing they said when covid was spreading was that it was most likely from a lab. That was before anyone in the news was saying that. So an independent first-look assessment by someone with experience, followed by later finding out that there was in fact a lab there, has me heavily leaning towards it being true. But it doesn't really change anything unless there's hard proof. Even with hard proof, do you think China would pay for anything? I don't think so.

therealpygon 2y ago
You should realize experience in a tangentially related field and there being a lab somewhere in the area is not the same as insight and evidence. That’s like saying that if a new flu came out of Atlanta, the fact the CDC is there proves it came from a lab, and must be true because someone’s janitor cousin who worked there one summer said it was true. “Low confidence” means that there is a lack of evidence and the statement is ambiguous; that it could be completely true, or completely false. The only lower confidence would be direct evidence that it is outright false. Given, as you said, how nearly impossible it would be to prove true, wouldn’t you think it equally nearly impossible to prove false? Believe what you want, but even the CIA doesn’t lean on the side of you being right.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  If something very like smallpox, thought eradicated, suddenly showed up in some random town, it might be surmised that maybe some animal reservoir for it somehow slipped through the gaps. But if that random town happened to be Atlanta, home of the CDC, known to have some of the few samples of smallpox to still exist, then the relative chance of a lab leak must be thought higher. That's basic Bayesian reasoning. It doesn't prove anything but pretending the proximity to a relevant lab doesn't shift the odds at all is absurd.
  - ioulaum 2y ago
    Smallpox, yes. But another SARS variant (even a somewhat more aggressive one)... Obviously, it's not impossible. But, there were even RNA samples from Covid found in other countries, months before Covid really spread in China. I imagine the main problem with the superspreader event there was more that enough people ended up in the same hospital, and thus it was easier to identify that Covid was a distinct virus. If it was crawling around in a less dense population, its spread would've been meh, and the hospitals might not even notice the spike much.

secondcoming 2y ago

This is an event that saw a lot of the world effectively under house arrest for two years. I think that trying to finding out the underlying reason behind that is a reasonable goal. Looking for reparations is secondary to that, but maybe not entirely unreasonable either; not that it'll ever happen.

scarface_74 2y ago

> Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world Does COVID being a “plague” jibe with the talking point that COVID is “no worse than a cold”

hansvm 2y ago
[flagged]
- scarface_74 2y ago
  And don’t forget that TikTok should be banned and now it should be saved.
  - NeutralCrane 2y ago
    And also that drug dealers and cartels are terrorists who should be executed, except the kingpin of the largest online drug market and likely hitman client, who should be pardoned
  - dpkirchner 2y ago
    And China should be investigated for phone hacks but now that should stop.
    - bigmattystyles 2y ago
      And we should should subpoena Cassidy Hutchinson but actual no cause some of us sent unsolicited sexual threats/messages.
  - lamontcg 2y ago
    “The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

Analemma_ 2y ago

> 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. Yes, the annoying thing is that "the truth about covid" literally only matters to culture war grievances, it has no relevance whatsoever to the actual world. If it was a lab leak, then China needs to improve their BSL-4 safety... but they need to do that anyway[0]. If it was zoonotic, then they need to clean up the wet markets... but they need to do that anyway. The true origin of covid makes no difference at all, and I wish these people would just come out and admit this is all domestic political peacocking. [0]: and so does everyone else, for that matter. The US has also had several close calls with BSL-4 leaks; if covid did originate from a lab leak, the fact that it wasn't from an American lab is just sheer dumb luck.

wahern 2y ago
If it were a lab leak then the people especially fearful and distrustful of gain of function research would feel vindicated and try to use that to shut down existing research programs. I don't think that group of people is meaningfully divided along partisan lines, and outside the professional class probably includes everybody. Conversely, if it were a natural outbreak then that bolsters the case for continuing gain of function research as before. Such research is precisely why we were able to identify the threat and within weeks assemble a vaccine, at least on paper. (Granted, the arc began long before 2019 with a through-line of research going back to the 2002 SARS outbreak.) And it's why we've many other advancements. Creation of CRISPR and related technology emerged in part out of gain of function research with viruses. Gain of function is a critical tool in testing hypotheses about how foundational molecular machinery works, and viruses are a convenient research model for exploring and testing ideas in that space. But I'm not sure the origin should matter to that debate. And I'm even more sure it probably won't matter, even if we agreed on a definitive answer.
rayiner 2y ago
Whenever you have an institutional failure, you need to do a root cause analysis to fix the problem. That includes Chinese labs. That also includes health organizations who may have put aside their objectivity and tried to discredit a theory merely because they disagreed with the politics of those supporting it.

tzs 2y ago

>> 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. That could backfire in a couple ways. 1. China could say that they'll consider paying for COVID escaping their borders if the US pays for the damage the things that have escaped its borders have caused, such as greenhouse gases. Yes, I know that China currently is emitting more greenhouse gases than the US, but since CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for several hundred or even thousands of years the US is responsible for more of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere than China is. It's 26% US, 16% China, 7% Russia, 6% Germany, 5% UK, 4% Japan, 4% India, 2% France, 2% Canada, 2% Ukraine, 2% Poland, rounded to the nearest 1%. All the rest of the countries round to 1% or 0%. That's a can of worms I don't think the US wants to open. 2. China could say they they'll consider paying, but only up to the amount of damages that would have been reasonably incurred if the US had handled COVID competently. There were several distinct patterns in COVID deaths in the US. First, there were states like Washington that had a fairly linear growth in the cumulative number of deaths per capita from the start through April 2022, and then after that continued with a linear growth but not as steep. Then there were states like New York, which got hit very hard in the first two months, because of a combination of nobody really knowing yet how to treat it and dense populations of especially vulnerable people. New York reached in two months a deaths per capita number that Washington took 22 months to reach. But after those first two months, New York's deaths grew at about the same rate as Washington's, except during the Delta surge and to a lesser extent the Omicron surge. Washington's rate picked up during those surges, but not very much. There were states like Florida. Its curve was like Washington's first 3 months, the switched to growing about twice as fast. By the end of 2021 it had almost caught up to New York. From then it and New York both continued at about the same rate was Washington, with Florida slightly higher so it passed New York in August 2022. Other states tended to be a mix of those three patterns. California was close to Washington up until Delta, which brought it to near Florida, but then after Delta was was similar to Washington. A little better actually. Right after Delta it had about 70 more deaths per 100k than Washington, but by March 2023 was down to 56 more deaths per 100k. Texas was like Florida until Omicron, which it handled better, and after that it was similar to Washington, or even a little better. It had 140 more deaths per 100k than Washington right after Omicron, but only 115 more by March 2023. By March 2023, which is when the data I'm using ends, Washington stood at 206 deaths per 100k population, California at 256, Texas at 322, New York at 396, and Florida at 404. Tom Cotton's state, Arkansas, was basically the same pattern as Florida, except with a higher rate. It ended up at 431 deaths per 100k by March 2023. A good case can probably be made that somewhere from 25% to 50% of the Florida deaths were due to Florida's lax handling of the pandemic. That too is probably a can of worms many politicians would not want to open, especially if their state is one of the ones that China would be arguing should get greatly reduced damages.

westcort 2y ago

I have previously shared this little known, but factual, event on Hacker News. It is simply a Wikipedia article--the 1977 Russian Flu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu). This is not my statement, note this well dang, and read or argue with the editors of Wikipedia if you want (not me), but the following statement stands firm: "Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian flu have prompted many researchers to say that the virus was released to the public through a laboratory accident, or resulted from a live-vaccine trial escape"

Terr_ 2y ago
Tangentially, risks like that are why I'm really frustrated-with/exasperated-by certain mRNA-vaccine scaremongers: Ones who act as if older techniques were already fine and sufficient. Ex: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-derived-poliovirus-faq.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-derived-p...
- zmgsabst 2y ago
  It can both be the case that old methods have risks and new methods have greater risks, eg, underestimating mRNA distribution in the body, leading to mRNA replication in heart tissue, and higher than expect dangerous side-effects. In general, people prefer understood risks to new risks because the system is better adapted to them — both biologically and politically.
braiamp 2y ago
> Reanalysis of the H1N1 sequences excluding isolates with unrealistic sampling dates indicates that the 1977 re-emergent lineage was circulating for approximately one year before detection, making it difficult to determine the geographic source of reintroduction. We suggest that a new method is needed to account for viral isolates with unrealistic sampling dates. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2887442/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2887442/ I will have to have a discussion with the editors of that page.
- 2y ago

tootie 2y ago

It's also pretty clear in the article that the newly appointed head of the CIA is very politically motivated to endorse this conclusion.

ridkjdr 2y ago

This is a strange take to me. Of course the search for truth is to some degree a search for accountability. It's not a gotcha to say "They just want to hold China accountable". Of course they do if it seems likely it came from poor procedure, it makes it their responsibility.

drewbug01 2y ago
> It's not a gotcha to say "They just want to hold China accountable". Sure, it’s not a gotcha if we divorce such a statement from all of its surrounding context. But context in communication is incredibly important, and it’s unwise to analyze these kinds of statements in a context-free manner. I find it occurs on this site fairly often; it seems endemic to engineers. I try hard to avoid it myself, but frequently fail. The relevant context here, of course, is the rabid anti-China sentiment expressed by folks like Sen. Cotton for years, dating back to well before the COVID pandemic. I take no position on whether or not his views are accurate or fair - but a context-informed analysis of the situation suggests that Sen. Cotton (and others) are not simply seeking truth and accountability: rather, they seek pretext to justify their views.

duxup 2y ago

I remember watching the movie War Games (1983 film) and even as a kid when they announced nuclear missiles had been launched and "confidence is high" I thought "That's a really good way to indicate that there are indications that something might be happening, AND indicate how much you believe it when you talk about things that you can't confirm."

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hedora 2y ago

Two things to note: 1) Multiple departments of the executive branch were saying this under Biden too. 2) The US gov’t funded the biological weapons research lab at Wuhan. Mr Cotton has been a senator for 10 years, and therefore was around when the funding was approved. So if he wants to find someone to punish, maybe he should look in a mirror.

dinoqqq 2y ago
Sources?

miguelazo 2y ago

What’s most disturbing and highly irresponsible about comments like that and all of the reporting on this development is that there’s almost zero acknowledgement that the lab in question was being funded by the US government and much of the Gain of Function research was being directed by a US nonprofit with ties to the US government.

oneshtein 2y ago
There is nothing wrong with that. You should worry about those, who do such experiments secretly. (Russians)
- miguelazo 2y ago
  There are plenty of experiments done secretly by Americans. You think everything is published in some nice little NIH budget explainer? Ever heard of Fort Detrick?
macns 2y ago
Sources for this? Deserves it's own post if data are there to back it up
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  It's been widely known for years. Search for EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszack if you want to learn more. Briefly, under Obama gain of function research was banned for a while. During this time Fauci signed off on illegal grants to fund GoF research, funnelled through a British NGO in order to evade detection and the ban. The NGO didn't do the research themselves, they then sent the money to Wuhan to fund experiments done there. Thus Fauci was using US money to do banned research, which he then lied about under oath to Congress. It's for this sort of reason that he's now been pardoned by Biden, as otherwise he would likely have been prosecuted. Whether you can actually retroactively pardon someone for any/all crimes without actually specifying what for and without that person actually having been found guilty is a bit unclear, though.
- rixed 2y ago

Animats 2y ago

Right. "Low confidence". Read [1] People who deal with intel data need to work with possibly wrong info. Most spy novels don't get this. Real military planning works more like: "Intel says the enemy is at A or B, most likely at A. How much resources should we devote to A vs B, or hold in reserve until we find out by encountering the enemy? What's our plan if we guess wrong?" Planning has to assume that intel might be wrong. Go watch "A Bridge Too Far" (WWII). Read the story of the Son Tay raid (Vietnam). The many overestimates of Soviet capability during the Cold War. The underestimates of North Korean missile capability. Sometimes uncertain intel really works, as with the attack on the bin Laden compound in Pakistan. Retrospective intel questions may never be answered. It's known that the US atomic bomb program had another Russian spy who is mentioned by code name in VENONA transcripts, but that spy was never identified. There are still arguments over whether the explosion of the Maine in Havana harbor in 1889 was an accident or a hostile act. It's still not clear why Turret 2 of the USS Iowa blew up in 1989. Huge amounts of effort were expended on all three of those questions, all of which were important at the time, and yet they remain unsettled. [1] https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Article-Principles-of-Intelligence-Analysis-Studies65-4-Dec2021.pdf https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Article-Principles-...

choppaface 2y ago
It’s also important to weight dramatic changes in the White House this week, too, right? There’s the intel itself, but then there’s also the guy trying to control the news cycle.
- TypingOutBugs 2y ago
  Also in one article I read the intel or reading hadn’t changed? Just the reporting is open now
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  That's a two sided argument. You could also argue the prior view was being suppressed by the previous White House, for the same reasons.

rolandog 2y ago

Any new theory needs to match evidence for SARS-COV-2 being present in European wastewater during December 2019 [0] [1]. Maybe it leaked from the lab; maybe it was released? As far as I understand (but tbh, I have not kept up as much with immunology news) the alternative theory of the virus hopping from another species hadn't been confirmed, as no reservoir had been found. Does anyone know if that had been the case? [0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53106444 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53106444 [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7428442/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7428442/

rob_c 2y ago

Sigh again this is where we were ending up. > 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. 0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books. 1. China reacted asif they'd accidentally released a bioweapon. 2. China did what it does best, shut the F up on the world stage. 3. Everyone saw China's reaction because this isn't the 1950s and the internet exists. 4. The developed nations freaked out until there was data, hence the first set of lockdowns in Europe very quickly. 5. 2-3 years later after media pantomime, sectarian politics, holier than though preaching from everyone, the WHO declared the "emergency" over. Some countries achieved 80%+ vaccination rates, didn't see 20% die. Some only achieved 50% and didn't see 50% death rates. We now have a serious economic tab to be paid because of the BS pushed by developed countries in a panic that might have been less dramatic had there been information available from day 1. China _has_ hidden and or destroyed a lot of "evidence" making certain discussions mute. (Again they are good at this let's not pretend otherwise). Western countries, who, _like china_, jumped on a "who can punch themselves hardest with policy?" approach to this unknown now want someone else to blame. Aka because we can pin a small significance and serious fault on China being a bad neighbour. (Snooze to the sensible this isn't news, china is very private about internal policy and now even more so) We are choosing to blame them for everything to get motivation up to get them to pay the bill... This unfortunately was clear winter of 2020 and is clear now, it's just taken 4-5yr for politics to go through it's "he said she said" cycle. And I'm not referring to the US or UK political cycles this is the slow bi-partizan we all need someone to blame rather than be introspective and realise __"We should have handled this better"__.

drewbug01 2y ago
You have some interesting thoughts. But: > 0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books. At the beginning of the pandemic, I found out that my father and his partner had COVID. He lived, at the time, about 12 hours drive from me. Where he lived, his support network was thin (to say the least) - the little family he had nearby needed to keep away because they were responsible for caring for my cousin with a severely weakened immune system. His friends, sadly, also contracted COVID around the same time. I called him twice a day, and each call he was worse than the last. I decided to rent an AirBnB nearby. My partner and I packed up the dog and everything we needed and drove overnight to get there. We masked up, and got supplies at Walmart. We brought them to my Dad’s house and left them on the patio - retreated a safe distance - and my Dad came to retrieve them. He was in an awful condition, and his partner was worse. For the next week I came to their porch every few hours, and called my dad, and we spoke with what little breath he had. He dictated his last will and testament to me. I delivered pedialyte, meal replacement shakes, pulse oximeters, anything to help them make it through. I forced them to get up and move around a little from time to time, and took notes on their condition. They wouldn’t let me in the house. One day, before I arrived with supplies, my Dad told me they had called an ambulance for his partner. They took his partner to the local hospital… and the hospital turned him away because they had no beds. They essentially sent my Dad’s partner home to die. By some miraculous turn of events, they survived. They have issues walking and breathing to this day, but they survived. It’s one of the more agonizing, awful things I’ve ever had to watch. COVID-19 wasn’t harmless; it killed millions. I saw it up close. Especially early on, it was virulent and deadly, and very nearly took my parents from me. It did end up taking a lot of people in my extended social network. They died agonizing deaths. How dare you paint it as “mostly harmless.”

hoppp 2y ago

Just more reasons for a trade war that is not good for anyone

ban-evader 2y ago

Getting to the truth is a valid motivator for a bit over half of the country.