6 ms·

Lab leak – True origins of Covid-19

16 points by binarno_sp 1y ago

binarno_sp 1y ago
The dumbness level of the Trump administration reached new heights.
theandrewbailey 1y ago
> Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency. Most egregiously, the federal government demonized alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions. When those efforts failed, the Biden Administration resorted to “outright censorship—coercing and colluding with the world’s largest social media companies to censor all COVID-19-related dissent.” I remember when lab leak was officially considered a conspiracy theory, and everyone who mentioned or even referenced it should be canceled and shunned.
- eviks 1y ago
  But since the was no such a time (it was an official alternative), and only a few people got shunned, the theory became more prominent
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    For a time mentioning covid lab leak (like literally quoting published research) on Instagram or FB looked definitely suppressed to me. As non American this is maybe the only thing that looks wrong about US gov COVID handling.
    - eviks 1y ago
      None of this company was official USG
      - throwaway290 1y ago
        https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covid-vaccines-censorship/ https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covi... > Claims vetted by the CDC included whether "COVID-19 is man-made." The CDC told Facebook that it was "theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely." > For months, it was Meta policy to prohibit users from asserting that the pandemic may have originated from a lab leak. The platform revised this policy around the same time that the above email exchange took place.
        eviks 1y ago
        your quote confirms the official policy was not "conspiracy theory, shun and ban them", and even the Facebook's policy changed to not ban.
        throwaway290 1y ago
        Look, I am just an average user. I don't agree with US far right on much, I simply said it seemed like it was suppressed on FB/IG and turns out this was correct. But if you want to argue FINE. I don't think this is about shunning people like me because no one cares about people like me. It is about shunning scientists and famous people. How about mainstream US media literally never touched for years the topic that a massive pandemic that caused billions in damage possibly came from an US funded lab in China? Either all scientists were dumb and thought it was impossible, or they all as one agreed to never talk about it, OR some scientists thought it's likely and wanted to talk about it but could not publicly. Almost as if people talking about unwelcome theory were idk how could we call it... shunned? All US gov needed to say is yes this maybe happened but we are not sure. Instead they doubled down and even published known wrong papers. This discredited science for many years. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nih-emails-origin-covid-lab-theory/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nih-emails-origin-... > Unredacted records obtained by The Nation and The Intercept offer detailed insights into those confidential deliberations. The documents show that in the early days of the pandemic, Fauci and Collins took part in a series of e-mail exchanges and telephone calls in which several leading virologists expressed concern that SARS-CoV-2 looked potentially “engineered.” The participants also contemplated the possibility that laboratory activities had inadvertently led to the creation and release of the virus. The conversations convey a sense of anxious urgency and included speculation about the specific types of laboratory techniques that might have caused the virus’s emergence. After roughly a week of debate and data collection, one of the key figures involved in the deliberations characterized the focus of the group’s work as follows: “to disprove any type of lab theory.” Several of the scientists on the calls and e-mails then went on to write and publish “Proximal Origin.” It became one of the best-read papers in the history of science.
    - bslanej 1y ago
      [flagged]
- therealpygon 1y ago
  And since then, there is no more scientific evidence or verifiable sources. Hence the reason the CIA didn’t even believe it and gave it the lowest confidence rating it has. Used to be truth matters, now rumors and theories are more important.
  - tim333 1y ago
    For me Ralph Baric's 2024 test testimony moved the lab leak hypothesis to pretty likely. I think that's probably "since then" depending on when then is exactly. Also the 2023 "so friggin likely" messages. There has been various stuff dragged out into public by the court actions, leaks and subpoenas that are the hallmark of open science.
    - therealpygon 1y ago
      And yet the CIA still maintains a low confidence, who would clearly have more information than either of us, despite being directed to back that ploy. Wonder why.
      - tim333 1y ago
        Dunno. There's a lot of politics in what all US government funded bodies say. The US after all were heavily involved with the lab research. The Germans don't have much bias here and recently: >Germany's foreign intelligence service believed there was a 80-90% chance that coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab, German media say. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7vypq31z7o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7vypq31z7o which is roughly the odds I'd guess too.
        therealpygon 1y ago
        Sure, you can try to find supporting opinions on any topic. In either case, whether it was a lab leak or not, it’s not like anything would be different. Nor does it matter, given that the modifying strains for pathogens for research purposes is what every research lab does, because that is what virology is. If you recall, this is the same COVID that Trump and his followers said “does not exist”, then “was nothing more than a common cold”, was “no more deadly than the flu”, could be cured with a dewormer, that masks don’t help despite it being universally known that it does, so on and so forth. For those same people then to try to use the opposite of that misinformation they were spreading as a dunk now is comically hypocritical, as can be expected from MAGA/Trump.
- techpineapple 1y ago
  It seems like we’ve become a populous where we base our entire rhetorical confidence on logical fallacies(if “they” don’t want us to believe it, it must be true!”)
shakna 1y ago
If half of the claims are accurate... Should Trump not be blaming himself, here?
- ath3nd 1y ago
  No, as you can see by the beautiful and very appropriate visuals (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Frame-1-3-1.png https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Frame-...), he is coming out towards us, the viewers, with his back to the Lab Leak letters. He is poised, he's not looking back (suggesting that maybe the letters will explode?). If we know anything about American fiction, it's that: - The person walking with their back on the scene is the hero - The hero is totally justified in whatever they are doing, no need to question their motives, morale or veracity - An explosion or sunglasses (or both) is imminent If this wasn't tragic, it'd be actually some (low) quality entertainment.
ath3nd 1y ago
This doesn't look like a press release from a government, but more like an ad site for questionable supplements.
- zero-sharp 1y ago
  I understand how politicized the pandemic became, but I'm still baffled that this is making its way to the white house website now.
throwaway290 1y ago
Not from US. I understand why democrats and centrists worried about COVID origin and lab leak theory and that it was suppressed. But the extreme right of all people, how do they explain it if their previous line was literally "COVID doesn't exist or is not worse than any flu"?
- amalcon 1y ago
  It's pretty simple actually: the lab leak theory is what allows Trump to maximally blame other people. The ability to always blame other people is the most important thing to Trump, even above his usual motivations of always being perceived as correct and never blaming himself. Blaming other people is priority number one.
- tim333 1y ago
  I don't think "covid doesn't exist" was ever a widespread position, and you could argue it's not as bad as some flus.
  - ath3nd 1y ago
    > could argue it's not as bad as some flus. You could argue that, but you'd be dead wrong. Herman Cain kind of wrong. Yes, you could argue that, if by "some flus" you mean the Spanish Flu of 1918. But if you are not a demagogue and not trying to twist words and try to compare Covid in 2020 to the flu in 2020, you'd be totally and BRUTALLY wrong. Let's look at the numbers and do some rudimentary math: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124915/flu-deaths-number-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124915/flu-deaths-numbe... 6,300 people died of the flu in the US in 2020-2021 Now, let's visit how many people died of Covid in 2020 in the US. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1382334/number-covid-deaths-us-by-year/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1382334/number-covid-dea... 380,000 people died of Covid in 2020-2021 Now let's divide 380,000/6,300. We get the number 60. That's 60 times more deaths. One could then argue, but with data, that Covid was actually 60 TIMES worse than the flu in 2020. Now you might say that 6300 deaths in the US during that time were unusually low for flu and go for the average annual number of flu deaths in the US which is about 25,000. Then we do the math and we divide 380,000/25,000, and we get 15.2. That tells you that in 2020 Covid was "only" 15.2 times worse than the flu. You've heard about the 10x programmer, it's apparently significant enough to mention something is 10x more than something else, so what about 15.2x times? But yeah, generally you are right, it was not as bad as some flus. It didn't kill as many people as the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, which is, I am sure, what many people thought of when their favorite demagogue fed them the narrative that it's "not as bad as the some flus". > I don't think "covid doesn't exist" was ever a widespread position Enough right-wingers pushed this BS that there are numerous articles fact-checking their unfounded claims. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/deep-dive-into-stupid-meet-the-growing-group-that-rejects-germ-theory/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/deep-dive-into-stupi... https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-the-virus-that-causes-covid-19-exists-can-be-tested-for-and-is-not-idUSKBN2613BL/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-the-virus-t... Enough right-wing figures also pushed the narrative that the vaccine didn't work (they were up to 17x times wrong, especially in the beginning of the pandemic): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-compare-covid-deaths-for-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-people/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-compare-co... https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divide-covid-19-death/story?id=83649085 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divid... So you could argue a lot of things, but the numbers'd always prove you wrong.
tim333 1y ago
It's a shame covid's origins got so politicized by both sides. We should be able to deal with viruses in a scientific manner and consider the relevant hypotheses without being demonized.
- throwaway290 1y ago
  When far right puts politics above true science it's not surprising. They always do that anyway. But when left put politics above true science then science gets discredited for everybody. And thanks to FOIA everybody knows that this happened with COVID in 2020/21 and far right has this fact to support their "science bad" and various conspiracy talking points for many years.
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    you know you're onto something when you piss off both sides at once. they downvote but have nothing to object haha
    - tim333 1y ago
      I think some of the details were maybe a bit unproven. I was a bit surprised how partisan it went in the US. I'm in the UK and we didn't have that sort of left right split on lab leaks or vaccine use.
      - throwaway290 1y ago
        They got emails from FOIA, this is not a "prove" thing, it is public documents. Many scientists were concerned with artificial origin but forced to go with political message and when publishing the proximal origins paper the goal was "disprove lab leak" not find the truth. Related FB & IG suppression of lab leak mentions by CDC moderation happened all over the world including the UK. I won't duplicate the links but those are reputable sources. Your opinion was shaped by US left.

16 points by binarno_sp 1y ago

The dumbness level of the Trump administration reached new heights.

> Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency. Most egregiously, the federal government demonized alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions. When those efforts failed, the Biden Administration resorted to “outright censorship—coercing and colluding with the world’s largest social media companies to censor all COVID-19-related dissent.” I remember when lab leak was officially considered a conspiracy theory, and everyone who mentioned or even referenced it should be canceled and shunned.

eviks 1y ago
But since the was no such a time (it was an official alternative), and only a few people got shunned, the theory became more prominent
- throwaway290 1y ago
  For a time mentioning covid lab leak (like literally quoting published research) on Instagram or FB looked definitely suppressed to me. As non American this is maybe the only thing that looks wrong about US gov COVID handling.
  - eviks 1y ago
    None of this company was official USG
    - throwaway290 1y ago
      https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covid-vaccines-censorship/ https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covi... > Claims vetted by the CDC included whether "COVID-19 is man-made." The CDC told Facebook that it was "theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely." > For months, it was Meta policy to prohibit users from asserting that the pandemic may have originated from a lab leak. The platform revised this policy around the same time that the above email exchange took place.
      - eviks 1y ago
        your quote confirms the official policy was not "conspiracy theory, shun and ban them", and even the Facebook's policy changed to not ban.
        throwaway290 1y ago
        Look, I am just an average user. I don't agree with US far right on much, I simply said it seemed like it was suppressed on FB/IG and turns out this was correct. But if you want to argue FINE. I don't think this is about shunning people like me because no one cares about people like me. It is about shunning scientists and famous people. How about mainstream US media literally never touched for years the topic that a massive pandemic that caused billions in damage possibly came from an US funded lab in China? Either all scientists were dumb and thought it was impossible, or they all as one agreed to never talk about it, OR some scientists thought it's likely and wanted to talk about it but could not publicly. Almost as if people talking about unwelcome theory were idk how could we call it... shunned? All US gov needed to say is yes this maybe happened but we are not sure. Instead they doubled down and even published known wrong papers. This discredited science for many years. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nih-emails-origin-covid-lab-theory/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nih-emails-origin-... > Unredacted records obtained by The Nation and The Intercept offer detailed insights into those confidential deliberations. The documents show that in the early days of the pandemic, Fauci and Collins took part in a series of e-mail exchanges and telephone calls in which several leading virologists expressed concern that SARS-CoV-2 looked potentially “engineered.” The participants also contemplated the possibility that laboratory activities had inadvertently led to the creation and release of the virus. The conversations convey a sense of anxious urgency and included speculation about the specific types of laboratory techniques that might have caused the virus’s emergence. After roughly a week of debate and data collection, one of the key figures involved in the deliberations characterized the focus of the group’s work as follows: “to disprove any type of lab theory.” Several of the scientists on the calls and e-mails then went on to write and publish “Proximal Origin.” It became one of the best-read papers in the history of science.
  - bslanej 1y ago
    [flagged]
therealpygon 1y ago
And since then, there is no more scientific evidence or verifiable sources. Hence the reason the CIA didn’t even believe it and gave it the lowest confidence rating it has. Used to be truth matters, now rumors and theories are more important.
- tim333 1y ago
  For me Ralph Baric's 2024 test testimony moved the lab leak hypothesis to pretty likely. I think that's probably "since then" depending on when then is exactly. Also the 2023 "so friggin likely" messages. There has been various stuff dragged out into public by the court actions, leaks and subpoenas that are the hallmark of open science.
  - therealpygon 1y ago
    And yet the CIA still maintains a low confidence, who would clearly have more information than either of us, despite being directed to back that ploy. Wonder why.
    - tim333 1y ago
      Dunno. There's a lot of politics in what all US government funded bodies say. The US after all were heavily involved with the lab research. The Germans don't have much bias here and recently: >Germany's foreign intelligence service believed there was a 80-90% chance that coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab, German media say. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7vypq31z7o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz7vypq31z7o which is roughly the odds I'd guess too.
      - therealpygon 1y ago
        Sure, you can try to find supporting opinions on any topic. In either case, whether it was a lab leak or not, it’s not like anything would be different. Nor does it matter, given that the modifying strains for pathogens for research purposes is what every research lab does, because that is what virology is. If you recall, this is the same COVID that Trump and his followers said “does not exist”, then “was nothing more than a common cold”, was “no more deadly than the flu”, could be cured with a dewormer, that masks don’t help despite it being universally known that it does, so on and so forth. For those same people then to try to use the opposite of that misinformation they were spreading as a dunk now is comically hypocritical, as can be expected from MAGA/Trump.
techpineapple 1y ago
It seems like we’ve become a populous where we base our entire rhetorical confidence on logical fallacies(if “they” don’t want us to believe it, it must be true!”)

shakna 1y ago

If half of the claims are accurate... Should Trump not be blaming himself, here?

ath3nd 1y ago
No, as you can see by the beautiful and very appropriate visuals (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Frame-1-3-1.png https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Frame-...), he is coming out towards us, the viewers, with his back to the Lab Leak letters. He is poised, he's not looking back (suggesting that maybe the letters will explode?). If we know anything about American fiction, it's that: - The person walking with their back on the scene is the hero - The hero is totally justified in whatever they are doing, no need to question their motives, morale or veracity - An explosion or sunglasses (or both) is imminent If this wasn't tragic, it'd be actually some (low) quality entertainment.

ath3nd 1y ago

This doesn't look like a press release from a government, but more like an ad site for questionable supplements.

zero-sharp 1y ago
I understand how politicized the pandemic became, but I'm still baffled that this is making its way to the white house website now.

throwaway290 1y ago

Not from US. I understand why democrats and centrists worried about COVID origin and lab leak theory and that it was suppressed. But the extreme right of all people, how do they explain it if their previous line was literally "COVID doesn't exist or is not worse than any flu"?

amalcon 1y ago
It's pretty simple actually: the lab leak theory is what allows Trump to maximally blame other people. The ability to always blame other people is the most important thing to Trump, even above his usual motivations of always being perceived as correct and never blaming himself. Blaming other people is priority number one.
tim333 1y ago
I don't think "covid doesn't exist" was ever a widespread position, and you could argue it's not as bad as some flus.
- ath3nd 1y ago
  > could argue it's not as bad as some flus. You could argue that, but you'd be dead wrong. Herman Cain kind of wrong. Yes, you could argue that, if by "some flus" you mean the Spanish Flu of 1918. But if you are not a demagogue and not trying to twist words and try to compare Covid in 2020 to the flu in 2020, you'd be totally and BRUTALLY wrong. Let's look at the numbers and do some rudimentary math: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124915/flu-deaths-number-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124915/flu-deaths-numbe... 6,300 people died of the flu in the US in 2020-2021 Now, let's visit how many people died of Covid in 2020 in the US. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1382334/number-covid-deaths-us-by-year/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1382334/number-covid-dea... 380,000 people died of Covid in 2020-2021 Now let's divide 380,000/6,300. We get the number 60. That's 60 times more deaths. One could then argue, but with data, that Covid was actually 60 TIMES worse than the flu in 2020. Now you might say that 6300 deaths in the US during that time were unusually low for flu and go for the average annual number of flu deaths in the US which is about 25,000. Then we do the math and we divide 380,000/25,000, and we get 15.2. That tells you that in 2020 Covid was "only" 15.2 times worse than the flu. You've heard about the 10x programmer, it's apparently significant enough to mention something is 10x more than something else, so what about 15.2x times? But yeah, generally you are right, it was not as bad as some flus. It didn't kill as many people as the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, which is, I am sure, what many people thought of when their favorite demagogue fed them the narrative that it's "not as bad as the some flus". > I don't think "covid doesn't exist" was ever a widespread position Enough right-wingers pushed this BS that there are numerous articles fact-checking their unfounded claims. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/deep-dive-into-stupid-meet-the-growing-group-that-rejects-germ-theory/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/deep-dive-into-stupi... https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-the-virus-that-causes-covid-19-exists-can-be-tested-for-and-is-not-idUSKBN2613BL/ https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-the-virus-t... Enough right-wing figures also pushed the narrative that the vaccine didn't work (they were up to 17x times wrong, especially in the beginning of the pandemic): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-compare-covid-deaths-for-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-people/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-compare-co... https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divide-covid-19-death/story?id=83649085 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divid... So you could argue a lot of things, but the numbers'd always prove you wrong.

tim333 1y ago

It's a shame covid's origins got so politicized by both sides. We should be able to deal with viruses in a scientific manner and consider the relevant hypotheses without being demonized.

throwaway290 1y ago
When far right puts politics above true science it's not surprising. They always do that anyway. But when left put politics above true science then science gets discredited for everybody. And thanks to FOIA everybody knows that this happened with COVID in 2020/21 and far right has this fact to support their "science bad" and various conspiracy talking points for many years.
- throwaway290 1y ago
  you know you're onto something when you piss off both sides at once. they downvote but have nothing to object haha
  - tim333 1y ago
    I think some of the details were maybe a bit unproven. I was a bit surprised how partisan it went in the US. I'm in the UK and we didn't have that sort of left right split on lab leaks or vaccine use.
    - throwaway290 1y ago
      They got emails from FOIA, this is not a "prove" thing, it is public documents. Many scientists were concerned with artificial origin but forced to go with political message and when publishing the proximal origins paper the goal was "disprove lab leak" not find the truth. Related FB & IG suppression of lab leak mentions by CDC moderation happened all over the world including the UK. I won't duplicate the links but those are reputable sources. Your opinion was shaped by US left.