Declassified US Intelligence: Still No Evidence for Covid 'Lab Leak' Theory (reuters.com) 167
Reuters reports:
U.S. intelligence agencies found no direct evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic stemmed from an incident at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, a report declassified on Friday said.
America's Director of National Intelligence was responding to March legislation requiring declassification (within 90 days) of any information on possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (or "WIV") and the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. One key finding in the just-released report?
"We continue to have no indication that the Wuhan Institute of Virology's pre-pandemic research holdings included SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic." The information available to the U.S. Intelligence Community "indicates that the WIV first possessed SARS-CoV-2 in late December 2019, when WIV researchers isolated and identified the virus from samples from patients diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown causes."
And in addition, "All Intelligence Community agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon."
Beyond that, the report also emphasizes that "Almost all Intelligence Community agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered," adding "Most agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not laboratory-adapted; some are unable to make a determination." The National Intelligence Council and four other Intelligence Community agencies assess that the initial human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal that carried SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2...
The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.
The only two outliers appear to be the Department of Energy, which gives "low confidence" support to the lab-leak theory, and the FBI (whose Trump-appointed director "said he couldn't share many details of the agency's assessment because they were classified.")
Addressing rumors online, the report notes that the lab has performed public health-related research with the army, such as work on vaccines and therapeutics. This included working "with several viruses, including coronaviruses, but no known viruses that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2."
And while several researchers were ill in the fall of 2019, their symptoms "were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19... [T]he researchers' symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19... [T]hey experienced a range of symptoms consistent with colds or allergies with accompanying symptoms typically not associated with COVID-19, and some of them were confirmed to have been sick with other illnesses unrelated to COVID-19." And there's no indication any of them were ever hospitalized for COVID-19 symptoms.
America's Director of National Intelligence was responding to March legislation requiring declassification (within 90 days) of any information on possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology (or "WIV") and the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. One key finding in the just-released report?
"We continue to have no indication that the Wuhan Institute of Virology's pre-pandemic research holdings included SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic." The information available to the U.S. Intelligence Community "indicates that the WIV first possessed SARS-CoV-2 in late December 2019, when WIV researchers isolated and identified the virus from samples from patients diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown causes."
And in addition, "All Intelligence Community agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon."
Beyond that, the report also emphasizes that "Almost all Intelligence Community agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered," adding "Most agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not laboratory-adapted; some are unable to make a determination." The National Intelligence Council and four other Intelligence Community agencies assess that the initial human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal that carried SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2...
The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting.
The only two outliers appear to be the Department of Energy, which gives "low confidence" support to the lab-leak theory, and the FBI (whose Trump-appointed director "said he couldn't share many details of the agency's assessment because they were classified.")
Addressing rumors online, the report notes that the lab has performed public health-related research with the army, such as work on vaccines and therapeutics. This included working "with several viruses, including coronaviruses, but no known viruses that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2."
And while several researchers were ill in the fall of 2019, their symptoms "were consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19... [T]he researchers' symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19... [T]hey experienced a range of symptoms consistent with colds or allergies with accompanying symptoms typically not associated with COVID-19, and some of them were confirmed to have been sick with other illnesses unrelated to COVID-19." And there's no indication any of them were ever hospitalized for COVID-19 symptoms.
It was just a coincidence that the virus started (Score:1, Informative)
In the same city where a virology lab exists that is doing gain of function research?
Lab Leak Theory: 1, Misinformation Cops: 0 [reason.com]
What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted [thetimes.co.uk]
Senate COVID origins report details lab leak theory [axios.com]
Fauci Praised 'Competent, Trustworthy Scientists' in Wuhan. His Own Agency Said They Needed Ethics Training Over 'Research Misconduct.' [freebeacon.com]
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Yes, actually... coincidences happen sometimes.
And given the utter lack of any evidence to actually support the lab leak hypothesis, believing that it is just coincidence is the more rational thing to do.
Otherwise you are grasping at flimsy explanations that are mere conjecture, with no actual way to prove anything. That's not scientific skepticism.
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>"Yes, actually... coincidences happen sometimes. "
Yeah, and this one would be a wildly fantastic coincidence, wouldn't it?
* A virus research lab location in Wuhan
* Location working with corona viruses
* Gain of function location
* Lab technician from there died from symptoms consistent with C19
* First actually known cases of C19 near that location
* Apparent cover-up actions from host country
COMMON SENSE would indicate it came from or leaked from that lab in Wuhan. So it seems reasonable to default to tha
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* Genetic modification leaves traces
* There is no evidence that the virus was genetically modified.
COMMON SENSE would indicate it did not come from or leak from that lab in Wuhan. So it seems reasonable to default to that position/belief until proven otherwise...
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Reverse genetics leaves indications, some say those indications are there.
Laboratory-adapted viruses just use enhanced mutation, it leaves no evidence.
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As usual you get modded up for displaying basic ignorance.
Prior to technology existing to directly manipulating dna did you know we performed genetic manipulation on plants and animals for thousands of years all around the world?
It's called selective breeding and it works on virii, too.
COMMON SENSE would indicate you earn 50 cents a post.
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* Genetic modification leaves traces
* There is no evidence that the virus was genetically modified.
Recall that this thread is about a newly declassified report. Here is what that report says about WIV and genetic engineering of SARS-like coronaviruses, at the top of page 5:
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Yes, actually... coincidences happen sometimes.
And sometimes they don't.
And given the utter lack of any evidence to actually support the lab leak hypothesis, believing that it is just coincidence is the more rational thing to do.
Otherwise you are grasping at flimsy explanations that are mere conjecture, with no actual way to prove anything. That's not scientific skepticism.
This is what occasionally disappoints me about skeptics. Sometimes they seem to commit the very same errors in reasoning only real difference being getting to hide behind an inductively "safe" default assumption.
What is especially troubling in in this case is lack of affirmative evidence in support of natural release. No credible zoonotic precursors found despite unprecedented intensive search and on top of that no evidence of human adaptation.
The only concrete irrefutable facts a
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Yet at present there are multiple lines of circumstantial evidence for lab leak
Then show them to us. I'm not aware of any.
and only inductive arguments and evidence of absence in the case of natural origins.
Then explain that. As I don't grasp it. How can it be no evidence that some guys coming home from a field trip got infected and then spread it on the market?
Hu? We all know that the market is - despite the fact that they sell wild animals there - not the source. But only the center of the first infection
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Absent the cooperation of the Chinese Government on telling us what happened in Wuhan in 2019, and considering their curious actions around this lab (deleting research, researchers that somehow fell off the top of tall buildings, etc) it is perfectly reasonable to wonder if the Chinese Govt/Wuhan Lab had anything to do with the creation and/or leaking (intentionally or unintentionally) the virus.
What can you point to to direct blame elsewhere? The lack of information from the Chinese govt/Wuhan lab doesn't
Re:It was just a coincidence that the virus starte (Score:5, Insightful)
Novel coronavirus outbreaks have been happening regularly every few years, for at least the past 20 years. (Probably longer, but nobody was paying attention before SARS in 2003.)
Only one of them occurred in the same city as a lab researching corona viruses. However, all of the cities in question had cell phone towers. All the cities also had bicycles. The correlation of corona outbreaks to cell towers and bicycles is actually much stronger than the correlation to labs.
None of this, of course, proves anything... Except that corona viruses have been naturally circulating and mutating, planetwide, for decades. So, even the lab leak theory were confirmed tomorrow, I'm not sure what good that knowledge would do anyone. Yet, you seem to have a desire to beat your chest in stern conviction on the matter. Why is that?
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However, all of the cities in question had cell phone towers. All the cities also had bicycles. The correlation of corona outbreaks to cell towers and bicycles is actually much stronger than the correlation to labs.
Every city has cell towers and bicycles. Only three cities in China have BSL-4 labs, and I *think* that only one of those three studies coronaviruses. That's actually a much stronger correlation by virtue of the lab's uniqueness.
But even if you assume that the location wasn't a coincidence, it still doesn't provide the slightest evidence of lab *creation*. It could just as easily be the case that while collecting samples, somebody from the virology institute got sick with a novel coronavirus, likely expe
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The correlation of corona outbreaks to cell towers and bicycles is actually much stronger than the correlation to labs.
That's just whataboutism, and isn't really useful if you're trying to make a serious argument. The difference is that lab-leak has a valid scientific (if unlikely) path by which the virus could have entered the community; a similar mechanism does not exist for bicycles, cell towers etc. I'm surprised you got mod'd up for an infantile argument like this.
Personally, I don't see a problem with either theory - lab leak or zoonotic. There doesn't seem to be much conclusive evidence for either, though of course y
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"I'm surprised you got mod'd up for an infantile argument like this."
You must be new to slashdot. Most of the moderators seem to have an IQ only slight greater than their shoe size.
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The difference is that lab-leak has a valid scientific (if unlikely) path
How do you calculate the probability there?
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We will never know. If it was a lab leak it will have been covered up, if it wasn't a lab leak we will never find the exact before and after strains.
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questioning everything is exactly as stupid as questioning nothing
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You'd rather believe conspiracy theories than the NIH:
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/... [nih.gov]
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Since the NIH funds 90% of all non-commercial biomedical research in the world, you'd have to be a hypocrite not to swear off modern medicine for life.
https://health-policy-systems.... [biomedcentral.com]
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RTFA -- official documents don't contradict the NIH statement.
But here's a a double-strength tinfoil hat and straightjacket for you. *holds them out*
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Novel coronavirus outbreaks have been happening regularly every few years, for at least the past 20 years. (Probably longer, but nobody was paying attention before SARS in 2003.)
Only one of them occurred in the same city as a lab researching corona viruses. However, all of the cities in question had cell phone towers. All the cities also had bicycles. The correlation of corona outbreaks to cell towers and bicycles is actually much stronger than the correlation to labs.
So you're saying that COVID-19 was released by the lab, mutated by the 5G coming from the cell towers, then distributed through the population using bikes.
WE MUST BAN THEM ALL!!!
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Also where less than 7 months later the primary government and military CCP liaison at the Wuhan institute for virology "falls" off the roof of the building in a freak "accident".
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Re: It was just a coincidence that the virus start (Score:1)
Maybe, maybe not.
Coincidences actually happen.
Maybe it was a lab, but not that lab. There are loads of labs.
If you had a leak at your lab, maybe sending the virus to wuhan would be a good way to shift the blame.
There are lots of ways it could have made it to wuhan from elsewhere. As we know, viruses travel.
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Yes, it's just a coincidence. Even entertaining the idea that it could be a lab leak of a virus which was intentionally made more virulent, means that all the experts who come to the consensus it's not a lab leak entire career was built on a technique evidently dangerous to mankind.
The experts who by coincidence have a personal stake in it being a coincidence, come to the consensus that it was not a lab leak and the consensus determines what is and isn't fake news. Now everything should just stop spreading
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It's not a pure coincidence. But maybe not in the way you think. it's always worth reversing the claimed direction of the cause and effect to see if the opposite sound sensibly. News tend to present finding the wrong way around as that makes them sound more surprising and click-baity: 'People with liver issues more likely to be heavy drinkers, study says!'
In this case, it may well be that the lab was there because of the viruses. Where would you build a research laboratory working on known potential zoonoti
Re:It was just a coincidence that the virus starte (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes exciting conspiracies hide boring ones. Wuhan is the epicentre of the Chinese wildlife exploitation industry [aljazeera.com], where endangered animals like pangolins and bats are factory-farmed in disgraceful conditions for folk medicine—conditions that are perfect for naturally accelerating evolution of coronaviruses. The CCP and regional government understandably knew this would look bad if there was global coverage of it, so they kept foreign journalists out.
Unfortunately, some (Facebook-loving) Americans took this tacit admission of wrongdoing and let their imaginations run wild because, true or not, the claim served their political agenda. There's plenty of blame to be heaped at the feet of both Chinese society and the Chinese government for allowing this to happen, but the circlejerk of accusation and hatred keeping the topic in the public consciousness isn't about accountability, so it has no time for anything less than the most salacious and sensational claims.
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Sometimes exciting conspiracies hide boring ones. Wuhan is the epicentre of the Chinese wildlife exploitation industry [aljazeera.com]
And this is the biggest lesson (and perhaps even sanctions) that should come out of this.
As long as the CCP continues to cover up the wildlife trade, shit like this will happen frequently.
Re: It was just a coincidence that the virus start (Score:3)
Yep. And the conspiracy theorists are doing the real culprits a big favor.
It's like how the new movie by Ken Loach got censored recently: the state of Isreal sent its henchmen to claim the movie was a right wing conspiracy theory. And people believed it.
Right now, actual (simple and banal) conspiracies for economic and political benefit, similar to LIBOR rate manipulation or cum-ex dividend stripping, get hidden because of all the noise made by the moronic about baby sacrifice and the WEF.
Re: It was just a coincidence that the virus start (Score:1)
Purely from vague memory, but I recall reading that Wuhan actually isn't the best place to find the viruses. They actually have to travel quite far and go on long hikes to get to such places. Perhaps it's a good central place?
I could be wrong but worth checking, if you care.
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Purely from vague memory, but I recall reading that Wuhan actually isn't the best place to find the viruses. They actually have to travel quite far and go on long hikes to get to such places. Perhaps it's a good central place?
SARS started in Guangdong province, which is 517 miles pretty much due south from Wuhan. There are only three BSL-4 labs in China, though: Wuhan, Harbin, and Kunming. Kunming is about twice as far, and roughly due west. Harbin is about three times as far, in a northeasterly direction.
I'm not sure why they picked Wuhan as the location a decade and a half before COVID, but they did. So even though it isn't the best place for that sort of lab geographically, it is the closest BSL-4 lab geographically to th
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Re: It was just a coincidence that the virus start (Score:1, Flamebait)
It was 600 miles away from the place where they found the virus lineage (RATg13) closest to SARS-CoV-2.
This report seems also to contradict a lot of the earlier findings: https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html [state.gov]. Note the website, too.
Also, I wonder why China has been so secretive, blocking access to investigators, deleted the virus database in September 2019, had a total sudden communication silence about anything at that time, lied about several things
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Yes, and your own article shows why with an example of pizza restaurants.
In this, the framing is just weird. This declassified intelligence found that Wuhan studied viruses and manipulated them in ways that would not show signs of genetic engineering and that they had lax safety, both things we already knew, but just more confirmation.
Yet we're supposed to believe that it came from a bat or maybe a pangolin in a wet market that doesn't sell either animal according to prior published research and not from t
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Yet we're supposed to believe that it came from a bat or maybe a pangolin in a wet market that doesn't sell either animal according to prior published research But they do. Do you understand that the trade is not fully documented? Wet markets don't have blockchains tracking every thing that enters and exits out of it, dumbass.
They also sell raccoon dogs, if you bothered keeping up with the news, especially since that they found the virus in raccoon dogs and then pulled down the genetic sequences and publications.
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> Wet markets don't have blockchains tracking every thing that enters and exits out of it, dumbass.
No, but there was published research on that particular wet market [nature.com] looking for what animals were traded specifically because they often contain endangered species.
And the nearest sample we have is from a bat in Laos, about 1000 miles from Wuhan. Which we know about because those bats are studied by the Wuhan Institute of Virology...
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> Because people trading stuff in the black market would let their stuff be researched...
It wasn't a black market, it was operating openly, though maybe there is a black market now due to it being deservedly shut down. You can see the prices for various animals in the actual research if you'd read it.
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In the same city where a virology lab exists that is doing gain of function research?
Lab Leak Theory: 1, Misinformation Cops: 0 [reason.com]
What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted [thetimes.co.uk]
Senate COVID origins report details lab leak theory [axios.com]
Fauci Praised 'Competent, Trustworthy Scientists' in Wuhan. His Own Agency Said They Needed Ethics Training Over 'Research Misconduct.' [freebeacon.com]
The above down-modded into oblivion by the Chinese agents. Should be +5 Informative.
two lab leak possibilities (Score:1)
1. They collected the virus from during a survey and it infected a scientist/worker and leaked
2. They genetically modified an existing virus and made COVID and then it leaked.
Of the above, #1 is remotely plausible. #2 is a bit too fantastical .. there's nothing about the virus that shows signs of genetic modification. Every "evidence" and theory I've seen regarding #2 seems far fetched to me. There's no evidence of anything being spliced in. The "furin cleavage site" that many people cite as evidence of man
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"Lab leak" doesn't mean it was maliciously created or released. It doesn't mean it was created in a lab. Just that it leaked from a lab.
There's an awful lot of evidence that the first human victims worked at the lab in Wuhan.
All of the "evidence" to the contrary seems to be debunking straw men - claims no one is making. But whatever the mainstream media (guided by US intelligence) says is "truth" and anything else is "conspiracy theory."
Welcome to 2023. Hope you packed a spare set of underwear!
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
There's an awful lot of evidence that the first human victims worked at the lab in Wuhan.
Meaning they most likely *also* lived near and shopped/ate at the Wuhan Market ...
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There's an awful lot of evidence that the first human victims worked at the lab in Wuhan.
Then please share it with the world instead of hoarding it to yourself. All the evidence available points to a cluster of infections in the market. We've pinned it down to a specific woman at a seafood stall, which was adjacent to a stall selling live animals. We've found traces of the virus in the animal residue from that stand. You'll never be able to fully prove any theory, but it's as solid as you're able to get tying it to the market.
All of the "evidence" to the contrary seems to be debunking straw men - claims no one is making
No one's debunking strawmen. The conspiracy theories started out as i
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Who is this we you speak of specifically? :)
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There's an awful lot of evidence that the first human victims worked at the lab in Wuhan. /. seems to *know* that, but the people searching for evidence, don't.
Strange that everyone on
Do you have a link about your theory? Some facts about he first sick ones came from the lab? Because: today on /. is the first time I heard about that.
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That doesn't make it unimportant ... it's vitally important to virologists for instance. If a lab leak of an enhanced virus is judged likely and causes the entire basis of their research career to go into the trash can by precautionary principle, well that sucks for them.
Virologists and the CCP both have a high interest in it being declared not a lab leak.
Re:two lab leak possibilities (Score:4, Insightful)
#1 is a lot more than remotely plausible; the problem is that it's not remotely provable. Not without transparent and unimpeded access to people, data, and physical evidence.
And we can't do any kind of reasonable estimate of liklihood that it was a leak from WIV just by focusing on WIV, you also have look at all the other plausible possibilities and guage their relative probabilities. There's a lot of them, and as things stand we really can't investigate *any* of them.
While we can pretty safely rule out genetic engineering conspiracy theories with molecular biology, the epidemiology of the inital spread of this thing is something we will probably never be able to reconstruct.
Re:two lab leak possibilities (Score:4, Interesting)
I question what purpose the back-and-forth about a lab leak even serves.
The subtext lurking underneath all of it is that if we could just prove the virus was engineered in the Wuhan lab, that this knowledge would be somehow useful. That we could then do something.
Assume for a moment, that we did confirm the 2019 virus was engineered for deadliness and transmissibility in a lab. We do what, shut down all labs engineering viruses? OK, let's assume we shut down all the labs. Now what, we go back to bed?
Coronaviruses were circulating and mutating in nature, causing outbreaks in humans every few years, since at least the 2003 SARS outbreak. And probably well before that, before anyone was looking. So whether Covid-19 came out of a lab or not makes zero difference. It wasn't the first respiratory virus to cause a pandemic, and it won't be the last, even if we burn every lab to the ground.
There are a number of ways we can look at preventing or mitigating the next respiratory pandemic. Better ventilation indoors, not fucking around with wild animals, less factory farming, better medicines, better societal response. Speculating about what may or may not have happened at a lab in Wuhan in 2019 does jack shit for the 2031 moose flu pandemic originating in Newfoundland.
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#1 is a lot more than remotely plausible;
Bat coronaviruses aren't structurally adapted to humans, they need to infect an intermediate host to become more adapted to a physiology more closely to that of humans.
So a direct from bat to human for this coronavirus is incredibly unplausible. The most likely source is actually an infected animal from an exotic animal farm that did deliveries to the Wuhan wet market.
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Zoonotic disease emergences are always tail events: improbable things that eventually occur because of a vast number of trials. It's happened at least twice with bat coronaviruses: SARS and MERS. Bat coronaviruses do routinely spill out to animal populations near bat roosts. The index patient for SARS was a farmer which tracks. MERS was more improbable: it appeared to spread to humans via camels.
But the *typical* behavior of bat coronaviruses is neither here nor there. *This* bat coronavirus had genetic
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Wuhan is a megacity larger than New York. There's a lot going on there. WIV isn't even the only institution doing biological research, there's dozens of them. Like any megacity it doesn't grow its own food, it gets it from a huge and extensive supply chain reaching out in every direction, including to areas where bat coronaviruses are endemic. It also has a lot of people moving in and out of it. When COVID-19 took off in the US, there were some cases in the Pacific Northwest, but it really took off in t
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Which one of those is the scenario where they are lazy about safety when they dispose of human cell cultures and the virus is allowed to evolve while its sitting in the dumpster?
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It's fantastical to assume there was not gain of function research at Wuhan. It's fantastical to assume they were not investigating the spike protein specifically. This was factually settled in 2021.
https://twitter.com/r_h_ebrigh... [twitter.com]
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. All we can do is judge likelihood, I judge the likelihood of an enhanced virus being leaked high.
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There are certainly possibilities, but that's not evidence. I could make up all sorts of stories, and many of them have some degree of probability. Be the way you assess that probability says more about you than about what actually happened. (E.g. It could have been developed in the US and smuggled into Wuhan to be releases as a terror weapon. Prove that's wrong.)
This is why one should depend on real evidence. Personally I give the highest probability to "It was native carried on some animal, or by som
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I tend to agree with that. Most of the time flu-like symptoms are not even tested to determine the causative agent -- even in advanced countries. A friend of mine had bladder cancer and it took months, by which time the cancer had progressed significantly, before they even did enough tests to determine that's what it was. First they told her it was a UTI, then they told her it she was peeing wrong (I'm not kidding -- they literally told her some BS that the ultrasound indicated that she doesn't completely e
Coincidences are mounting (Score:1, Troll)
I'm sure it's a coincidence that Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance was collecting wild bat coronaviruses in the caves of Yunnan China, and along with Zhi Shengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they were modifying them to create an innoculant precursor, infecting more bats, and studying the results. And that this happened right around where patient 0 lived. And that the Chinese government started scrubbing all information about this research from the public WIV site in about Sept. of 2019.
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It's routine to collect viruses of all type including coronaviruses from the wild -- we need to know what's out there. Virus collection has been happening for decades continuously .. saying it's a "coincidence" is dumb. It's like saying .. it's a coincidence the sun rose that day. It is a common thing, especially afters the original SARS in 2003 and then MERS in 2012. The other assertion you make that they were modifying them and infecting more bats, what docs do you have on that? what are the modifications
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> It is a common thing, especially afters the original SARS in 2003 and then MERS in 2012
That makes it more likely it was responsible for the outbreak, not less.
>The other assertion you make that they were modifying them and infecting more bats, what docs do you have on that? what are the modifications?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/wo... [telegraph.co.uk]
"Based on the analysis of the publicly available information, it appears reasonable to conclude that
the COVID-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a rese
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>The other assertion you make that they were modifying them and infecting more bats, what docs do you have on that? what are the modifications?
You're welcome
We investigated ourselves (Score:1, Troll)
Sure, not *that* lab, but what about other labs? (Score:1)
There are many potential labs and we know viruses can travel.
What a garbage summary (Score:1, Flamebait)
Even if you entirely agree with the summary, it feels belittling reading it that the author doesn't trust you to reach the right conclusions without heavy-handed guidance in every sentence.
The only two outliers appear to be the Department of Energy, which gives "low confidence" support to the lab-leak theory, and the FBI
Note the use of the words "only" and "outliers" and "appear", and then scare quotes around "low confidence". All words designed to let you know you need to disregard whatever is being referred to.
The DOE is $50 billion dollar/yr department that covers national laboratories that do clearance work and brimming with PhDs, t
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A master class in critical thinking and deconstructing rhetoric. Well done, indeed.
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Re:What a garbage summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Outlier (noun) - something that lies outside the main body or group that it is a part of. 2 agencies out of at least 8 participating in the review, possibly more.
low confidence - the exact words the DOE used to describe their own assessment [nbcnews.com]
So you're complaining about journalists using words correctly. Find a new horse to beat, this one's long gone.
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Even if you entirely agree with the summary, it feels belittling reading it that the author doesn't trust you to reach the right conclusions without heavy-handed guidance in every sentence.
That's not deliberate manipulation, that's just how people's beliefs creep into what they write, I'll give you some examples.
The only two outliers appear to be the Department of Energy, which gives "low confidence" support to the lab-leak theory, and the FBI
Note the use of the words "only" and "outliers" and "appear", and then scare quotes around "low confidence". All words designed to let you know you need to disregard whatever is being referred to.
The DOE is $50 billion dollar/yr department that covers national laboratories that do clearance work and brimming with PhDs, the FBI is probably the word's biggest and most sophisticated law enforcement agency, with tens of thousands of personnel. It focuses on domestic intelligence but also has dozens of field foreign field offices.
But the dismissive language lets you know they are basically just country bumpkins not suave enough to keep up with the crowd.
Most US government agencies are fairly impressive, you extol the creds of the couple that entertain the lab leak but say nothing of the others that disregarded it. You say the FBI has foreign intel because they have "field foreign offices", you really think they have more intel than the CIA and NSA in China? Why emphasize the FBI's foreign intel while ignoring the others.
As for the DO
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That's not deliberate manipulation, that's just how people's beliefs creep into what they write,
Then how do you explain that the headline is completely false?
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That's not deliberate manipulation, that's just how people's beliefs creep into what they write,
Then how do you explain that the headline is completely false?
It's pretty common for people to say "there's no evidence" when they really mean "there's no direct evidence and the circumstantial evidence isn't compelling".
Maybe an overstatement, but hardly "completely false".
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Well (Score:2)
That's exactly what they would document isn't it
Yet people pretend the pandemic is over... (Score:2)
Weekly totals of Americans STILL being killed by Covid 19
https://mastodon.social/@Weekl... [mastodon.social]
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People are still going on about where Covid 19 came from while pretending the pandemic is over.
Weekly totals of Americans STILL being killed by Covid 19
https://mastodon.social/@Weekl... [mastodon.social]
Huh.
So you are saying that Biden and the unnamed party that runs the big cities are evil science deniers? For engaging in the same laxity that just 5 minutes ago was called, er, evil science denying?
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It is now no different than the common flu, only a threat if you have other pre-existing health conditions.
I give up. I mean...not like anyone really gets it (Score:2)
Okay so follow my logic here ... not that anyone cares or anything. Because we're all gonna die some horrible death that we caused ourselves anyway.
But whether or not a pangolin mated with a bat and had pangobat babies...the COVID virus happened. Oh and it's still mutating like crazy mad. Who the hell knows how it will end up even a year from now.
The world was woefully unprepared for the outbreak that legit increased the worldwide mortality rate by a good percentage. It makes Pandemia look like God mode com
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Mold, Viruses, Climate Change (no matter WHO caused it) and more all take a backseat into the lies that the Media is shoving down our throat.
What on earth are you talking about?
"direct" (Score:2)
Not evidence, but "direct evidence." What does "direct evidence" mean? Its a legal term, and it means that no one has testified that it actually saw it happen. For example, if a cop has a green light, and you cross the intersection on the other street in the intersection, and the cop gives you a ticket for running a red light, he has NO "direct evidence" that your light was red; he only has the circumstantial evidence that his light was green, only making it highly likely that your light was red.
Similar
Intelligence? How about published research? (Score:3)
Intelligence gathered by various agencies have its place and value. But it is not panacea, regardless of who it is from, or what it says.
This virus is most likely natural, and jumped from animals to humans. Available evidence points this way, with no evidence to the contrary. This has been the pattern for coronaviruses in the past two decades (in 2003 we had SARS, then ~ 2012 we had MERS, then in 2019 COVID-19). Why should this one be any different?
There are at least four other coronaviruses that infect humans, and cause common cold. The thinking is that these were virulent strains (against a naive population) but they mellowed down over time and live in equilibrium with humans.
Anyways, back to the lab leak thing ... how about we check published literature?
Here is a symposium by virologists and an ex-FBI analyst [microbe.tv] on the lab leak theory.
Here is Michael Worobey's analysis of the genomes [microbe.tv] of infections in Wuhan, and how there were two lineages (A and B) with the former going extinct early on.
Then here is Worobey again [microbe.tv] concluding that the virus is a result of a spillover zoonosis.
And here is Eddie Holmes on viral origins [microbe.tv].
All the published paper and experts in the field lean towards a natural spillover from animals.
There is no evidence for a lab leak.
Side note: Coronaviruses are unique because they straddle a narrow niche between RNA viruses (e.g. Influenza) and DNA ones (most of the rest): DNA viruses are more stable, and have less mutations. RNA viruses mutate very quickly (that is why the flu vaccine has to change year to year). Coronaviruses on the other hand are in between: they have a relatively large genome, which includes RDRP (RNA Dependent RNA Polymerase). This is an enzyme that does corrections on the replicated RNA. It is still not fool proof, and mutations happen.
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The location of the lab and the known presence of gain of function research on corona viruses is circumstantial evidence.
Virologists on the whole have a nigh on religious belief that gain of function research is a necessity to fight pandemics, they will lie to everyone and themselves the most. They let be published what they want to let published, they declare a circumstance evidence or coincidence based on not undermining their religious belief and their entire history of research.
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This virus is most likely natural, and jumped from animals to humans. Available evidence points this way, with no evidence to the contrary. This has been the pattern for coronaviruses in the past two decades (in 2003 we had SARS, then ~ 2012 we had MERS, then in 2019 COVID-19). Why should this one be any different?
Well, I guess the Chinese government would be better at covering it up. So better at covering up the initial outbreak, and better at covering up the subsequent lab leaks.
No evidence??? (Score:2)
"U.S. intelligence had learned that three Wuhan Institute of Virology lab workers had been hospitalized with Covid symptoms in November 2019"
Given the nature of the Chinese government I doubt we'll ever have definitive evidence of where COVID came from (lab or natural), but to say there is "no evidence" for a lab leak is laughably false. The virus outbreak "just happens" to occur right next to a lab doing coronavirus research, some of the researchers working directly working on coronavirus research "just h
This is false (Score:2)
Strictly an Internal Chinese Matter (Score:2)
It seems nosy to me for foreigners to go on about an internal Chinese question. It's not like they'll EVER help us resolve it by providing information that we can trust to be true, so it's a waste of time, as well.
I call it entirely internal, because, for the whole world NOT under the thumb of Mr. Xi and his assistant dictators, this is China's fault. It's their pandemic.
Of minor interest is whether it started in Wuhan because Chinese staff and regulators could not run a food market, or because Chinese s
They didn't go looking for any evidence (Score:2)
Re: Lies (Score:3, Insightful)
You start with fatally flawed assumptions and then try to reason your way into the conclusion you started out with.
There really is no way to debate with the scientifically illiterate.
Re: Lies (Score:2)
Sources please. (Score:2)
You quote a published study...
Re:Lies (Score:5, Funny)
This was moderated from 2 to 0, I suppose by Chinese agents or sympathizers.
Yep, must be a coordinated campaign to silence you. Can't possibly be that you're just kinda stupid and/or illiterate. It was probably the same dastardly yellow menace that made it rain that day you wanted to go to the park. Devious bastards.
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"Well, your honor we've got plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence."
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It should be noted that under this categorization, there's only conjecture and no hearsay for the natural origin of C19.
Re: Lies (Score:2)
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Lab studying Coronavirus set up in epicenter of wild Coronavirus. Wild fucking conspiracy amirite?!
Youtube isn't a news source.
Re: Lies (Score:2)
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Since when, and supposed by who?
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Initially? In early 2020 and by a bunch of scientists involved in the WIV funding in some way.
Re: Lies (Score:2)
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>Intelligence communities don't like revealing explosive information
More to the point, intelligence services reveal information or false information in furtherance of secret goals. You absolutely cannot trust them if they tell you the weather right now is exactly what you're experiencing when you step outside.
However, when the scientists and epidemic specialists chime in and tell me the virus is entirely consistent with a strain emerging from the wild according to well-known vectors? Them I believe.
Ult
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