191–200 of 1001 posts
This was considered "fake news" and heavily reprimanded all throughout the pandemic in the media attached to the Western consensus, hilarious how they're starting to do a 180 on it (next is doing a 360, I guess).
It's always been a possibility although other explanations are more likely. I'd be interested in the evidence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Trump made accusations of a lab leak, there were few facts pointing to that conclusion. Furthermore, the statements he made were dangerous to Asian Americans in the US. Later, as more facts came to light, the lab-leak theory became more plausible. Guessing right in the absence of evidence shouldn't grant a person any kind of vindication in retrospect
I’ll never understand this take. “The virus accidentally leaked from a highly sophisticated lab in China” is somehow racist and dangerous, but “Chinese people can’t stop eating weird stuff at a wet market and the virus jumped to humans from there” isn’t.
A farmer handling infected guano (which is used for fertilizer) could’ve been patient zero. A scientist studying bats in a cave could’ve been exposed, and I guess that could count as a lab leak, I guess, but it’s not as sexy as “mad scientists were manually recombinating viruses for the interest of authoritarian regimes!”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/health/germs-fort-detrick...
Without meaning to take a position either way, as a non-American, why does the Energy Department have a position on this? I’m aware that the Energy Department has sone degree of responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal, but even taking that into account, it seems out of scope.
I seems like a little nitpick, but there are lots of agencies in the US, sometimes there’s a little nobody agency with a name similar to a big deal one… as a style thing, reporters should stick to the common names for big agencies, so we can be sure they aren’t mixing things up.
Without meaning to take a position either way, as a non-American, why does the Energy Department have a position on this? I’m aware that the Energy Department has sone degree of responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal, but even taking that into account, it seems out of scope.
Per the article, it looks like a supporting report came out of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is funded by the DoE. While LLNL is primarily known for nuclear research, biosecurity is also apparently part of its mission: https://www.llnl.gov/missions/biosecurity
There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus. So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cau…
What is the substantive difference between "Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says" and "Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says"? The only difference I see is that one notes the pandemic ("Covid-19") while the other notes the agency ("Energy Dept."). Or is your comment more broadly that both headlines are bad? If so, then I'd disagree. Both headlines give the most impo…
How can they tell the difference between a lab leak and a deliberate release to explore the world's reaction to a viral weapon?
And if you are trying to insinuate that it might have been the Chinese that released it, it becomes even more bloody stupid, because you would obviously never release it on your own soil right outside your own biolab which would immediately be under suspicion of being the source. You'd release it at NY Grand Central Station or the Atlanta International, and no one will be able to figure out what happened.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because what good does it do to actually dealing with the outbreak? I assume the government just made a decision that it was politically less desirable to do for a number of reasons. Mainly, probably the continuing attempts at thawing of relations with China.
If China is engaged in a behavior that lead to a global pandemic, we have to know everything about what they were doing so that we can stop this from ever happening again. Who gives a crap about thawed relations after the extraordinary amount of damage this pandemic has done to the world
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecuri...