So much fake news and propaganda out there, who knows what to believe.
Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
251–260 of 1001 posts
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also article mentions FBI has “moderate” confidence it was lab leak. I find that very interesting given it wouldn’t be so much based on scientific analysis but some intelligence collection the FBI has.
And the WSJ piece says the CIA is undecided! I wonder what explains the different assessments.
I have not been inside the CIA, but that could just mean they haven't done any research on that or that their research is ongoing.
An institution will not have assessments on everything at any point in time. Two different institutions might have didferent assessments for a billion reasons, e.g. they could have done the research at different points in time, the underlying evisence could differ, the interviewed experts could have said different things and so on.
Two different instutions reaching different conclusions is not as surprising as it seems.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#253As a non-American, the whole thing seems crazy to me. It seems like Trump said it from the start, and the media negated him based on political views, not facts. And now, only years later, there is a reconciliation with the facts. Now, I'm not that aware of the politics or the media in the US. But I think the way I see it may be the way many others saw this story roll. Whether or not it's true - it is a big reason tha…
> It seems like Trump said it from the start, and the media negated him based on political views, not facts.
Trump's insinuations were that the virus was engineered as a bioweapon and intentionally leaked from the lab in Wuhan. This is not the same as the virus being studied in the lab and leaking. Just because the statements involved the work "leak" doesn't make them equivalent.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#254There has been SO much lost faith in media and authorities because of the coverage, laws and regulations re this, it's so so bad... People not vaccinating their young children with vaccines we know to work and have no side effects for 30+ years.
Locking young children inside for years and stumping their social growth. Or teenagers and adults too, leading to unmeasurable mental health problems.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#255Without 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.
Actually as a side question, why does the reporting on this story in particular use the somewhat unusual phrase “US Energy Department?” It is the Department of Energy, right? 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…
I think in cases where there are two large agencies that can be abbreviated to the same acronym people who work for those agencies tend to use names that don't lend themselves to that abbreviation. So in this case it's the Energy Dept and Education Dept rather than something that might be turned into the ambiguous DoE.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#256I don’t know what the truth is here, and I don’t know if I’ll ever know. Ultimately, I don’t think it is that important.
What concerns me much more, is that this issue has become overly politicised - not just out of concern for the possible geopolitical implications, or a desire to not offend Beijing, but also by being tied up with US domestic political divides.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan No it isn't. The were studying SARS-CoV-1 and WIV-1. They sequenced RaTG13 but that is too far away from SARS-CoV-2 with a thousand random mutations across its genome. And there's no evidence that they ever recovered culturable virus from RaTG13 or were able to culture it--there's a vast gap between sequencing a virus and culturing…
If you are not a native English speaker, you may want to know that you are pretty drastically misreading parents comment. He is not saying "I know this specific virus is present" but "the lab studied SARS related coronaviruses" which you in fact seem to agree with.
They're not related enough to matter.
I've lived in the United States all my life, you're just missing the point.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where do you people get briefed? The guy was fucking President
I love this reaction, because Trump, of all people, was getting some of the least useful briefings of any modern US president, due to his inability to pay attention.[0][1][2] So it's entirely possible that just watching the news casually would leave you better informed than the US president during the years of 2017 to 2021. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/29/politics/trump-intelligence-b... [1] https://www.theguardia…
I'm always fascinated by the dichotomy of the evil hitler hyper-competent sub 100IQ billionaire who became president illustrated in every one of these types of comments.
You could literally just read his executive orders to figure out what you said is false.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#259There'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…
They always softball these bombshells like this so any confidence in official terms is something that pretty much solidifies this as the source of the virus for me.
I’m trying to think of anyone involved had a conscience if they would be tallying themselves to be one of the most prolific murderers in history but then that likely wouldn’t happen since first unofficial hazing ritual you do when entering academia is to develop an air of “that’s not me” attitude about things like this.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#260The timing of this is interesting, given that China is now considering giving weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine.
It seemed that from 2020 until recently, the intelligence community was trying to lower tensions with China. That's shifted now with China's increasing support Russia's war in Ukraine and China's increasing pressure in Taiwan.
It's now in the US's interests to try and isolate China geopolitically. So, we're shooting down balloons and blaming them for Covid, rather than turning a blind eye.