Why does the HN title say "US agency" but the NY Times headline says "Energy Department"? Did the NY Times change their title or was the OP trying to obscure the Energy Department part?
Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
471–480 of 1001 posts
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#472Annoying that early on even suggesting this as a possibility labeled you as a crazy, racist, conspiracy freak. Hopefully in the years to come people are more open minded.
It may not be that we now love conspiracy freaks (as you put it) because they're so open minded, but that now it doesn't matter anymore to sidetrack the conversation from "how can we fix it" to "whodunnit". Different period in the pandemic, rather than a shift in mindset from whether pointing fingers without evidence is helpful.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#473There'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…
Feels like we should assume it's a lab leak and push for caution anyways. If it wasn't a lab leak then all we've done is help better prevent that from happening in the future.
It’s hard enough to get a good objective analysis done without saying it should be bent to political considerations.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the WSJ piece says the CIA is undecided! I wonder what explains the different assessments.
Well, when all 17 intelligence agencies agree on something, you know they must be right then.
> Well, when all 17 intelligence agencies agree on something, you know they must be right then.
Then you know they are lying.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#475IMO, it seems obvious from the behavior of China's government that they know it is a lab leak. If it wasn't a lab leak, then presumably there is an animal reservoir of the virus somewhere in China, but as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it. But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work? A lockdown on travel would only r…
> But if there is an animal reservoir of the virus in China, then how could the Chinese government ever expect a lockdown to work?
Because if people avoid contact with the animals and it's a rare type of human-animal interaction to begin with, then it doesn't spread. And if you catch it again, you lock down instantly locally again.
I'm not taking any side on the source of the virus, but I don't think the Chinese government behavior makes either option more likely. Once vaccines had been developed, the Chinese lockdown went on for way longer than reason could ever have dictated, since Covid had turned endemic in the rest of the world. The extreme lockdown was never a good example of rational health policy in any scenario, post-vaccine.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US isn't capable of preventing its own citizens from acquiring weapons and performing terrorist attacks with them. The idea that we'll be able to enforce controls on labs in foreign countries seems pretty far fetched given that. And as the tech advances, I suspect it will democratize like any other technology so that a lone enthusiast can design their own viruses in a home lab. I'm not particularly an optimist ab…
But it is in the best interest of all countries. Unlike nuclear weapons where the damage can be isolated to one area, highly contagious weapons are impossible to control and will end up hurting themselves as well.
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Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#477I wonder how the classified intelligence report responds to the fact that the early cases clustered around the Huanan Market not the Wahun Institute of Virology... https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/03/03/1083751...
Do people typically gather in the parking lot of the WIV in large numbers? What was the reproductive rate of the initial version? What was the probability of an infection turning into a severe enough case to register to epidemiologists months later? For a relatively low reproductive rate or severity, you will need a lot of human contact to have detectable cases. The fact that the initial detectable cases are clustere…
The market is not near the WIV. They're on opposite sides of a very large city.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#478I've read that some american scientists were working or were distantly involved in research projects at this lab.
I still entertain the conspiracy theory that Trump, since he hated China, could have had the capacity to ask the CIA to "cause problems in China", and this lab would have been one way to do harm.
Of course the US would not be really held responsible as long as chinese lab workers were pushed to be negligent, for example to manipulate virus in lower security lab settings, and no scientist was really able to know it would cause a pandemic.
Of course it's impossible to prove, which is why it's a conspiracy theory. Of course the cause was negligence. I'm just ashamed to have this theory in my head, but there are still legitimate scientists who have unanswered questions. It is still quite puzzling, when you read about the subject, to read that they searched for "gain of function", because there was nothing really good to learn, and it was always a pandora box which was very risky to explore.
I guess governments could ask China for financial reparations for this negligence, but I don't think it is worth the drama.
Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course there's a reservoir. That's why there was a lab in the first place. There are many more viruses in those caves. Many many. And tourists literally pay money to go into such caves, and look up to the ceiling to look at the bats. Bats that may at any time shit into their eye with one of these new viruses. And then on top of that people catch them and sell them live to slaughter them at home to eat. Again, this…
Well its been years, why haven't they found the reservoir yet then? They would obviously want to since it would prove that it wasn't a lab leak, yet as far as I know they haven't claimed to have found it yet.
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Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says
#480How is this lab leak theory anything more than an attempt to excuse Trump from any blame for his pandemic response failure?
The Energy Department is no longer a Trump organ. I don’t see why the senior bureaucrat who oversees it - who is a Biden appointee - would be doing anything to help out Trump here. “Jennifer M. Granholm was sworn in as the 16th Secretary of Energy on February 25, 2021.” https://www.energy.gov/leadership
Biden admin might strategically decide to do the lab leak investigation as part of their anti-China plan. That would be a balance decision, but I could see it coming down on lab leak investigation.