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Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

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Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#811

Post by benlivengood »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #740
benlivengood wrote: post #739

Does it matter? Is it possible that a worldwide pandemic was created in a laboratory and we were powerless to stop it? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes! Is it possible that a novel animal virus became viable in humans and became a worldwide pandemic that we were powerless to stop? Yes. Is that a problem? Yes! The best outcome is: figure out how to combat both the origin of novel viruses under any cases and how to eradicat…

The problem is China as a country caused irreparable harm. It needs to be punished.

How does that stop the next pandemic any better than prison stops recidivism or new criminals? How can a billion people be held accountable for the actions of a few unelected researchers?

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#812

Post by initplus »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #356
smsm42 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious solution for this conundrum is that they did study it, but didn't publish it because the screw-up happened and all evidence was promptly destroyed. In a totalitarian state, the secrecy is the default mode. You can get exceptions and publish stuff, sure, but only once you asked and received permission. If you didn't - or in the period between you asking and permission being issued something happened - no e…

Perfect, then it's unfalsifiable.

The circumstances that make the theory unfalsifiable (lack of transparency/controls in Chinese biological research) are the issue here. Due to the lack of transparency we will likely never have definitive proof for the origin one way or the other.

At a minimum the US government should not be funding any biological research in places without adequate transparency/controls.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#813

Post by Retric »

tootie wrote: post #797
Retric wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s evidence that it’s more likely than various other theories, but there isn’t a smoking gun. That’s the kind of nuance that’s easy to ignore in favor of your preconceived notions because weak evidence is rarely worth changing your mind over. At a practical level I don’t think there’s much difference between the lab link being a 7% chance vs a 70% chance. What’s more concerning is the potential of future leaks a…

"There’s evidence that it’s more likely than various other theories," None that I've seen. And the possibility of a future leak is probably unrelated to the possibility of this one having been a leak.

“None that I’ve seen.”

Which has little to do with the existence of said evidence. I’ve never seen direct evidence for the year Columbus sailed.

Anyway, many things that would make future leaks less likely also make past leaks less likely. The types of experiments being conducted and the types of labs those experiments are conducted in. Oversight, funding, and systems for reporting safety issues etc etc.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#815

Post by BoorishBears »

mths wrote: post #630
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does no one else on earth remember the initial videos out of China of people laying dead on the streets? Does no one else remeber the WHO refusing to acknowledge Taiwan is its own state? I really struggle that anyone is seriously buying a single “truth” that is coming out of China. I don’t know it was a lab leak, but I agree, if you are at all reasonable you can just see that China thinks it was.

I remember viral videos of big halls and hallways full of spastic people strapped into their beds. I still wonder sometimes what that was all about. Who had an interest in spreading such videos? What outcome did they hope for / get?

Maybe it was a poor attempt at trying to spur action without saying more than they were "allowed" to?

To me the whole idea of "China knew" is an oversimplification. Even if it was a lab leak, given the insane stakes, I can't imagine a majority of the Chinese government, or even a sizable portion of their own government would ever learn that.

People in China may have known and tried to do "something" without being able to outright say what the world (and even their own country's people) was about to be dealing with

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#816

Post by initplus »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #112
ttul wrote: post #11

The This Week In Virology podcast has been talking about the lab leak concept since the early days of the pandemic, with various experts opining on the likelihood. In [1], the expert discusses how the virus itself does not seem engineered; it’s most likely a naturally created virus. However, this is exactly the sort of virus that they study at the BSL4 lab in Wuhan, quite legitimately - and they produce good science…

[flagged]

American Virologists feared that their field would be blamed for the pandemic, and used motivated reasoning to convince themselves that the field could not be responsible for the pandemic. And the US was gripped by Trumpism, so anything in any way connected to Trump automatically became verboten.

Some of the leading voices in opposition to the lab leak hypothesis such as Peter Daszak had close academic connections (collaboration, grants etc.) with the BSL4 lab in Wuhan.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#818

Post by dqpb »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #564
dqpb wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was it so stigmatized before and now it's the preferred hypothesis for FBI and DOE?

Good question! Perhaps 'Deep Trump'? Certainly even the 3 letter agencies are not immune to what at best we might call the reactionary right, at worst proto-fascism.

[dead]

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#819

Post by wunderlust »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #151

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…

> So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cause,' and a confidence score: 'low'.

These qualifications seem to me to be in conflict. If there's low confidence about the most likely cause, then does that imply that there's low confidence about every possible cause? Could there be high confidence in the least likely cause? That, too, seems contradictory to me.

Re: Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says

#820

Post by wonderwonder »

kristopolous wrote: post #738
jboy55 wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need the truth though? In some ways the mere question on the origin of the virus is a political one. No one in the public has ever cared to have definitive proof where any virus came from before. The ability to point to a specific time and place is probably outside of our ability. A lab had it on Nov 1st, 2021. A lab worker brought it home, is that 100% proof that was the first infection? Or did the lab get it…

Moreover, disease stories has a very long history of being used to justify racism and genocide. There's a specific American racist connection with blaming Chinese immigrants for disease that goes back to the era of the Chinese exclusion act of the 1880s. There were riots attacking chinatowns and doing ethnic cleansing with lynchings and mass destruction in Denver, Tacoma, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Eureka, Seattle a…

So are you advocating for the government lying to the American people over where it came from because the truth might seem to be racist? Really? You would rather the government conceal information about a virus that killed millions of people because it might make some people upset with Asians? What else would you like the government to lie about? Murder rates? Crime Rates? The color of a man they are looking for accused of sexual assault?

Additionally it seems like you are advocating removing free speech? Friend you are sitting here actively campaigning for a 1984 style society. Not sure I have ever seen this one before; well done.

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