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

wsj.com

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

#851

Post by unicornmama »

unicornmama wrote: post #215
goolulusaurs wrote: post #192

IMO, 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…

Lockdowns serve a purpose: to slow the spread of the virus.

-1 clueless downvotes and 6 clueless replies.

If you can’t understand that slowing the spread (exponential growth factor) in a pandemic is priority number 1, and can’t understand that lockdowns serve that purpose then take up knitting or pottery or something and stop commenting on pandemics.

China is a highly population dense country with incredible means of public transit, and millions of people moving back and forth every day: these factors all serve to increase the exponential spread of the virus. Slowing the rate of infection helps reduce hospital and equipment overload, gives more time to develop a vaccine, and increases each individual’s chances of survival when they do become ill.

^ If you can’t understand the above then pottery and knitting.

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

#852

Post by ergocoder »

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #254

There 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.

Now adding the Ohio explosion fiasco where authorities and experts insist that the air is safe to breathe.

The science crowd who say we should trust authorities have gone silence

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

#853

Post by Teever »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #685
goolulusaurs wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but don't they have a vast network of contact tracing? Presumably if a bunch of cases showed up that weren't connected to any other cases because of the lockdowns then that would be a really good indication of where the animal reservoir was located. But they haven't found the animal reservoir yet either, even with all of the lockdowns.

If by 'animal reservoir' you mean the intermediary pangolin, or something similar, this 'reservoir' could be as small as 1 animal if it was a spontaneous mutation. Where do you get the idea that there must be a large population of such animals roaming around?

Wasn't the intermediate pangolin idea also discredited as exceedingly improbable relatively early in the pandemic?

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

#854

Post by salawat »

slumos wrote: post #785
salawat wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: Wuhan was closed to interprovincial traffic very early on. The International Airport, however, was left open. There's a hanful of ways you can look at that: Wuhan International couldn't be closed without consent from Beijing. Beijing didn't grant it because A) Poor information propagation Or B) Someone made a weighty geopolitical decision that in order to best serve China's interests, it was time to make this e…

C) Trapping foreign citizens in their country would have caused an international incident when very little was yet known.

Every country understands the concept of Quarantine. There would not have been even a blink of an eye within diplomatic channels. At least I don't think so. It also doesn't jibe with the tight lipped behavior of the Chinese Government, and the iron fist they dropped on their academic establishment that under no circumstances were virological materials to be widely published without Party approval.

The clamp down on information exchange does not strike me as the actions of a group with everyone else's best interests in mind. And given that we have hitherto been pretty chill with China on the whole, I really think if they had gone "screw it, international travel lockdown"; you'd have seen materials and humanitarian relief being flown in in order to help out with citizens stranded overseas. We may not even be having this conversation, because to be frank, how China did decide to react just doesn't make any sense except in the context of someone with something to hide.

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

#855

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

fallingfrog wrote: post #761
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This would be counterproductive.

Why? We should santion them worse than Russia.

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

#856

Post by neoromantique »

dilap wrote: post #387
nostromo wrote: post #260

The 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, w…

How would the US fare if China cut off exports? Seems like it would at best be extremely disruptive. So how much leverage does US really have to "isolate" China?

This cuts both ways though.

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

#857

Post by roelschroeven »

yellowapple wrote: post #827
bradleyjg wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s your comment from two years ago belittling the wet market theory as shitty? This whole saga is a damning indictment of: science journalism, government agencies’ public engagement, scientists’ public engagement, and the critical reasoning skills of middlebrow audiences.

Were any of these "theories" (they're hypotheses, at best) ever mutually exclusive? It seems entirely possible - and maybe even probable - that SARS-CoV-2: - Originally evolved in the wild to at least some extent - Was being studied in a lab and escaped - Found its way into a wet market near said lab

They were not really mutually exclusive, but were often portrayed as such. The lab leak theory got confused with the intentionally fabricated theory, probably as a strawman argument to discredit the lab leak theory.

For what it's worth, your scenario seems to me the most probably by far. I don't think we'll ever know for sure, since China has done it's best to destroy all evidence (we should be careful not to take that fact as evidence for one theory or another though).

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

#858

Post by himinlomax »

pessimizer wrote: post #511
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…

The headline is absolutely, literally true. I also don't understand the nuance that anyone could miss here. The astounding thing is that the Energy Dept. can say that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the pandemic, and people jump out in front of them to say that what they somehow still mean is that a lab leak wasn't the cause of the pandemic. They have "low confidence" that it was a lab leak ( there might not e…

> (there might not even be a physical way to prove that conclusively)

There is a way, or there would be a way had this not been in an autocratic country. A developed and free nation would have formed an independent enquiry and be given access to the lab, its staff and documents. That would have had a high likelihood to either find the cause there or rule it out with some certainty.

But this is China, and for some reason some people don't want to admit that it's a repressive dictatorship with no regard for human life, justice and transparency.

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

#859

Post by himinlomax »

jboy55 wrote: post #725
goatlover wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it clickbait? A US intelligence agency did say that the lab leak theory was more likely than the wet market one, even if their confidence is low to moderate.

And 4 other US intelligence agencies still say the wet market is more likely.

The title doesn't contradict that.

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

#860

Post by StanislavPetrov »

iaseiadit wrote: post #769
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #154

Earlier 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.

“The FBI employs a cadre of microbiologists, immunologists and other scientists and is supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, which was established at Fort Detrick, Md., in 2004 to analyze anthrax and other possible biological threats.” -the article

Ironic, since the anthrax from the "anthrax attacks" in 2001 were traced to Fort Detrick.
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