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CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
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Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#32So there’s a new president and the main intelligence agency changes its position radically in alignment with the new government. Why should we be confident in any other claim they made in the past?
Yes that's what I thought but it does say it was an analysis project started by Biden. The timing is suspicious, true.
But yeah this topic is extremely politicised (not just by the US mind you, but also by China). So it's hard to say what's the truth. I doubt we'll ever find it.
The lab leak theory does make sense though IMO. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. But yeah, I take this at face value. And to be honest I'm just really happy that this is all behind us.
Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#33The CIA is not a neutral party in this. Discrediting China may well be their goal here.
A lab leak is not impossible, but there are good reasons to suspect a natural spillover event. There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests that the Wuhan wet market was the origin.
Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#34Wasn't this one of those "forbidden" conspiracy theories, censored from most social media, while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/us/politics/covid-lab-lea... and https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/27/media/covid-19-origins-lab-le... In short a few prominent people claimed it was racist to suggest that China's research or wet market contributed to the origins of COVID. They were mistaken but with the highly politicized environment, it helped distort opinions at a critical time. The claims of racism have since been de…
Conflation of very different factors. Animal origin was always going to be the most likely explanation, so wet market tracks. Lab leak after secret gain of function research is much more of a speculatory accusation than the existence of wet markets.
Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#35Wasn't this one of those "forbidden" conspiracy theories, censored from most social media, while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?
Saying COVID-19 leaked from a lab with zero evidence is different than waiting for evidence and then saying it leaked from a lab.
Yes, but the rush to the wet market theory was no better.
Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#36So there’s a new president and the main intelligence agency changes its position radically in alignment with the new government. Why should we be confident in any other claim they made in the past?
We shouldn’t be confident in this specific assessment because the agency making it isn’t either:
> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#37The CIA is not a neutral party in this. Discrediting China may well be their goal here. A lab leak is not impossible, but there are good reasons to suspect a natural spillover event. There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests that the Wuhan wet market was the origin. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2
overlaying an additional conspiracy theory in skepticism of the current conspiracy theory
Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#38So there’s a new president and the main intelligence agency changes its position radically in alignment with the new government. Why should we be confident in any other claim they made in the past?
So what you're saying is that we shouldn't put our trust into people who pride themselves on being master manipulators and deceivers?
Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Censoring views that it came from a lab leak with zero evidence isn't any better. In fact I remember being lied to by major news outlets at the time saying that the evidence points to a non lab origin.
It did though. Animal origin only stopped being the most favored explanation because we haven't found the link in 5 years.
I'm confused, do you mean the animal origin had no evidence either, but was favoured? But not having evidence for 5 years suddenly makes the other theory favoured instead?
So basically neither had real evidence, but one was favoured?
Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins
#40The CIA is not a neutral party in this. Discrediting China may well be their goal here. A lab leak is not impossible, but there are good reasons to suspect a natural spillover event. There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests that the Wuhan wet market was the origin. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00901-2
> There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests the Wuhan wet market was the origin.
Those are not mutually exclusive theories.
It could have been a lab leak that was then superspread by the visit of an affected lab worker (or someone they came into contact with) at the wet market.