Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 868 posts

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#81

Post by oldpersonintx »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #70
CMay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concern about China is not partisan anymore, pretty much everyone is on board now. Also from the article: "Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time."

But we know Trump lies, and that people around him change their story and lie for him, and we know he gets rid of personnel who don't 'kiss the ring'... and this comes at the exact instant that he says he's going to start his import tariffs for Chinese goods and needs media support to convince USA-ians that making all goods coming from China now expensive is a good idea... I mean you're going to need extraordinary ev…

[dead]

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#83

Post by pessimizer »

drewbug01 wrote: post #17

> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete. I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain. --- One thing that is, however, quite certain: there are very real political reasons to favor one theory or another. For example, Sen. Tom Cotton is quoted as…

> I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.

There's never going to be any conclusive evidence of the source of covid, and anyone claiming they have certainty (who wasn't a witness to a lab leak) is simply lying to you. What they're doing is going along with everyone else worth listening to, who find the coincidence that we were funding banned research on coronaviruses in a lab a few feet away from the origin of the outbreak unlikely. They also find tales of non-lab origin both speculative and vague, while stories of lab origin are only speculative.

It's so strange to demand so much more proof of lab origin than one does of non-lab origin. The obvious reasons for that demand are that millions died, and that everybody involved with that lab can easily be named. Also weird that this observation is covid-skeptic coded, when in reality the worse you think covid is, the greater the crime that a lab leak entails.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#84

Post by shadowgovt »

rhansgrt wrote: post #68

Fauci has been preemptively pardoned for gain of function research (lying or funding), so the bureaucrats can now pander to Trump. Anyway, we have always been at war with Oceania and China is now our enemy! Next week the NYT will use the term "Wuhan Virus". This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now? I feel l…

FWIW, the pardon doesn't mention gain of function research. (https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/dl). This pardon applies every bit as much to him parallel parking while attending a Chief Medical Advisor meeting as it does to gain of function research.

> This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now?

No; this is 100% new. This is in no way a normal Presidential transition of power.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#85

Post by jgalt212 »

mrkramer wrote: post #46
chimprich wrote: post #33

The 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

US will keep discrediting China as long as there is no conclusive evidence of what exactly happened. The burden of proof is on China. But let's be honest if it was a lab leak of this scale and consequences in US, US wouldn't admit it as would probably no country.

> US will keep discrediting China as long as there is no conclusive evidence of what exactly happened.

Right, but in 2020 and 2021, the US was doing everything it could to discredit those who were trying to possibly discredit China. And the WHO was doing whatever China wanted. No scrutiny was to be tolerated. That in and of itself is very fishy.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#86

Post by mrkramer »

buyucu wrote: post #57
mrkramer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US will keep discrediting China as long as there is no conclusive evidence of what exactly happened. The burden of proof is on China. But let's be honest if it was a lab leak of this scale and consequences in US, US wouldn't admit it as would probably no country.

[flagged]

>State media has been reporting intensively on coronavirus discovered on packaging of frozen food imports, not considered a significant vector of infection elsewhere, and research into possible cases of the disease found outside China’s borders before December 2019.

The official People’s Daily newspaper claimed in a Facebook post last week that “all available evidence suggests that the coronavirus did not start in central China’s Wuhan”.

“Wuhan was where the coronavirus was first detected but it was not where it originated,” it quoted Zeng Guang, formerly a chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/29/a-year-after-w...

They kept changing the story....they claim or claimed that it originated outside China. Give me evidence. The burden of proof is on them.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#87

Post by nunobrito »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #59
eightysixfour wrote: post #29

I had a pretty long post about this here before, due to the politicization of the issue it is highly unlikely any of us will ever know “the truth” without a surprise smoking gun. There are good reasons to believe the natural or the lab leak hypotheses. I think you have to accept it is now unlikely we normies will ever know the truth. The post, and its comments, are worth reading still IMO: https://news.ycombinator.co…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#88

Post by shadowgovt »

fgna wrote: post #3

Was thinking this would be due to the inauguration or decree spree, however the analysis was started under the biden administration

It was started under Biden, but the decision to publicize it is the new director's decision.

Worth noting is that this is a low-confidence report. I'm not accusing the director of divulging a low-confidence report under the belief that the public will accept it as categorically true because they have no sense of how CIA confidence levels work, but they're willing to believe the director wouldn't publicize it if it wasn't true.

... you should have low confidence in the truth of my last statement.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#89

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

frankharv wrote: post #63
andy_ppp wrote: post #53

We can conclude nothing, except that humans do stupid stuff and usually conspiracy theories are incorrect. Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Do we actually know if NIH was doing gain of function research (on Corona viruses) in the Wuhan lab? It sounds like another right wing conspiracy theory but if people have high quality sources for this being true I’ll happily change my mind.

They subbed it out to these guys because it was illegal to do Gain of Function research: https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2024/06/ecohealth-alliance...

The demonization of the Ecohealth Alliance is one of the more depressing aspects of the response to the pandemic.

EHA has been warning for decades that a coronavirus pandemic is likely, and that governments should be taking steps to prepare for it and to make it less likely. Then, they're proved right, but instead of society thanking them, they're subject to a politically motivated witch hunt, with the aim of distracting from the US government's disastrous pandemic response.

Re: CIA now favors lab leak theory to explain Covid's origins

#90

Post by buyucu »

mrkramer wrote: post #86
buyucu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>State media has been reporting intensively on coronavirus discovered on packaging of frozen food imports, not considered a significant vector of infection elsewhere, and research into possible cases of the disease found outside China’s borders before December 2019. The official People’s Daily newspaper claimed in a Facebook post last week that “all available evidence suggests that the coronavirus did not start in ce…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN