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

nytimes.com

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

#461

Post by AlotOfReading »

Izkata wrote: post #422
lolinder wrote: post #306

Can someone help me understand why a lab leak looks worse for China than zoonotic spillover? Why would Senator Cotton need it to be a lab leak to give him more leverage? From what I understand, one theory is that China has for decades tolerated unsanitary wet markets that allowed dangerous diseases to evolve, get stronger, and eventually transmit to human hosts. They'd been warned about this over and over again and h…

The lab in question is BSL-2* while viruses like this are supposed to be researched in BSL-3*. If it was a lab leak, they were using insufficient safety protocols to keep the virus contained. It also implies they're probably still doing the same for much worse viruses. *I think these were the levels, I'm going from memory.

There are two campuses in Wuhan. One has BSL-3 facilities, the other BSL-4. Not all work is done at the highest BSL available for cost and practicality reasons though. American rules were that research on agents in the same classification as COVID is BSL-3, but routine diagnostic work is only BSL-2. Chinese researchers classified both at BSL-2.

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

#462

Post by danenania »

hakfoo wrote: post #446
Izkata wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question of whether we should do gain-of-function research is a fairly complex cost/benefit analysis. Has there ever been benefit to such research? People fall back on wishy-washy "we could learn ___" when trying to defend it, but with how long it's been going on have we ever actually had a solid benefit from it?

Isn't the above-the-board justification for gain-of-function the promise of built-for-purpose microbes? The dream of "we spilled a million litres of toxic soup, here's a jar full of bacteria that eat that stuff and poop out useful compounds" or "let's make a virus that selectively over-infects tumours to weaken them?" We might have the usual problem with every high-powered technology, from the fission reaction to the…

Gain-of-function in the virology context doesn’t mean creating helpful microbes/viruses. It means purposely engineering pandemic-caliber viruses so that (the theory goes) we find them before evolution produces them naturally and so have time to study them and create vaccines before they are widespread.

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

#463

Post by gtgvdfc »

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

Actually under the original Trump administration.

The intel community never dismissed the lab leak theory. The discrediting of it was 100% a psyop

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

#464

Post by Fomite »

why_at wrote: post #456
Fomite wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few reasons, though as I note in another comment, I'm not an expert in spillover events, my area of interest kicks in about a week later. So there's a few: 1) People I trust are skeptical, including people who are opposed to gain of function research. I've found Angela Rasmussen to be one of the better voices in terms of discussing the evidence for a natural origin, but she's far from the only one. 2) We have had t…

Can you elaborate on point 4? Your comment is interesting but I don't entirely follow.

Basically, things like "It started in Wuhan near the WIV" implies that we actually have found the first case, etc., when this is notoriously difficult to do, especially with a disease that can have mild or asymptomatic presentation.

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

#465

Post by Fomite »

dmix wrote: post #447
Fomite wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the key parts of the lab leak hypothesis is that, depending on who is advancing it, it ranges from "poor biocontainment of a natural virus" to "engineered and released" with everything in between.

What does the biocontainment angle entail? They keep the bodies of animals (or live ones) or samples?

Biocontainment just means that the virus stays in the lab and doesn't move outside it - be that the disposal of lab materials, accidental infections, etc.

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

#466

Post by lolinder »

mmustapic wrote: post #16

So 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?

Changes its position radically? The FBI came out saying it had moderate confidence in the lab leak theory in 2023, right in the middle of the Biden administration [0]. The DOE came out with their own assessment a few days earlier [1]. The CIA's position was hiterto "we're not yet sure", and now it's "we still aren't sure but we're leaning towards lab leak". That's not a radical shift, it's a very slight shift in the direction that other three-letter agencies have been leaning for years.

There were almost certainly some politics involved in the decision to release the report now, but it's not like the CIA were staunch advocates for zoonotic origins up until now, and again: Biden's FBI and DOE were already leaning this way!

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/politics/wray-fbi-covid-origi...

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/26/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan...

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

#467

Post by gtgvdfc »

What I never understood about the politicization of the lab leak theory is this:

How is it more racist and Sinophobic to support the lab leak theory vs the wet market one?

The lab leak theory has single individuals messing up.

The wet market theory judges an entire nation's culinary habits.

Of course racism has nothing to do with the Truth of COVID's origins. Im was just always perplexed how the lab leak ended up spun as more "racist" than the wet lab one.

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

#468

Post by hedora »

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…

Two things to note:

1) Multiple departments of the executive branch were saying this under Biden too.

2) The US gov’t funded the biological weapons research lab at Wuhan. Mr Cotton has been a senator for 10 years, and therefore was around when the funding was approved. So if he wants to find someone to punish, maybe he should look in a mirror.

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

#469

Post by rufus_foreman »

ioulaum wrote: post #384
rufus_foreman wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how you have high confidence in the CIA.

If you don't have extra evidence, and the you don't trust the CIA, then what base do you have for your assumption? Wanting human like causes for problems is how humanity invented gods. So that they could feel more under control by trying to appease the now humanized force. Of course, if the problem went away after you prayed, that would really just have been luck. Even though it strengthened your belief.

[flagged]

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

#470

Post by sleeplessworld »

danenania wrote: post #462
hakfoo wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the above-the-board justification for gain-of-function the promise of built-for-purpose microbes? The dream of "we spilled a million litres of toxic soup, here's a jar full of bacteria that eat that stuff and poop out useful compounds" or "let's make a virus that selectively over-infects tumours to weaken them?" We might have the usual problem with every high-powered technology, from the fission reaction to the…

Gain-of-function in the virology context doesn’t mean creating helpful microbes/viruses. It means purposely engineering pandemic-caliber viruses so that (the theory goes) we find them before evolution produces them naturally and so have time to study them and create vaccines before they are widespread.

This seems to be one of the most dangerous propositions that I have ever heard of. Given human history, human psychology, human error, politics etc.

What am I missing here? That biolabs are the only human made thing that can be made absolutely 100% secure?

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