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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

#321

Post by downrightmike »

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…

Same reason Senators claimed American blood was spilled on American soil in ~1835 in the Mexican state of Tejas, which we now call Texas. Notably, Abraham Lincoln demanded proof, but the senate was too happy to see manifest destiny come about even on lies. Fast forward ~200 years and you're starting to hear the same things.

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

#322

Post by rsanek »

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?

Doesn't feel like a radical change in position to me. They said they weren't sure either way previously. In this statement they're explicitly calling it "low-confidence."

The FBI & Energy Department have both said that they think it's a lab leak.

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

#323

Post by fragmede »

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…

Lax health codes mean the virus came about through sheer (bad) luck, by a bunch of "dumb hicks". The US doesn't have to do anything to compete with a bunch of yokels with bad hygiene. We have those in the US too. But if it came from a lab, using advanced technology that the west doesn't have, China goes from being more than where shitty knockoffs come from, to a much scarier boogieman that requires us to give more money to the military-industrial complex.

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

#324

Post by FeteCommuniste »

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…

Because a lab leak could imply that China had a direct, active role in cultivating or engineering the virus, as opposed to the “mere” disastrous negligence entailed by the wet market theory.

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

#325

Post by tootie »

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…

It's also pretty clear in the article that the newly appointed head of the CIA is very politically motivated to endorse this conclusion.

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

#326

Post by Enginerrrd »

AngryData wrote: post #311
Enginerrrd wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a paper from 2014 that tried to estimate the annual chance of a pandemic from a lab leak. They estimated it at 2%. I assumed they overestimated a bit for effect and put it at around 1%. Pandemics have historically happened somewhere around ever 100 years. What's that annual probability? 1%. So if you knew NOTHING else, from a bayesian standpoint, if you have to differentiate a once in a 100 year spillover or…

To me it barely moves the needle, specifically because as you have said we have found other remarkably similar viruses in the past. We have known about coronaviruses for almost 100 years, and we have been studying them due to their dangers for atleast 60 years, and it has likely existed since before humans could be called human. And it has been shown to be a highly virulent numerous times in many different forms. No…

You're not saying it, but you're obviously starting with a very different bayseian prior than my 50/50.

As someone that makes forecasts for a living, I'd like to see what you're assumptions are about the base rates there.

As for how the facts produce modifications to the base rate, personally I think that a virus identified in a cave over a thousand miles away popping up in a very urban area right next to a BSL facility that specializes in researching that type of virus moves the needle toward it being more likely a lab escape. You seem to feel otherwise and I don't really agree. In particular, if you take the converse: suppose the virus wasn't known at all to man, you'd probably argue it also pushes you toward the conclusion that it was a natural spillover. (In which case, I'd be in agreement.) So I don't think that argument is really a logical one.

Your objection in the last paragraph, describing this as a "bioweapon modified virus" is really a classic strawman, and since it isn't the argument I was making I see no reason to indulge it. It is indeed a relatively ridiculous notion.

Also, just for precision, my own assessment of the truth value there is about 70% in favor of a lab-leak.

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

#327

Post by lolinder »

davesque wrote: post #317
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…

That's one way to look at it. Another is that a lab leak makes the government seem much more culpable, since they would presumably have more direct control over the activities of government funded scientists. In any case, I think world governments have been reluctant to endorse theories that place more blame on the Chinese government for fear of forcing them into a defensive posture and risking a larger confrontation…

It may be true that other states don't want to antagonize them, and that may also be why we don't see enough emphasis placed on how absurd it is that China has allowed these wet markets to exist so long. Imposing a basic set of health codes is a very fundamental task of any government, and their inability or unwillingness to do so does not reflect well on them.

If anything, one reason why the China hawks may prefer the lab leak theory is because it makes China look more threatening than the alternative: the we-couldn't-enforce-basic-health-codes version of the story doesn't mesh well with the image we have in the West of the CCP as an all-powerful Big Brother that has complete control over every aspect of their citizens' lives. It instead projects a CCP that can barely perform the minimum functions of a state, which is harder to be afraid of.

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

#328

Post by npunt »

jdietrich wrote: post #320

If we actually care about public health, we should act as if both the lab leak and zoonosis theories are correct. We should take laboratory biosecurity, wet markets, the bush meat trade and intensive livestock management equally seriously as threats. We should do this because we have no idea where the next pandemic - and there will be a next pandemic - will come from. It seems fairly clear to me that a lot of people…

Agree, that's the only sane way to approach things. I worry that it's already relatively rare for people to realize that problems in general can be multi-causal, let alone that we can approach problems as probabilistically multi-causal. Placing blame, on the other hand, is something everyone understands.

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

#329

Post by lolinder »

fragmede wrote: post #323
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…

Lax health codes mean the virus came about through sheer (bad) luck, by a bunch of "dumb hicks". The US doesn't have to do anything to compete with a bunch of yokels with bad hygiene. We have those in the US too. But if it came from a lab, using advanced technology that the west doesn't have, China goes from being more than where shitty knockoffs come from, to a much scarier boogieman that requires us to give more mo…

Yeah, I think this hits closer to home: the zoonotic origins story makes the Chinese government look incompetent. They actually are much less competent than Western popular culture likes to paint them, but emphasizing that doesn't provide a very effective external threat to rally the masses against.

A lab leak plays into the stereotypical German or Russian mad scientist trope of the 20th century: the incredibly powerful supervillain who in their hubris (nearly) destroys the world.

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

#330

Post by tootie »

hansvm wrote: post #205
scarface_74 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world Does COVID being a “plague” jibe with the talking point that COVID is “no worse than a cold”

[flagged]

They were also agents provocateur sent by the FBI
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