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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

#331

Post by Terr_ »

westcort wrote: post #312
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 have previously shared this little known, but factual, event on Hacker News. It is simply a Wikipedia article--the 1977 Russian Flu ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu ). This is not my statement, note this well dang, and read or argue with the editors of Wikipedia if you want (not me), but the following statement stands firm: "Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian fl…

Tangentially, risks like that are why I'm really frustrated-with/exasperated-by certain mRNA-vaccine scaremongers: Ones who act as if older techniques were already fine and sufficient.

Ex: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-derived-p...

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

#332

Post by tensor »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #9

Wasn't this one of those "forbidden" conspiracy theories, censored from most social media, while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?

It wasn't forbidden, it lacked evidence, which it still does, even under this highly biased new administration.

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

#333

Post by Fomite »

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…

I wrote this awhile ago on a previous thread about this:

To my mind, there are a few reasons why people are so fixated on the lab leak thing

1) It makes the pandemic deterministic (bad lab security means an outbreak) instead of stochastic (wildlife spillover). That is, to be frank, even as an epidemiologist who is very skeptical of the lab leak hypothesis, a comforting thought.

2) It's a popular topic in the Substack/Medium set, because it moves the pandemic back into their wheelhouse of expertise, international relations, policy, etc. It becomes a human problem with human solutions.

3) It appeals to the contrarian mindset.

4) All of the lab leak papers at least attempt to show definitive proof. In contrast, actually finding the source of spillover events is the work of decades (and isn't always or even often successful). "Science is slow and uncertain" is a less compelling narrative.

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

#334

Post by Fomite »

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #324
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.

That this is someone's fault and they can be punished is, I think, the reason people want it to be true. Rather than the world is a terrifying place that sometimes kills millions.

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

#335

Post by Fomite »

spanktheuser wrote: post #172
derektank wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the FBI and DOE, which have their own foreign intelligence gathering capabilities, had previously assessed that COVID was caused by a lab leak with moderate confidence. So while I agree with you that the truth will likely remain shrouded in some mystery, most of us that believed it originated from zoonosis at first (and I would include myself in that camp) should update our priors both based on the CIA assessmen…

My priors include none of the agencies having expertise in epidemiology.

While I am very skeptical of the lab leak hypothesis as an infectious disease epidemiologist, the DoE has a fair amount of expertise via the national labs.

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

#336

Post by jtc331 »

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…

The problem is that the two theories can have competing indications as to how to prepare. Specifically: should we do gain of function research, or is that foolish — depends on how you read what happened in 2020.

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

#337

Post by Enginerrrd »

hindsightbias wrote: post #313
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…

Not that it will fit a western centric ideology but there is zero mystery with people going into hospitals in Nov. It would be surprising if it weren’t so. It’s flu season and Chinese don’t go zoom their Dr, they go and check into the hospital. In other countries, it would be considered sociopathy to go to work with a flu, but we’re all Real Americans so anything different means… conspiracy.

I'm actually aware of the cultural differences there. Going to the hospital is not usually the same thing as being "hospitalized" though, and it would be relevant for us to make that distinction to determine how much that tidbit pushes us one way or the other. I had originally read "hospitalized" some time ago, but i just checked the intelligence briefing and it definitely does not indicate actual hospitalization.

So that intel doesn't push us one way or the other very much. Although perhaps the absence of known lab-worker hospitalizations is an argument against the lab-leak though.

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

#338

Post by JumpCrisscross »

crazygringo wrote: post #245
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These two theories get mixed up constantly, either by accident or on purpose, who knows I'm struggling to see the practical difference. Ebola naturally evolved. I'm not sure I'm be more incensed if an American lab released natural versus artifical Ebola into the population.

One way to look at the difference is that a "natural Ebola" almost certainly would have spread at some point anyways, and so it wouldn't affect the total number of world deaths in the end, just make them happen some number of years sooner. Whereas an "artificial Ebola" would never have existed without it being intentionally created, so all the deaths aren't just time-shifted, they wouldn't have happened otherwise. Th…

> a "natural Ebola" almost certainly would have spread at some point anyways

Plenty of plagues have evolved in the last thousand years. That doesn’t mean they, or their deaths, were inevitable.

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

#339

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#340

Post by subsistence234 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #227
nxm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back then anyone who suggested the lab leak theory was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist by main stream media.

[flagged]

it's always easier to dismiss imaginary strawmen than real people.
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