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

nytimes.com

371–380 of 868 posts

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

#371

I think it’s important to note that there are really two “lab leak” theories: One in which the virus developed naturally, was collected in a remote location, and was being studied in a lab when it leaked from the lab into nearby human society. One in which it was not a dangerous virus originally, and it became dangerous in the lab through human agency, either maliciously (e.g. bioweapons research) or accidentally (e.…

> 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.

It guides policy. If it was engineered, it means this is research we really shouldn't be doing. If it was a wild virus being researched, it means we need to take the threat of spillover more seriously.

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

#372
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've had two months to prep for the new felon.

Two months, exactly. And like as not built on internal reports started long ago.

But they also say that there's no new evidence of any kind.

They are just choosing to believe the lab leak hypothesis now, because they spent more time thinking about the conditions of the labs before Covid started.

...

And it's still low confidence... Since there's no evidence.

Sad stuff, really. Any self respecting person would just not express their opinion in such a situation.

Just about the only value of this new report is that it tells Trump what he wants to hear.

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China obstructed and delayed the investigation. You can only assume from this that whatever was going to be found would have been unfavorable to them. Although that would be the case with both the market theory and the lab leak theory.

You can, in fact, imagine other things. For example, maybe the people shutting down the investigation had no idea what it would find and just didn't want to take the chance.

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

#374
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Clarifying: Many of the pardoned individuals have video evidence of assaulting police with weapons and claim to be part of organizations diametrically opposed to BLM, Antifa, and the FBI. Are they: 1. Lying, masquerading as Trump supporters in deep cover for many years (secretly a part of the organizations you're blaming, despite playing part in an attempted coup that would have opposed those organizations and despit…

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

#375
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ve seen no compelling evidence gain of function has benefited us in any pandemic — or even a theoretical justification. How, precisely, do you believe that gain of function will benefit us the next pandemic? Edit: Swap “aid” to “benefit us” for hopefully better clarity.

I haven't been following it closely but I am guessing the documents from the Select Committee were the closest thing to "compelling evidence"

The Intercept wrote an article about it: https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-house-re...

It begins as:

House Republicans on the subcommittee probing the origin of the Covid-19 virus appear to have inadvertently released a trove of new documents related to their investigation that shed light on deliberations among the scientists who drafted a key paper in February and March of 2020. The paper, published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, was titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and played a leading role in creating a public impression of a scientific consensus that the virus had emerged naturally in a Chinese “wet market.” The paper was the subject of a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, which coincided with the release of a report by the subcommittee devoted to the “Proximal Origin” paper. It contains limited screenshots of emails and Slack messages among the authors, laying out its case that the scientists believed one thing in private — that lab escape was likely — while working to produce a paper saying the opposite in public.

The newly exposed documents include full emails and pages of Slack chats that were cropped for the report, exposing the “Proximal Origin” authors’ real-time thinking. According to the metadata in the PDF of the report, it was created using “Acrobat PDFMaker 23 for Word,” indicating that the report was originally drafted as a Word document. Word, however, retains the original image when an image is cropped, as do many other apps. Microsoft’s documentation cautions that “Cropped parts of the picture are not removed from the file, and can potentially be seen by others,” going on to note: “If there is sensitive information in the area you’re cropping out make sure you delete the cropped areas.”

When this Word document was converted to a PDF, the original, uncropped images were likewise carried over. The Intercept was able to extract the original, complete images from the PDF using freely available tools, following the work of a Twitter sleuth.

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

#376

There is no evidence or plausible scenario to support this, but it’s an incredibly useful story for the incoming regime to promote for the purposes of hampering consensus reality. It also gives conspiracy theorists and low-trust communities a bone to chew on, since UFO hysterias are proving to have an increasingly short shelf life.

What do you mean by "no evidence"?

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

#377

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…

If this wasn't a political problem, but me and my teammates dealing with the aftermath of an incident that cost the company serious money, that's how we'd approach it. But we are technicians trying to prevent a problem, with incentives very well aligned with the company.

Government committees just don't have anywhere near this level of goal alignment, and it's not as if there is a lot of media whose best interests aligns with prevention either. You aren't getting a lot of information in the future out of a group of people you badmouthed a year ago.

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

#378
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It sure seemed like a lot of people wanted the other theory to be true also though didn't it? I think the biggest driver for the lab leak arguments is backlash.

Both theories would presumably have people that are culpable due to violating safety rules designed to prevent exactly what happened. But I suppose a lab screwing up is more embarrassing to China than a hick selling wild animals or whatever illegally.

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

#379

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 intelligence likely has more evidence than they will publicly discuss. It is a matter of public record that parts of US intelligence (not CIA) had been tracking COVID in China since at least November of 2019. That they coincidentally happened to be johnny-on-the-spot when the initial infection(s) happened, long before anyone was paying attention or trying to create a narrative, suggests that they probably have mor…

They could as well say "We aren't sharing our real sources, but we have high confidence."

But they are saying that they have low confidence, and that there is no new evidence that changes anything.

They're just changing the way they're biased, because they think that the lab's conditions weren't particularly safe.

But then, we might as well expect that dozens of dangerous viruses should've gotten out.

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

#380
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clarifying: Many of the pardoned individuals have video evidence of assaulting police with weapons and claim to be part of organizations diametrically opposed to BLM, Antifa, and the FBI. Are they: 1. Lying, masquerading as Trump supporters in deep cover for many years (secretly a part of the organizations you're blaming, despite playing part in an attempted coup that would have opposed those organizations and despit…

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> - Democrat aligned mobs routinely invade the Capitol building without facing similar charges

It’s the internet, can you link to some concrete instances where they did this? Were Congress people forced to retreat when they did it (assuming your claim is that they were roughly similar in extremity?)?

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