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

Post by wk_end » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 7:16 AM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #433

standardUser wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not racist to blame China, but it is racist to accuse/harass/disparage Asian people and that was what was happening in America. Pushing back on the lab leak theory was at least in part to stop the dumbest among us from blaming their Asian neighbor. That and the lack of evidence.

It was racism to suggest that China’s only level4 bio lab that received funding for coronavirus research was the source of the leak… But not racism to declare that the virus must have come from a wet market where the savages eat uncooked bats and pangolin. Now the goal posts have shifted to “lack of evidence” knowing full well china would nuke the city before admitting they caused covid by negligence.

Post by whoitwas » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 7:18 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #298

whoitwas wrote: post #294

Hasn't this always been the most likely cause? I thought practically all evidence pointed to that. I haven't even heard a competing theory.

The competing theory is that it was transmitted from living animals sold at a wet market in Wuhan. Either story isn't a great look for the CCP: either they failed to maintain sufficient health protocols to keep diseases from spreading in wet markets, or they let a dangerous virus leak from a lab. There's no theory for its origins that have the CCP looking competent, so I'm not sure why it's such a politicized topic.

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 7:19 AM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #403

mikeyouse wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two Covid strains were closely related with only a few mutations difference between them. As you’d expect if eg two different raccoon dogs were infected with the same virus and one of the lineages was preferred.

You would expect, as was the case with SARS, that we would then find the population of infected animals. That did not happen with COVID, and in fact when we went looking, the closest virus in a wild population was a bat coronavirus located 1000 miles away.

Post by morepedantic » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 7:20 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #302

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.

The practical difference is that many of the arguments against lab-leak theories in general are actually arguments against the gain-of-function theory in particular . Things like lack of markers that would indicate engineering, or the presence of markers that would indicate animal origins. So distinguishing the two candidate theories becomes important for discerning whether the evidence is for or against a lab leak:…

Post by amyames » Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 7:23 AM UTC

throwaway290 wrote: post #519

Fomite wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you followed events at the time and the suppressed rumours from doctors in China end of 2019, the new illness began exactly around that area actually ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang etc). There were no similar reports in another place on this planet. (Since 99% of other places do not have full control of media and many have better healthcare so if it happened it would be less likely to go unnoticed)