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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

#561

Post by morepedantic »

pessimizer wrote: post #106
mrkramer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US will keep discrediting China as long as there is no conclusive evidence of what exactly happened. The burden of proof is on China. But let's be honest if it was a lab leak of this scale and consequences in US, US wouldn't admit it as would probably no country.

> US will keep discrediting China as long as there is no conclusive evidence of what exactly happened. The US funded the lab and the specific fields of research. I have no idea how people can still be banging on about lab-leak origin being a racist plot against the Chinese. Covid probably leaked from US lab experiments in China. The rest of the world should be raging against the US and China both.

Yeah, an accident in one of the most advanced scientific laboratories in the world is racist. It was a wet market. Try to keep up.

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

#563

Post by oneshtein »

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)

There was similar report about sudden increase of cases of atypical pneumonia at Oct 16, 2019 in Krasnoyark Krai, Siberia, Russia: about 700 cases per week, which is similar to Covid-19 levels.

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

#564

Post by morepedantic »

csomar wrote: post #473
chimprich wrote: post #33

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

If only there was an inter-national body that everyone contributes to and that does these things /s. Both parties here are at blame: China didn't fully cooperate with the WHO and the US recently kicked it out.

It's not obvious that international bodies are the answer. Health agencies the world over lied through their teeth to manipulate the public to take specific actions.

So if you believe that your lauded international bodies are immune to politics and the abuse of authority, then maybe it will work. The rest of us prefer international bodies to be forums and coordination points for the real authorities.

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

#565

Post by morepedantic »

Glyptodon wrote: post #499
steveBK123 wrote: post #62

It was never an implausible theory so the censorship over it was foolish. Of course the immediate jump to conclusion in the first few months by some who found it politically expedient was no better either. People need to be more comfortable saying I don’t know but we are looking into it.

It only went the way it did because people were making "lab leak" synonymous with "genetically engineered."

I think you're confusing genetic engineering with the bioweapons research. The WIV did collect natural coronaviruses and genetically engineer them.

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

#566

Post by morepedantic »

arp242 wrote: post #293
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.

The major reason for that is that many were doing this in language that was generally considered racist and/or mixed in some other weird stuff like how COVID lockdowns were like the Jewish persecution, rants about masking, or that type of stuff. I'm not saying everyone did that, but there was a huge overlap.

Have you considered the possibility that you infer racism more often than people imply it?

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

#567

Post by JumpCrisscross »

oneshtein wrote: post #515
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days CIA has been in the hot seat for long enough to be politically sensitive. Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce multiple reports for every conclusion. It's not implausible that this happened here. In any case, we're talking about a partian topic with low- and moderate-confidence reports with a President who has zero chanc…

Investigation of multiple hypothesis simultaneously is the norm, not an exception.

> Investigation of multiple hypothesis simultaneously is the norm, not an exception

Multiple conclusions, not multiple investigations.

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

#568

Post by otherme123 »

epistasis wrote: post #451
adastra22 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confusing “lab leak” with “lab made.”

No, the academic papers that were published strongly pointed to the origin being the market and from wild animals, not lab animals.

You are being downvoted, but you are right. Evidence suggest that patient zero was someone in the Wuhan market, around november 2019, and the SARS-CoV-2 genetic "signatures" where all found in wild animals for sale in that market.

Even if it leaked from the lab, the first affected people (mainly sellers) were from the market, which is weird. Occam's razor points to what you said.

I guess everyone loves a good conspirancy.

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

#569

Post by morepedantic »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #204
chowells wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

The fact that there's a biolab doing gain-of-function research a few blocks away from ground zero is much stronger bayesian evidence than "but maybe it's true". (And then the fact that ground zero is a wet market is strong evidence against . It's so weird that we have two plausible origins for this virus and they're almost right next to each other.)

JFC, finally someone that understands specific evidence changes probabilities.

It's unlikely we'll ever know the truth. If it's a cover up, then it's possible that someone will come forward in 30 years. For example, Luis Salas spilled the beans on Lyndon B Johnson's 1948 election fraud. But it's unlikely, because the PRC doesn't have a statute of limitations on STFU. If it's natural zoonosis, then maybe we'll manage to find and prove the origin.

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