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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

#631

Post by mike_hearn »

choppaface wrote: post #576
Animats wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. "Low confidence". Read [1] People who deal with intel data need to work with possibly wrong info. Most spy novels don't get this. Real military planning works more like: "Intel says the enemy is at A or B, most likely at A. How much resources should we devote to A vs B, or hold in reserve until we find out by encountering the enemy? What's our plan if we guess wrong?" Planning has to assume that intel might be…

It’s also important to weight dramatic changes in the White House this week, too, right? There’s the intel itself, but then there’s also the guy trying to control the news cycle.

That's a two sided argument. You could also argue the prior view was being suppressed by the previous White House, for the same reasons.

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

#632

Post by mharig »

yobbo wrote: post #595
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…

Lab leak and zoonotic origin are not mutually exclusive. The lab leak hypothesis means "accelerated evolution" through either caged animals or "in vitro cells" infecting the lab personnel. Gene splicing and such are not necessary to make the argument. The observed fact pointing to this is the number of generations required to produce the divergence between the first SCoV2 variant and the closest wild ancestor. It cor…

[dead]

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

#633

Post by petre »

twh123751 wrote: post #187
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the agency was not bending its views to a new boss Trump has thrown the China hawks under the bus. To the extent anyone is winning accolades by pushing this hypothesis, it's in giving Trump leverage in a trade negotiation. That's too marginal to motivate an adverse conclusion at the CIA. (Counterfactual: Soviet bureaucrats would notoriously produce reports for every possible conclusion, and then pick the one that w…

> ... giving Trump leverage in a trade negotiation. That is a perfectly valid hypothesis. In the EU there are also doubts as to what Trump's actual goals are. People are preparing for the scenario that first Biden and now Trump are driving a wedge between the EU and China, whereupon Trump will suddenly change course and be China's best friend. (The unspoken second thesis is that the same scheme applies to Russia): ht…

Trump is trying to bully everyone into submission and when that fails, hit them with tariffs and sanctions. It's what he did during his first mandate when he invited his "very good friend" Xi at his Mar-a-Lago estate. When a deal regarding the DPRK nuclear prigram failed to materialize he began threatening China with tariffs. I don't see any reason why it would be different now, only more "ambitious".

The EU should have its own China policy irrespective of the Trump Administration's.

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

#634

Post by otherme123 »

TypingOutBugs wrote: post #590
otherme123 wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conspir…

How is occams razor pointing you to a fish market where they didn’t find it in any animals that could transmit it, next to a research center working on similar viruses, where people commuted from there via the market, where documents exist pointing out poor security practices, and where the Chinese government restricted access?

Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market also sold the following seafood items: raccoon dogs, hedgehogs, weasels, badgers, hares, squirrels, civets, rats, porcupines, coypus, marmots, foxes, minks, wild boars, etc.

Civets at the very least are known to be the host for SARS-CoV virus that jumped to humans. The first affected people all had in common the market, and not the lab. Samples from the market in early 2020 found a lot of SARS-CoV-2 everywhere, specially at stalls that were selling poultry and racoons. The market was stuffed with animals. As poor as the security was in the lab, the market was orders of magnitude worse.

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

#635

Post by mike_hearn »

macns wrote: post #559
miguelazo wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s most disturbing and highly irresponsible about comments like that and all of the reporting on this development is that there’s almost zero acknowledgement that the lab in question was being funded by the US government and much of the Gain of Function research was being directed by a US nonprofit with ties to the US government.

Sources for this? Deserves it's own post if data are there to back it up

It's been widely known for years. Search for EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszack if you want to learn more.

Briefly, under Obama gain of function research was banned for a while. During this time Fauci signed off on illegal grants to fund GoF research, funnelled through a British NGO in order to evade detection and the ban. The NGO didn't do the research themselves, they then sent the money to Wuhan to fund experiments done there. Thus Fauci was using US money to do banned research, which he then lied about under oath to Congress. It's for this sort of reason that he's now been pardoned by Biden, as otherwise he would likely have been prosecuted. Whether you can actually retroactively pardon someone for any/all crimes without actually specifying what for and without that person actually having been found guilty is a bit unclear, though.

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

#637

Post by bragh »

maxglute wrote: post #609
tzs wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 saying: > “Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Mr. Cotton said. That could backfire in a couple ways. 1. China could say that they'll consider paying for COVID escaping their borders if the US pays for the dam…

> if the US pays for the damage the things that have escaped its borders have caused, Or just covid. I remember after PRC lockdown when regional countries were publishing their inbound repatriation flight test data and basically they only got very low digit covid positives, i.e. it was epidemiologically containable. At same time you have all the news of western travellers spreading covid to different countrries becau…

The reason borders were kept open was that it was considered xenophobic to close down the borders and globally public health guidance was saying that the virus was affecting only old, very young and people with weak immune systems. Only in the middle of March 2020 did countries start restricting travel and by then it was way too late.

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

#638

Post by tgv »

snowwrestler wrote: post #166

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.…

You may distinguish a 100 different lab leak theories, but they do have one thing in common: the virus came from the Wuhan lab. And it's not as if people are going to shrug and say: well, it only costs 100 of thousands or even millions of lives, and still cripples a great many, but forgive and forget.

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

#639

Post by tim333 »

gtgvdfc wrote: post #467

What I never understood about the politicization of the lab leak theory is this: How is it more racist and Sinophobic to support the lab leak theory vs the wet market one? The lab leak theory has single individuals messing up. The wet market theory judges an entire nation's culinary habits. Of course racism has nothing to do with the Truth of COVID's origins. Im was just always perplexed how the lab leak ended up spu…

I have puzzled about that too. One issue with it being a lab leak is the Chinese very clearly said it's not a lab leak and tried to cover up, hiding databases, banning access to the lab or the area etc, so they would have been shown to be lying and covering up. Also about half the work at the WIV is military stuff and you're not really supposed to be doing military virus research these days.

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

#640

Post by MagicMoonlight »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #610

If the cia wants to prove something, they do. See the Saddam Hussein weapon of mass destruction that never actually existed. The fact they can't prove it and have low confidence on this theory means it has absolutely zero credibility. I see a pattern in the news these last month of warmongering, from the US to China. Maybe I'm wrong but history has shown that with the us, everytime they want to make a war they first…

China wouldn’t have acted the way they did if it was a surprise to them. They were burning bodies and interning people like it was an escaped bioweapon.
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