Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

741–750 of 868 posts

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

#741

Post by jjk166 »

jtc331 wrote: post #336
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.

Gain of function research in a lab you can't (and more damningly won't) prove had adequate precautions is bad regardless of the source of Covid or the utility of the research. We should be taking it as a wake up call to make sure standards are appropriate and the institutions to make sure those standards are met are strong.

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

#742

Post by tptacek »

kasey_junk wrote: post #740
tptacek wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been a proud Republican since you were a student, and openly so here. That's fine, of course, but it's odd to see you talking about "real" Democrats. Democrats broadly opposed the Republican party; whether or not the Republicans responsible for the Iraq War fled the party post-Trump, they do not characterize the Democratic party today. I really don't give a shit about how credible the US IC is; no part of my i…

The Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, this year, used Cheney on the campaign trail. When Trump called her ‘war hawk’, rather than trying to defend that very legitimate condemnation, they attacked it as anti-woman. I think where I disagree with rayiner is that I believe she _was_ toxic. Her endorsement is certainly one of my grievances with the party, as a Democratic voter, and we saw the big tent collapse be…

Isn't this practically an American election tradition at this point? The designated Republican at the DNC, and Democrat at the RNC?

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

#743

Post by camgunz »

rayiner wrote: post #737
camgunz wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, you're a smart guy. Just once I want you to like, do the reading and argue in good faith. I'm sure a lot of people on HN respect you, including me! Let's say that any donation to any Democratic campaign makes you a Democrat (ignoring for a moment that being against Trump isn't the same as being for Democrats). By that logic maybe half of the signatories on that letter are Democrats--and also a few are Republican…

I’m arguing in good faith. The Iraq War was the biggest mistake in recent American history. Which is why the realignment of pro-Iraq War republicans to democrats—and democrats’ acceptance of them—is so shocking. Liz Cheney should be politically radioactive. Instead Biden gave her a medal. Harris campaigned with her. I think you may have the causation reversed. I voted for Biden in 2020. But the intelligence community…

I wanna try and weight my reply right. I like a lot of your posts and learn from you not infrequently. I also respect the way you think. Sometimes though, you toss out a very Fox News talking point, which confuses me! Before Trump's reelection I was fine letting this kind of thing stand, I mean who has the energy. But it's clearly gone too far. Here's another great example: "the intelligence community [is] just trying to get us into war with Russia." I mean, what a fuckin bonkers claim with no evidence. What are you doing?

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

#744

Post by camgunz »

kasey_junk wrote: post #740
tptacek wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been a proud Republican since you were a student, and openly so here. That's fine, of course, but it's odd to see you talking about "real" Democrats. Democrats broadly opposed the Republican party; whether or not the Republicans responsible for the Iraq War fled the party post-Trump, they do not characterize the Democratic party today. I really don't give a shit about how credible the US IC is; no part of my i…

The Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, this year, used Cheney on the campaign trail. When Trump called her ‘war hawk’, rather than trying to defend that very legitimate condemnation, they attacked it as anti-woman. I think where I disagree with rayiner is that I believe she _was_ toxic. Her endorsement is certainly one of my grievances with the party, as a Democratic voter, and we saw the big tent collapse be…

Here's the full quote:

"She is a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face."

Trump has a (literal) record of advocating for and perpetrating violence against women and minorities. I don't know of any elected Dems who called it anti-woman (there's a trend of taking any Dem on X as representative, which isn't a good survey), but if they did that's the nicest thing you could say about it.

---

FWIW I agree the Cheney thing was boneheaded, and the defense of "she offered to campaign" is... prrrrrrretty wimpy. Some people argued you needed to shake people in the middle free, but no one in the middle likes Liz Cheney; she's mega conservative.

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

#745

Post by labster »

strangecasts wrote: post #597
labster wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just set an arbitrary bar that that is higher for the lab leak based on an “everybody knows” argument. That’s not science, it’s faith.

Prior probability estimates are not part of science?

Prior probability estimates of p = 0.083 are not extraordinary. As the sibling says one out of twelve past pandemics was a known lab leak.

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

#746

Post by LorenPechtel »

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…

Closest *identified* wild variant. The thing is it's made the jump before, making the jump again isn't astounding.

What's notable about the SCov2 variant is how well it spreads between humans. It probably has made the jump many times, it's just this time it figured out how to spread.

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

#747

Post by LorenPechtel »

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.

Actually, we probably can never prove that. Could the animals have come to the market via the lab?

But I see no reason to suspect a leak from the hot part of the lab. While it's not impossible I see no non-political reason to think it did happen.

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

#748

Post by LorenPechtel »

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?

It always happens. Local authorities are more interested in not killing business and tourism than they are in preventing low-probability epidemics. Thus a cover-up by the locals is to be expected.

And of course the Chinese government restricts access--there's no way to prove a negative, thus no way to exonerate them. No matter what investigators are allowed to see there will always be the allegation that they aren't being allowed to see the important stuff.

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

#749

Post by rayiner »

camgunz wrote: post #744
kasey_junk wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, this year, used Cheney on the campaign trail. When Trump called her ‘war hawk’, rather than trying to defend that very legitimate condemnation, they attacked it as anti-woman. I think where I disagree with rayiner is that I believe she _was_ toxic. Her endorsement is certainly one of my grievances with the party, as a Democratic voter, and we saw the big tent collapse be…

Here's the full quote: "She is a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face." Trump has a (literal) record of advocating for and perpetrating violence against women and minorities. I don't know of any elected Dems who called it anti-woman (there's a trend of taking any Dem on X as…

> perpetrating violence against women and minorities

Trump’s comment is a common way democrats have criticized hawks since the Vietnam war: asking if they’d be singing a different tune if they were the ones in the trenches getting shot at.

The fact that you’d invoke the “women and minorities” card to defend Liz effing Cheney is proof that the CIA has learned how to use wokeness as a psyop to eviscerate the antiwar left.

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

#750

Post by rayiner »

camgunz wrote: post #743
rayiner wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m arguing in good faith. The Iraq War was the biggest mistake in recent American history. Which is why the realignment of pro-Iraq War republicans to democrats—and democrats’ acceptance of them—is so shocking. Liz Cheney should be politically radioactive. Instead Biden gave her a medal. Harris campaigned with her. I think you may have the causation reversed. I voted for Biden in 2020. But the intelligence community…

I wanna try and weight my reply right. I like a lot of your posts and learn from you not infrequently. I also respect the way you think. Sometimes though, you toss out a very Fox News talking point, which confuses me! Before Trump's reelection I was fine letting this kind of thing stand, I mean who has the energy. But it's clearly gone too far. Here's another great example: "the intelligence community [is] just tryin…

> Here's another great example: "the intelligence community [is] just trying to get us into war with Russia."

I mean this respectfully: how old are you? Because that isn’t a “Fox News” comment at all! Until five minutes ago, Democrats were the ones who criticized Bush-era republicans for their fixation on Russia and efforts to keep fighting the Cold War: https://youtu.be/T1409sXBleg?si=Pz2Yd_vY4ZARbcvs

And yes, the intelligence community has been trying to get us into a war with Russia or its proxies since the 1950s. The whole idea that Americans have “allies” or “interests” in Eastern Europe is a Reagan-era CIA psyop.

Post reply on HN