CIA is now publicly lending credence to COVID19 lab leak theory

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you thought it was a coincidence that a Bio lab was in the same town as where a virus was unleashed, I have a crypto coin to sell you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Remeber when the scientific community and people on the left said that even the mere suggestion that COVID escaped from a lab in China was "anti-science" and conspiracy nonsense? Well, well, well:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/cia-now-favors-lab-leak-theory-on-origins-of-covid-19-eff4e67c

This is now after the Biden Administration opened up extensive investigations into the lab leak theory and the New York Times ran a long piece putting together a very plausible story.

I know the immediate response will be, "How does this change anything?". Well, for starters, it greatly damages the reputation of the scientific community going forward. Remember when top publications like Science and Nature were trying to downplay the possibility of a lab leak? The entire scientific community has been outed as being entirely susceptible to dangerous group think that clearly has a political agenda injected into it. The truth and being transparent do not matter. This should also have severe consequences for China. I mean if country causes the worst manmade disaster in human history that caused millions of deaths, including 1.2M of our own citizens, and trillions of dollars in economic damage, shouldn't they face severe repercussions?

Could this possibly be because Trump installed a conspiracy crank at the CIA?

Why is it so political to think it really could have been a lab leak? Why don't you want to entertain that possibility and instead just want to say it's a conspiracy? What does the left have to gain from continually pushing that it wasn't a lab leak?

DP But I’ve never heard someone say it’s not possible. I have heard the right push the idea that it was intention and that’s where left and right seem to disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Definitely not maga but it never made sense to me that it was NOT a lab leak. Bizarrely huge coincidence that it would have started in the town working on this virus and somehow not been connected to it.

But there are also lots of other coronaviruses in China. SARS and MERs are also coronaviruses. People who live near bat caves in China become infected with various coronaviruses, just depends on which ones get out. COVID was not the first coronavirus pandemic to come out of China and certainly will not be the last either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely not maga but it never made sense to me that it was NOT a lab leak. Bizarrely huge coincidence that it would have started in the town working on this virus and somehow not been connected to it.

But there are also lots of other coronaviruses in China. SARS and MERs are also coronaviruses. People who live near bat caves in China become infected with various coronaviruses, just depends on which ones get out. COVID was not the first coronavirus pandemic to come out of China and certainly will not be the last either.

DP to add, I also think a lab leak is possible. But the difference here is that Republicans are matter of fact convinced that it was a lab leak. And frankly, realistically, we will never know.

[obturningrussian]

i dont quite understand how this is suddenly coming out after 4 whole years and 1 million dead, seems kind of suspicious.

[Anonymous]

obturningrussian wrote:i dont quite understand how this is suddenly coming out after 4 whole years and 1 million dead, seems kind of suspicious.[/quote

It is just a political appeal to the MAGA base. The CIA report indicated low confidence determination (ie the evidence, of which there is nothing new, is weak and/or self-contradictory) with no new data

But MAGA reads "low confidence" and "no new data" as "it is absolutely a lab leak!" and will hear nothing else. Which really is just evidence of a basic lack of critical thinking.

[Anonymous]

obturningrussian wrote:i dont quite understand how this is suddenly coming out after 4 whole years and 1 million dead, seems kind of suspicious.

It is just a political appeal to the MAGA base. The CIA report indicated low confidence determination (ie the evidence, of which there is nothing new, is weak and/or self-contradictory) with no new data

But MAGA reads "low confidence" and "no new data" as "it is absolutely a lab leak!" and will hear nothing else. Which really is just evidence of a basic lack of critical thinking.

[Anonymous]

I’m a liberal and I think the lab thing is quite likely. I don’t even know why it’s controversial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Remeber when the scientific community and people on the left said that even the mere suggestion that COVID escaped from a lab in China was "anti-science" and conspiracy nonsense? Well, well, well:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/cia-now-favors-lab-leak-theory-on-origins-of-covid-19-eff4e67c

This is now after the Biden Administration opened up extensive investigations into the lab leak theory and the New York Times ran a long piece putting together a very plausible story.

I know the immediate response will be, "How does this change anything?". Well, for starters, it greatly damages the reputation of the scientific community going forward. Remember when top publications like Science and Nature were trying to downplay the possibility of a lab leak? The entire scientific community has been outed as being entirely susceptible to dangerous group think that clearly has a political agenda injected into it. The truth and being transparent do not matter. This should also have severe consequences for China. I mean if country causes the worst manmade disaster in human history that caused millions of deaths, including 1.2M of our own citizens, and trillions of dollars in economic damage, shouldn't they face severe repercussions?

Could this possibly be because Trump installed a conspiracy crank at the CIA?

Why is it so political to think it really could have been a lab leak? Why don't you want to entertain that possibility and instead just want to say it's a conspiracy? What does the left have to gain from continually pushing that it wasn't a lab leak?

DP But I’ve never heard someone say it’s not possible. I have heard the right push the idea that it was intention and that’s where left and right seem to disagree.

Don’t rewrite history.

Many people pointed to the now discredited 2020 proximal origin article that indicated that a genetic sequencing of the virus “showed” it wasn’t manmade. There was a silence of dissent after that including people who suggested it was an accidental leak to the point that posts were removed from social media that alluded to it - even though the paper’s own investigators had their doubts!!
———

“Yet a trove of recently published documents reveal that Andersen and his co-authors believed that the lab leak scenario was not just possible, but likely.

“[The] main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario,” Andersen said to his colleagues, according to a report from Public, which published a series of Slack messages between the authors.

Anderson was not the only author who privately expressed doubts that the virus had natural origins. Public cataloged dozens of statements from Andersen and his co-authors—Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry—between the dates January 31 and February 28, 2020 suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 may have been engineered.

…
“We unfortunately can’t refute the lab leak hypothesis,” Andersen said on Feb. 20, several days after the authors published their pre-print.“

https://catalyst.independent.org/2023/08/01/scientists-retraction-natures-proximal-origin/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

obturningrussian wrote:i dont quite understand how this is suddenly coming out after 4 whole years and 1 million dead, seems kind of suspicious.

It is just a political appeal to the MAGA base. The CIA report indicated low confidence determination (ie the evidence, of which there is nothing new, is weak and/or self-contradictory) with no new data

But MAGA reads "low confidence" and "no new data" as "it is absolutely a lab leak!" and will hear nothing else. Which really is just evidence of a basic lack of critical thinking.

The FBI had evidence of a lab leak but was prevented from bringing the evidence to Biden.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/fbi-covid-19-pandemic-lab-leak-theory-dfbd8a51

In addition other investigators were arguing for the lab leak. This was all back in 2021!!

“Three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, part of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted a scientific study that concluded that Covid-19 was manipulated in a laboratory in a risky research effort.”

[Anonymous]

OP, if you believe this to be true, then you should be concerned that it could happen again. So maybe we should look closely at whom the Chinese were targeting.

[Anonymous]

What severe consequences do you have in mind, OP?

[Anonymous]

Trump and his loons were saying China intentionally unleashed a virus to keep Trump from winning the 2020 election. That was a stupid conspiracy theory, and people pointed that out.

The CIA has given a low confidence report that it could have possibly been accidentally leaked by a lab. This was discussed in 2020 and beyond. It’s not proof to the scapegoat-happy crazy stories are correct. This is literally what we already knew.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a liberal and I think the lab thing is quite likely. I don’t even know why it’s controversial.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trump and his loons were saying China intentionally unleashed a virus to keep Trump from winning the 2020 election. That was a stupid conspiracy theory, and people pointed that out.

The CIA has given a low confidence report that it could have possibly been accidentally leaked by a lab. This was discussed in 2020 and beyond. It’s not proof to the scapegoat-happy crazy stories are correct. This is literally what we already knew.

+1

This report still does not translate into "IT IS CONCLUSIVE!"

It has always been a possibility. There are also other possibilities given China is a hot bed for other coronaviruses in general. The early science did not support it initially. Still a possibility and we could all stew over it for centuries but realistically, it will never be conclusively determined. The end.