> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.
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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.
So... I'm not certain this is a development worth trusting. Maybe it really did originate from a lab! But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.
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 wrong.
Go watch "A Bridge Too Far" (WWII). Read the story of the Son Tay raid (Vietnam). The many overestimates of Soviet capability during the Cold War. The underestimates of North Korean missile capability. Sometimes uncertain intel really works, as with the attack on the bin Laden compound in Pakistan.
Retrospective intel questions may never be answered. It's known that the US atomic bomb program had another Russian spy who is mentioned by code name in VENONA transcripts, but that spy was never identified. There are still arguments over whether the explosion of the Maine in Havana harbor in 1889 was an accident or a hostile act. It's still not clear why Turret 2 of the USS Iowa blew up in 1989. Huge amounts of effort were expended on all three of those questions, all of which were important at the time, and yet they remain unsettled.
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.
There's not an equivalence between post-Cold War Democratic and Republican administrations manipulating intelligence. My evidence is the Iraq War and Valerie Plame.
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 Republicans. Also many "Democratic" signatories signed a letter against Obama when he revoked Brennan's security clearance, so how in the tank can they really be? Also the main way the Hunter Biden emails were "authenticated" was via DKIM, which would allow you to mix fake emails in with real emails (we recently learned you could do this with $8 of server time). Too farfetched? The Russians did it to Macron in 2017. Also let's not equate creating a false basis for a full on war with 51 intelligence professionals raising doubts.
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 has no credibility and are just trying to get us into war with Russia. That letter never should’ve been taken seriously by real democrats.
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 identity is invested in how well they do their job. But the attempt to generalize this out to the parties themselves rankles, and is trollish.
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 because of, in part, the current hawkishness of that part of the leadership.
I would clarify that there’s a disconnect between what the party leadership thinks (Schumer with his “we’ll pick up two moderate republicans for every working class white we lose”) and the base. My dad is a straight ticket Dem voter and he stayed home this year, and Cheney and Blinken were part of the reason. But I also think the base is a little in denial about how many Romney 2012 folks are now in their coalition. Obama-Trump voters were 13% of Trump’s coalition in 2016. They were obviously replaced by a bunch of Romney-Clinton voters because the race was close overall.
"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.
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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.
No. That’s not the full quote. The full quote was minutes long and rambling. But you removed this for instance that was near that quote “You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'Oh, gee, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy”.
Cheney comes from a family of chicken hawks and lots of people have had similar quotes about them.
I don't think this was as boneheaded as you both do. I think the Cheney political legacy overall is odious, but none of Liz Cheney's recent supporters are there for her foreign policy; it's because she sacrificed her political career to stand up to Donald Trump, which is admirable, and because Trump took the bait and cast her as an enemy of the party, which raised her profile. The idea was that there was some material faction of the GOP that was persuadable by dint of Liz Cheney's mistreatment by GOP nominee.
The Cheney thing reminds me of people's attitudes towards John McCain. His history in the GOP: also not great. But in the end, he did have some principles; it's not unreasonable to celebrate them.
None of this is really germane to the thread, I just get irritable when directly partisan Democrat vs. Republican politics end up here.
I'll mea culpa: I try pretty hard to not backseat campaign manage. My defense is I was posting after midnight and wine and I'm trying to find a balance between not suffering right wing talking points and offering olive branches. I do agree we should celebrate the kind of courage Cheney showed, especially given the kinds of threats she's experienced since.
I mean, you can't expect me to paste multiple paragraphs as a quote here. If you think Trump's clumsy ersatz nod to "Fortunate Son" contextualizes putting Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, OK then. If you can find elected officials threatening to execute other electeds who were pro-Iraq War (so, so many people), go ahead and post it.
I think reasonable people can disagree about this. Trump is pretty good with the "flimsy excuse", like "look I said 'stand back' as well as 'stand by'" or "hey I said 'peacefully and patriotically'". Probably whether you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on these kinds of things is some kind of political ink blot test, but to me, he definitely has the instinct and pattern of "say it without saying it".
Most leaders are aware that people might cue off of what they're saying and do something very bad, so they stay far away from rhetoric like this. Trump (deliberately IMO) does the opposite for political gain. So even if I agree this is about combat, what's the difference? He's once again engaging in his pattern of dehumanizing his opponents and advocating violence against them, which has led to actual violence.
Elsewhere you pointed out this is pretty similar to Vietnam War protests. I think generally that's right (again "Fortunate Son"), but there are some differences. First is there isn't a draft; we have an all volunteer force (though there's a big discussion to be had about economic exploitation and multi-generational military families). Second, she wasn't even in Congress during Bush 2 and AFAIK had no policy making power where she was at State.
Do I love Liz Cheney? Hell no; her policy positions are one disaster after the next. I believe she should be vigorously opposed in every election she runs in. But do I think she should be subject to wink wink "sure would be a shame if something happened to Liz Cheney" rhetoric from maybe the most powerful person on Earth? Absolutely not; no one deserves that.
Like many Trump quotes, this isn’t an “ink blot” test:
> I don’t blame (Dick Cheney) for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. 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.
She has a rifle, and there are nine other guns pointed at her. When are people facing a firing squad given their own weapon? The quote is literally a textbook “what if the war hawk’s shoe were on the other foot” trope.
I know I skipped my usual edit sweep and my post above was pretty wordy as a result, but TL;DR I think giving her a rifle fits with Trump's pattern of "say it without saying it". If you don't agree, I'm fine conceding this is about combat. Trump is still dehumanizing and advocating for violence against his political enemies. The reason other politicians avoid this kind of rhetoric is they don't want to take the political gain at the risk of causing violence. Despite his rhetoric having led to violence multiple times, Trump continues to take the risk. Draw whatever conclusion you want from that.
I think the “pattern” is that Trump speaks plainly instead of using corporate HR speak and people read whatever they want into that. But regardless, we shouldn’t be more upset about how Trump is criticizing the war monger than we are about the war mongering.
There's a difference between talking like you're an LLM trained by focus groups and endangering your political rivals with your rhetoric. A lot of Democratic senators are/were good at that. Don't make yet another false equivalence here.
> 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.
I understand democrats have kicked all the social conservatives out of the party but I didn’t think it was retroactive! I was a registered Democrat until 2017. I went to Wingdings in Iowa in 2019 as a Tulsi Gabbard supporter.
Hawks are by no means the majority of democrats, but Romney 2012 types are the margin democrat voter. And while the majority of democrats aren’t hawks, the party’s dominant principle as of late seems to be trusting credentialed experts, which makes them suckers for the intelligence community.
The Harris 2024 coalition is a lot closer to the Romney 2012 coalition than democrats want to admit: https://x.com/patrickjfl/status/1854645395856482568. There’s been a huge swing of college educated whites, who Romney won decisively, to Democrats.
Also, Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney suggests that her campaign thought that Romney 2012 voters were their marginal vote.
A truly intelligent person is independent and not attached to a political part. By doing so, this latches to the "Yes men" mentally where those in power are always right even when wrong and probable through the most simplistic means. [0] Polarization leads to stupidity and ignorance to real world statistics and out comes, even in medical treatment.
Self identifying with a political party erodes critical thinking skills. Unless you can criticize the stupidity of all, including those you vote for, you are limited by your own stupidity.
Self identity ignorance is prominent in religious cultures where the church must be protected. The congregation will protect a priest or pastor that is sexual predator and pretend their actions didn't take place to protect their community. They loose their identity when their church is harmed, same with latching to political parties.
Majoritarian democratic systems require group coordination to achieve desires outcomes. Political parties are just a vehicle for doing that. If you care about outcomes, you should have some party identity, because that facilitates compromising less important goals for more important ones to achieve a coalition that can carry a majority.
I agree parties shouldn’t be so ideologically rigid, and for the most part they aren’t. Jamie Dimon and AOC are both in the same party, as are Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard. People who refuse to work within a party unless the party agrees on every issue are simply not interested in outcomes. That’s fine too!
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?
> 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.
Haha well, I think we're in the same cohort? I was a senior in HS when 9/11 happened. I've worked in Democratic politics in some capacity for over a decade, although I recently took a break to have kids. I know Russia's our enemy because I was working on the Hillary Clinton campaign when Trump asked them to hack into Hillary's emails and watched them actively trying to hack us; and they've since compromised a bunch of (dumb, like crunchyroll) accounts of mine.
I don't want to parse through everything here, and you definitely won't find me defending the intelligence establishment. All I'm saying is what tptacek said up there: stretching the Hunter Biden laptop letter signatories into "Democrats" stretches too far, and if that's the evidence you're bringing against the Iraq War and Valerie Plame you're coming up short. You have a big platform here; I think if you were a little more judicious about the claims you make you could do a lot of good, and I think we need that right now.
We must be the exact same age. You saw what I saw. How could you trust Clinton on foreign policy after that? I don’t think she even regrets the Iraq War, and wishes we were still in Afghanistan. She sounded like the Weekly Standard the way she went after Tulsi Gabbard for trying to keep us out of a war in Syria.
I don’t know what’s in the inner minds of other democrats. But out of the two parties, they’re cuddling up to all the ones who have been wrong for the last 50 years about foreign policy.
See I knew there was something I liked about you haha.
Hopefully this doesn't come across as deflecting or whatever (HRC has a lot of takes I disagree with, I think she would have been a very good president, but I'm more of a Warren or Booker guy). I think being an effective leader in the US at the level HRC was for decades is a lot harder than people really know. I'm not talking about the mechanics (though those are also hard), rather I'm talking about the effect it has on you as a human. I think the act of building a mental model of public opinion is fundamentally corrupting, but if you don't do it, you'll almost certainly lose power to someone who does (or you could be in a super safe seat, but that's not an option for everyone). You probably also think a big part of your job is representing your constituents, so there's a huge amount of balancing divining and representing their positions vs. leading them to where they might not necessarily be. The stakes are also bananas: you're talking about the lives of tons and tons of people. This is all very hard; I can't really overstate how mindfucking it can be.
So to come back around to your point, let's take an incredibly cynical view and say HRC authorized the Iraq War because that was the obvious power politics move. It's not wrong to consider, "I'm pursuing values I think are important, I'm effective at it, the odds of someone doing better or being more principled than I am are very low--after all this game is by itself deeply corrupting to even the best of us, taking a stand here has almost no upside, I do want to be president one day, OK I vote yea". This all really reasonable, then you throw on the pile her changing her vote would've made absolutely no difference, and she's the junior Senator from New York where 9/11 happened, and at least I start having a lot of sympathy for her vote. I don't mean to diminish the full on tragedies Iraq and Afghanistan were, but these are the kinds of stakes and incentives we're working with here.
So I try to be pretty kind to electeds, even on both sides, because the incentives are truly nutso. Maybe you're Trey Gowdy and you don't love having 5,000 Benghazi hearings, but you've got this plum committee assignment you don't want to lose, so here we go. Maybe you're John Boehner and you don't love being asked vaguely racist questions about Obama's birth certificate constantly, but you're finally Speaker and this is the zeitgeist. Anyway, I earnestly think we urgently need some kind of deep governance reform or whatever. It's almost impossible for the system to produce good outcomes. I'm not saying get the torches; I am saying start putting it in party platforms and get candidates on record about it.
Finally, you ask how I could trust her after her Iraq war vote, but Democrats are pretty used to not having our policy preferences represented in office. Again while I think HRC would have been a very good president, there are other people I'd have preferred. But that's what primaries and party politics are for, and that process is... imperfect. I voted for Obama in the '08 Iowa caucus largely because of her Iraq War vote and--hilariously--I liked Obama saying you wouldn't need an individual health insurance mandate (oh to be young). But, to resume a partisan stance, I think the Republican party--and Trump in particular--is dangerous enough to merit fierce and vigorous opposition in a general election. It's hard for me to imagine a Democratic candidate that was so bad I'd stay home on eday.
> I don’t know what’s in the inner minds of other democrats. But out of the two parties, they’re cuddling up to all the ones who have been wrong for the last 50 years about foreign policy.
I'm bad at foreign policy and mostly stay out of it. But my uninformed opinion is that while Democrats haven't done a bang up job, Iraq and Afghanistan aren't on us, and Trump's banging on NATO and creating some kind of comic book villain council of strongmen seem like obvious bad ideas. Strong disagree that Dems are now taking direction from Iraq/Afghanistan architects; I just don't see any evidence of that at all. Biden withdrew from Afghanistan at great political cost, after all.
So I guess it depends on why you think the Iraq War was bad. To me, the Iraq War was bad because, even if the intel had been correct, the notion that you could create a democracy in Iraq was fundamentally foolish, along with the idea that it was America’s job to do it.
To me, the Iraq War was a predictable disaster rooted not in bad intel, but the mistaken concept of liberal universalism (emphasis on universalism, not liberal). Clinton is a smart, probably well meaning person. But what she shares with George W. Bush is liberal universalism, and that’s a bad and dangerous idea. It’s been a bad and dangerous idea that’s gotten us involved in countless non-defensive wars over the last 50 years.
In that respect, the Democratic Party today is a lot closer to the bad old GOP than it was 20 years ago. Between Ukraine, helping overthrow Assad, what Blinken allegedly did in Pakistan, rabble-rousing about “human rights” in Bangladesh—the Democratic Party today is full of liberal universalists. They’re not literally the same people who got us into the Iraq War, but the ideology isn’t any less dumb today, and will result in similar disasters.
What Trump understands that democrats don’t is that non-Americans aren’t Americans. The conceit underlying the Iraq war is that Iraqis were Americans. If you overthrew the dictator keeping them down, they’d build a democracy. And it was a monumental error. And the same is true for Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc. This is a conceit that liberal universalists cannot let go of.
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” George W Bush.
The Iraq war was not about bringing democracy to Iraq. It was bad intel about a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. The intel for a nuclear weapons program was weak and flimsy and the disagreement within the intel community was strong, but the White House pushed hard to support the pro-nuclear program viewpoint.
While I agree we should not have gone into Iraq, I disagree that it was an inevitable disaster. Iraq was a disaster because there was zero post invasion plan in place. The government was purged of “regime loyalists” which was basically everyone. This did two major things that shaped the country. First, it put thousands of police and soldiers out of work, giving the later insurgency a large employment pool of trained personnel that needed money and resented the US for destroying their lives. Second, it created a security vacuum directly after the invasion, creating crime waves throughout the country when it needed stability. Iraq was a primarily urban society used to central governance (unlike rural/tribal Afghanistan, for instance) and it is likely it could have transitioned to a new government.
While it is dangerous to think everyone can be like Americans, it is just as dangerous to think Iraq and Afghanistan are basically the same, or that all interventions and goals are the same (nation building in Afghanistan vs minimizing genocidal civil war in Syria).
This is the only comment you made so far that made sense, with clear assertions and references. Everything else was unfounded or inflammatory without any concrete assertion, which is why it vibed like "Fox News talking points."
While I do think what you describe under the label of "liberal universalism" mostly makes sense, I do challenge it's consistency. By all measures, some countries are trending towards becoming liberal democracies. Why shouldn't we help them?
Ukraine being a viable liberal democracy, a useful geopolitical ally, and in opposition to a destabilizing and dehumanizing autocracy, makes for a perfect candidate for support beyond naive global liberalism. It is in our interests in many practical terms, separate from ideology.
Ukraine I think is a pretty good example of where we've learned our lesson. We're working with allies, we aren't involving US or NATO troops, we're broadening our coalition and isolating our adversaries, etc. I think we could do better (Russia is super winning the propaganda war inside the US), but it's a positive trend from Iraq/Afghanistan.
I 90% agree on the foreign policy stuff. I'd even go further and say advocates for invasion never considered Iraq was actually pretty good for a country in that region. Not only were they a key counterbalancing force to Iran, they were relatively religiously and culturally moderate (I'm sure there's a lot of nuance here; again I'm pretty ignorant). Advocates full on ignored or misrepresented intelligence about Iraq's WMD program though (I'm pretty sure even HRC ignored it or at least weighed it way too lightly).
I agree the Iraq War was premised on deeply faulty assumptions and complete naïveté about other cultures. Governments grow out of culture (a popular saying is "people tend to get the governments they deserve", which is maybe a little insensitive re: stuff like minority rights but not otherwise totally wrong); you can't really just poof a democracy into being; you can't just assume people will adopt your values. I do think we're way more circumspect on this now than you do though, I mean we haven't done another Iraq/Afghanistan. I'll also say that even though Republicans snicker at it, Jake Sullivan's foreign policy for the middle class is a pretty big departure for the establishment. That's a substantial positive change.
I also agree you can't 100% import "Americans". But, my worry with Trump's rhetoric here is that he ignores you can 99% import Americans, the children of the remaining 1% are fully assimilated, and that this has always been the case. There's so many ways we could make our immigration and asylum systems more humane and sustainable, but the GOP has ratfucked our immigration and asylum systems for decades to win elections (this is their move: break a part of government and then be like "look government is broken"... well yeah) so things will be trash for the foreseeable future.
Maybe, but I think we're all subject to the temptation to make bad arguments to get one over on people we disagree with. I can respect some things about someone and not respect other things. I guess this comes from being low-key terrified I've been as bamboozled as conservatives have, and I hope if I started parroting various propaganda someone here would have respect enough to tell me respectfully. But, also I get the internet makes cynics of us all.
Baldly accusing someone of bad faith is serious business, and I believe against the rules of this forum. It is way worse than calling out what you believe are bad arguments, as it's a slur against someone's integrity and character. Rayiner doesn't deserve that.
I might be misusing bad faith, but honestly I don't think so. I felt like trying to equate the Hunter Biden Laptop letter with the Iraq War was way too polemic to be good faith, designed solely for gotcha purposes rather than to continue or deepen a discussion. I think a good faith discussion would have had some standard by which they were categorizing Hunter Biden laptop letter signatories and wouldn't have equated the letter with all the intelligence fraud behind the Iraq War. I think it's not unreasonable to expect someone with Rayiner's platform on this site (and intelligence) to know that stuff. Maybe (probably?) you clearly take good/bad faith more seriously than I do; I think it's really easy to prioritize winning the argument or mindshare vs. participating in a discussion that benefits us all, and I think that comment had all the hallmarks of it. I don't think Rayiner's a bad person, just that he--like all of us--sometimes could do better (I'm also guilty of this, probably even recently who knows). I'm fine not agreeing on this, but I try pretty hard to criticize behavior and not people, and I think I've held to that standard here.
EDIT: I reread and I definitely gave the impression that Rayiner posts in bad faith a lot. I don't think that, and I apologize.
> 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?"
Not quite, and you can't possibly capture all of that paper in that sentiment. For instance, there's this excerpt:
> People’s judgments and willingness to accept analytic findings are framed by multiple factors, including backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs. Every decisionmaker has cognitive biases, including theories that guide them (e.g., the liberal international order), beliefs about how the world works (e.g., the arc of history bends in a particular direction), or sacred beliefs (e.g., all things happen for a reason). Thus it is essential for the analyst to understand as much as possible about the decisionmakers and the environment in which they operate.
Military intelligence will happily give you high confidence leads that are entirely wrong because, by all appearances, the information came from a source in the right place with the seemingly right motivations when in reality they can be playing 4D chess better than the analyst.
The confidence level can only be expressed in finite ways but it can be analyzed in almost infinite, one of them being that the information needed to develop "high confidence" has disappeared and the window of opportunity to gain insight has long passed. Personally speaking, I do not think we will ever find out the origins because a whole gaggle of people with various interests had a vested interest in a particular answer at the time. This is the byproduct of a democracy and bureaucratic system which has not been functioning nominally for quite some time - doubly so now.
I would go so far as to describe the events at the time as parallel construction.
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 assessment and previous assessments
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 corresponds to something like 20 years (?) of evolution.
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.
Although it's not specified in common dictionary definitions...
"...zoonosis (a disease communicable from animals to man under natural conditions)."
—Laurie Garrett, _The Coming Plague_ (Ch 14, section IV)
Which is naturally how the word is used virtually all the time.
Transmission from lab animals kept for study in a biolab, you could argue either way. Transmission from humanized lab animals purposely subjected to serial passage is not really zoonosis in any reasonable sense.
...and the most likely scenario is that it was leaked due to a mistake. Sloppy lab procedures. If anything, this should point to MORE regulation around GLP principles with more transparency and oversight, not less. And while I see some merit in determining potential risk, it should be only done with computation and computer modeling now, not an actual virus.
Are the FBI or DOE assessments public? What I last read in the peer-reviewed public literature seemed to point strongly to animal origin and not from a lab.
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.
It found that viral RNA and DNA from potential zoonotic hosts (palm civets, raccoon dogs) occurred together in some samples from the Huanan Seafood Market. But there's no question that infected humans were present there, and nothing in their study can distinguish an infected palm civet from a healthy palm civet near an infected human.
A different study by Jesse Bloom found that of all the animals present, viral RNA correlated most strongly with DNA from "catfish and largemouth bass":
So were those the proximal hosts? Obviously not, since SARS-CoV-2 can't infect fish--the point is that this is all just noise. Live, unquestionably infected proximal hosts were found for both SARS-1 and MERS, within about a year of the first human cases. For SARS-CoV-2, we still have nothing beyond those tortured metagenomics.
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.
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.
I have pretty much given up on trying to discuss this rationally on any Internet forum. The only people who seem to engage have very strong priors that are impervious to new data. But it's been a year so I guess I needed a reminder to myself in the futility of the endeavor
> 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.
You're just repeating the conclusions of papers that made ridiculous leaps of logic based on circumstantial evidence. For example [1], which is the likely source of the argument you're (mis-)remembering, bases this conclusion on:
1) case histories from reported, hospitalized cases, which were probably incorrect (i.e. they just assume that the cases they know about are, in fact, the first cases), being "geographically centered" on the market in December (not November) of 2019 [2].
2) positive environmental samples near animal stalls in the market, of which they found two strains.
Neither of which is dispositive of anything, and more an indictment of the motivated reasoning of the academic literature at the time than anything else. If you bother to read any of the subsequent analyses, you'll find that there are a bunch of different lines of evidence (genetic and case reports, at the least), pushing the date of the first infections well before December.
In short, the first/WHO case reports were probably wrong, the virus likely broke out earlier and was circulating in Wuhan before these samples were taken. If that's true, it wouldn't be surprising, at all, to find positive environmental samples in a food market, and the tortured logic of this paper would fall apart.
[2] Seriously. Not joking. Here's the "methods" they used for this oh-so-rigorous analysis:
> The 2021 WHO mission report identified 174 COVID-19 cases in Hubei Province in December 2019 after careful examination of reported case histories (7). Although geographical coordinates of the residential locations of the 164 cases who lived within Wuhan were unavailable, we were able to reliably extract the latitude and longitude coordinates of 155 cases from maps in the report
They then take this data and blend it through a kernel analysis, wave their hands, and voilá! This this The Science (tm) upon which your confidence is based.
...oh, and by the way: the market in question just happens to be right next to the Wuhan CDC, and a major city hospital [3]. Weird, right? I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Certainly nothing worth including in a putative "probability analysis" of geographic distribution.
Your guessing of my sources are wrong, thus your message is a strawman fallacy from beginning to end.
There are studies pre SARS-CoV-2 about coronavirus in natural environments (like bat caves), and they found motifs that we found also in SARS-CoV-2. Zoonotic infections are very common and specially for coronavirus, so it should be our first guess unless overwhelming evidence shows that the virus was originated in a lab (leaked or engineered).
Maybe it was a lab leak, but there is not stronger evidence for that, than for the zoonotic event.
Here is your bad science:
- H0: The origin is the lab.
- H1: The origin is a naturally ocurring zoonosis.
As evidence for H1 cannot convince you, you accept H0 without any proof. Great science! Problem is your H0 is wrong. H0 should be the most easy explanation, which is a zoonosis that has happened before thousands of times, and for which we have also evidence (you call it circumstancial, as this was a trial) like similar sequences found in bats nearby. You must get better evidence to prove the unusual lab leak hypothesis. Your H0 and H1 are reversed.
Well, I cited a canonical paper making the argument you're advancing, so if it's not that, then...
As for the rest of your comment -- oy, talk about a straw man fallacy. There's absolutely nothing I said that requires the false dichotomy you've presented between H0 and H1 (i.e. there are other plausible hypotheses that aren't as extreme as the ones you've presented). Also, I don't "accept" H0. I just can't rule it out.
> H0 should be the most easy explanation, which is a zoonosis that has happened before thousands of times, and for which we have also evidence
Neither hypothesis is easy (i.e. likely). Natural, human-optimized zoonosis is incredibly rare in viruses. Making humanized viruses in a lab, starting from natural viruses, is actually straightforward. But when one of the world centers for doing that kind of work, on very similar coronaviruses, was right there in Wuhan...
You provided no references, and you've made your claims in generally nonstandard terms. Given that, I don't think it's reasonable to criticize other users for guessing incorrectly what you meant to say.
> There are studies pre SARS-CoV-2 about coronavirus in natural environments (like bat caves), and they found motifs that we found also in SARS-CoV-2.
You're doing it again here, but I think you're probably referring to Andersen's Proximal Origin:
But nobody disputes that SARS-CoV-2 evolved mostly in bats; the question is whether its path from bats to humans included a trip through the lab. No genomic evidence can distinguish between a novel natural virus and a chimera of two novel natural viruses. As Davis Relman wrote:
> Some [that's Andersen] have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus. This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory
The disease might have already been global at that point, it doesn't exactly have conspicuous symptoms. Wuhan was a place where somebody thought of looking for anything unusual.
Doctors in Wuhan first identified the pandemic due to the unusually high volume of sick and dying patients, not by any sophisticated means. There's no public evidence that the WIV was involved in the initial discovery of the novel virus. Zhang Yong-Zhen was the first to publish a genome, in Shanghai.
If the disease had already been global, then retrospective testing of wastewater samples, nasal swabs obtained for other purposes like the Seattle Flu Study, banked blood, and other stored samples would have revealed that. There were some scattered claims that it did, but none that held up very well under scrutiny.
The peer reviewed literature is written and reviewed by the people who were funding/doing that kind of GoF research, so it isn't a reliable way to decide what's true.
You are wrong, something that you could have easily checked yourself. There are many sophisticated epidemiology groups throughout defense and intelligence. It is a longstanding critical part of their mission, for a variety of end purposes.
While I am very skeptical of the lab leak hypothesis as an infectious disease epidemiologist, the DoE has a fair amount of expertise via the national labs.
A few reasons, though as I note in another comment, I'm not an expert in spillover events, my area of interest kicks in about a week later. So there's a few:
1) People I trust are skeptical, including people who are opposed to gain of function research. I've found Angela Rasmussen to be one of the better voices in terms of discussing the evidence for a natural origin, but she's far from the only one.
2) We have had two naturally occurring coronavirus epidemics during my career. A third is all but inevitable -- I wrote a grant in October 2019 suggesting a novel coronavirus as an example case for a modeling exercise, for example (sadly, said grant didn't get funded). So for me, there's a very strong prior on coronaviruses emerging as significant public health threats.
3) At the same time, I've come to distrust many of the voices who push the lab leak hypothesis, either because they're obviously doing so for geopolitical reasons, or because they've become addicted to being "the lone voice in the wilderness", despite it not being a risky position to take.
4) The lab leak hypothesis, in terms of evidence, relies on WIV, the Chinese Government, the WHO, etc. being broadly incompetent except when it comes to the characterization of the initial cases when SARS-CoV-2 emerged, which is arguably the hardest part of any outbreak.
> or because they've become addicted to being "the lone voice in the wilderness", despite it not being a risky position to take.
This frankly makes me distrust you; in 2020-2022 this was absolutely a risky position to take for most public figures, let alone those on academia, let alone those connected to epidemiology. This remains the only time and topic I've seen
blanket banned from discussing across all major US social platforms. Try looking up what the vibe was like in 2020-2021 especially.
I got death threats for suggesting that mandatory vaccination for school kids wasn't well justified not from the people who wanted vaccination, but from the people who decided I wasn't sufficiently opposed to it.
That's obviously bad. Vaccination and COVID origins are different topics, though.
Opinions do correlate in the general public, and I guess that's why you've made that link. I don't think that trend holds among scientists, though--Deigin, Chan, Ebright, Bloom, etc. all have quite ordinary views on vaccine risk and efficacy.
Let's be honest, if their is a global conspiracy to spread disease I think it's to kill off the masses due to AI replacing jobs and lowering the amount of green houses gasses people produce.
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.
I agree with that statement. Even with prior warning, and knowing the virus could be introduced only at an airport or seaport, Western public health authorities managed to trace approximately zero cases to their introduction. So it's hard to believe the same tools would succeed at the much more difficult task of tracing the very first cases in China.
That makes it odd that you're promoting an author who has claimed such evidence shows conclusively that spillover into humans--and not just a super-spreader event--occurred in the Huanan Seafood Market. I suspect that if you looked personally at the methodology behind the conflicted (Rasmussen's doctorate was under Vincent Racaniello, a longtime proponent of high-risk virological research) authors' claims, then you'd find them much less worthy of repetition.
I think her arguments are solid, I'm just not certain they're definitive. But I do find her presentation of those arguments to be both detailed and accessible.
The claim that the location of spillover can be definitively localized within hundreds of meters from epidemiological data is core to the predominant theory of natural zoonotic origin, from an overlapping set of authors including Rasmussen.
Theories of a research accident almost never assume such localization is possible, not least because the earliest known cases weren't particularly close to the WIV. (If anyone's claiming otherwise, they've probably confused the WIV and Wuhan CDC.) So it's odd that you'd correctly note the near-impossibility of that localization, but then cite that as evidence against unnatural origin.
This makes me think you haven't looked much in the details yourself, and two of your four points above are explicitly arguments from authority. If you did look yourself, then I think your assessment might change.
Indeed, so it could be some unidentified third place. There are few labs and many other possibilities for people to come into contact with animals, so that third place was probably not a lab.
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.
> A joint study published by China and the World Health Organization at the end of March acknowledged there could have been sporadic human infections before the Wuhan outbreak.
> Researchers from Britain's University of Kent used methods from conservation science to estimate that SARS-CoV-2 first appeared from early October to mid-November 2019, according to a paper published in the PLOS Pathogens journal.
Brazil recorded its first COVID death April 15, 2019. Initially taken as a data entry error by some, data for 2019 is still published nearly six years after the fact.
November Brazil could happen because December is when rumours already circulated in China and October is when it was out in Wuhan already per your link.
April Brazil I don't know what to tell you, no sources support the wild claim that it was NOT a data error.
> 2 months before it came out of wuhan
Source? I bet it came out earlier.
It was circulating in Wuhan before the pandemic according to WHO. Just people in China who are more likely to get infected are less likely to travel abroad (social class/sanitary conditions/etc) but maybe one person brought it out.
I believe these agencies may have other kinds of intelligence data such as satellite photos of the (empty?) Wuhan Institute of Virology carpark, spikes in mobile phone activity in the area etc.
So assessments are made on more than just biological principles.
I would argue you are sowing disinfo and I honestly dont know what point you are trying to make.
Spikes and/or significant reductions in activity as indicated by external data sources, and particular the timing thereof, will obviously be very useful for determining the sequence of events.
Is Rasmussen really in favour of a GoF ban and destroying the academic value of the background of the majority of her professional friends in the field? Cause I can't really find her calling for a ban, quite the opposite really.
This is the problem with virology, it IS GoF. Expecting virologists to be objective in this is expecting the impossible, like expecting the WHO to apologize for sending Daszak as head of the fact finding mission. They were either THAT incompetent or THAT self interested in maintaing GoF/virology, damn the truth.
I suspect virologists still see themselves as guards on the wall and that we can't handle the truth. Which we already know from the early emails is how they thought early on, why should I assume their propensity for dishonesty has changed?
Yet you propose no thoughts of your own. You only base it on your belief in people around you and your disbelief of people you assume are political. This sounds not scientific at all. Are you really an epidemiologist?
I was honestly hoping for more given that you’re supposedly an epidemiologist.
I base it on my evaluation of the arguments of those people as an epidemiologist. And their expertise - as I've said, my expertise focuses on a different aspect of outbreaks, with its own theories and methods, and I know enough to recognize that addressing this requires a good deal of specialized knowledge.
Well, that sounds more reasonable, but the prior comment seems to be relying mostly on reputation and political viewpoints rather than the arguments themselves.
My priors include all the agencies (the Intelligence Community, arguably the deep state) having ulterior political and personal motives. Does noone remember the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax that the CIA cooked up for GWB?
I would not trust any of these agencies to provide objective findings or conclusions, there is a lot of power on the table that's at stake.
The CIA did not cook up the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax. Paul Wolfowitz had to create an entirely new intelligence agency with hand-picked analysts to get that result, because the existing agencies refused to make that claim.
According to Iraq general, WMD were moved to Syria about 6 month prior to invasion, then Syrian government used them against rebels.
HANNITY: So he had them.
SADA: Yes.
HANNITY: Where were they? And were they moved and where?
SADA: Well, up to the year 2002, 2002, in summer, they were in Iraq. And after that, when Saddam realized that the inspectors are coming on the first of November and the Americans are coming, so he took the advantage of a natural disaster happened in Syria, a dam was broken. So he — he announced to the world that he is going to make an air bridge...
HANNITY: You know for a fact he moved these weapons to Syria?
SADA: Yes.
HANNITY: How do you know that?
SADA: I know it because I have got the captains of the Iraqi airway that were my friends, and they told me these weapons of mass destruction had been moved to Syria.
BECKEL: How did he move them, general? How were they moved?
SADA: They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” George W Bush.
We went into Iraq because the White House latched on to insufficient and contested intel of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq (the yellowcake and the aluminum tubes). It wasn’t about some rusted old artillery rounds with chemical weapons in them.
Seriously, I remember the Bush admin going after the wife of a CIA operative by leaking her identity after he spoke out about the war intel being bullshit. As someone who was following the Iraq war from the left side and pretty disgusted by it it definitely seemed like it was being pushed hardest by the GOP with anti-war information coming out of the CIA or even military. Granted leakers don't represent the opinions of an agency but this narrative that the CIA was the real villain (not that they aren't) that hoodwinked the poor GOP strikes me revisionist whitewashing.
> I feel that that could've been an honest mistake too.
There were a lot of indications that it was wrong even at the time, like the inspectors’ reports. We knew about the unreliability of the dodgy dossier and how baseless Khidir Hamza was. The satellite evidence was sketchy and the rest was contradictory. Al-Qaeda was also not there and we also knew that. Let’s not rewrite history: there is no certainty in intelligence, but anyone not in the CIA’s pocket knew it was most likely wrong, a far cry from what you need to legitimately attack a country.
My prior includes neither agency can provide genetic analysis which would be the easiest way to convince a professor of virology that this theory has any merit.
I have previously shared this little known, but factual, event on Hacker News. It is simply a Wikipedia article--the 1977 Russian Flu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu). This is not my statement, note this well dang, and read or argue with the editors of Wikipedia if you want (not me), but the following statement stands firm:
"Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian flu have prompted many researchers to say that the virus was released to the public through a laboratory accident, or resulted from a live-vaccine trial escape"
> Reanalysis of the H1N1 sequences excluding isolates with unrealistic sampling dates indicates that the 1977 re-emergent lineage was circulating for approximately one year before detection, making it difficult to determine the geographic source of reintroduction. We suggest that a new method is needed to account for viral isolates with unrealistic sampling dates.
Read carefully, "...have prompted many researchers..." To change the text, one would need to change the minds of all of the many researchers, and have them administer retractions. Argue over what happened in that year, I guess, but the fact remains that the genetic clock of viral mutation does not stop unless a virus is kept in storage. Also, was the year of mutational change accrued from 1976 to 1977 or from 1918 to 1919? Either way, no question, the virus that caused the 1977 Russian flu spent time in a lab.
Exactly. The paper linked in the grandparent is questioning the exact date of reintroduction, not whether reintroduction occurred. The usual guess seems to be
> the result of vaccine trials in the Far East involving the challenge of several thousand military recruits with live H1N1 virus (C.M. Chu, personal communication)
That part is genuinely uncertain though, and probably unanswerable. Historical surveillance was weak, and those who do have information may not wish to implicitly confess to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
No one is seriously questioning that it spent ~20 years in a lab freezer. There was some speculation about virus frozen in the Arctic or such; but since that's never been observed to happen any other time, and multiple labs were known to be working with frozen and thawed virus, I think that's pretty abandoned.
Tangentially, risks like that are why I'm really frustrated-with/exasperated-by certain mRNA-vaccine scaremongers: Ones who act as if older techniques were already fine and sufficient.
It can both be the case that old methods have risks and new methods have greater risks, eg, underestimating mRNA distribution in the body, leading to mRNA replication in heart tissue, and higher than expect dangerous side-effects.
In general, people prefer understood risks to new risks because the system is better adapted to them — both biologically and politically.
I have family that have worked on developing NBC equipment for the military. The first thing they said when covid was spreading was that it was most likely from a lab. That was before anyone in the news was saying that. So an independent first-look assessment by someone with experience, followed by later finding out that there was in fact a lab there, has me heavily leaning towards it being true. But it doesn't really change anything unless there's hard proof. Even with hard proof, do you think China would pay for anything? I don't think so.
You should realize experience in a tangentially related field and there being a lab somewhere in the area is not the same as insight and evidence. That’s like saying that if a new flu came out of Atlanta, the fact the CDC is there proves it came from a lab, and must be true because someone’s janitor cousin who worked there one summer said it was true.
“Low confidence” means that there is a lack of evidence and the statement is ambiguous; that it could be completely true, or completely false. The only lower confidence would be direct evidence that it is outright false. Given, as you said, how nearly impossible it would be to prove true, wouldn’t you think it equally nearly impossible to prove false?
Believe what you want, but even the CIA doesn’t lean on the side of you being right.
There's a paper from 2014 that tried to estimate the annual chance of a pandemic from a lab leak. They estimated it at 2%.
I assumed they overestimated a bit for effect and put it at around 1%.
Pandemics have historically happened somewhere around ever 100 years. What's that annual probability? 1%.
So if you knew NOTHING else, from a bayesian standpoint, if you have to differentiate a once in a 100 year spillover or a lab leak, you would put it at 50/50.
Now add in the fact that the outbreak occurred right next to a BSL lab. Now add in the fact that this lab specialized in the exact type of virus that caused the pandemic. Now add in the fact that lab workers at that lab got hospitalized with respiratory symtpoms in November. Now add in the fact that China responded with tons of secrecy, pulled down their genomic database of known viruses in their Wuhan lab, Xi issued a proclamation in February that they were revamping safety at BSL labs to prevent leaks, and that the virus in question is remarkably similar to one they found in 2013 thousands of miles away, and add the fact that there was a proposal to modify cornaviruses to have a furan cleavage site to perform gain of function research and that the COVID virus has just such a furan cleavage site, and this virus emerged remarkably well adapted to humans very very quickly. Now how about the fact that China pushed the wet market theory even after they'd figured out that probably wasn't the case? Now add in the fact that China let SARS escape from the lab TWICE in the previous decade.
How does that affect your truth value? All the facts above push the probalistic truth value toward a lab leak. There are a few facts that push it back a little the other way, but there aren't very many that I've found.
> Now add in the fact that the outbreak occurred right next to a BSL lab.
The outbreak was likely to happen in a large population center near where the bats were. The actual probability that it went north and happened in Wuhan was probably 1-in-12 or so. And the first time there was a coronavirus spillover and pandemic, it happened in Guangzhou. So we rolled 1d12 once and didn't get a 1 and then rolled it again and did. Not that mind-blowingly improbable.
Also, not surprising that the lab was in a major city somewhat central and closer to the bats than e.g. Beijing. Because that is what it was set up to study.
> Now add in the fact that lab workers at that lab got hospitalized with respiratory symtpoms in November.
This has been asserted by a story in the NYT, but never proven and denied by WIV. There's literally no evidence of this.
> and that the virus in question is remarkably similar to one they found in 2013 thousands of miles away,
Still roughly a thousand base pairs and a few decades of evolution away from SARS-CoV-2. You can't get from RaTG-13 to SARS-CoV-2 in a lab, and there's no evidence they ever had live virus RaTG-13 in the lab.
> and that the COVID virus has just such a furan cleavage site
It had a novel PRRAR furin cleavage site which had never been seen before. Not one that humans would have ever guessed. That is actually strong evidence AGAINST it being lab-made.
> Also, not surprising that the lab was in a major city somewhat central and closer to the bats than e.g. Beijing. Because that is what it was set up to study.
As we've discussed, the greatest abundance of related viruses occurred around Yunnan and Southeast Asia. Dr. Shi herself didn't expect spillover in Wuhan:
> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.
Wuhan was "closer to the bats" only in the sense that New York City is "closer to the alligators" than Boston. There's little reason to choose that phrasing except to deliberately mislead.
I've warned repeatedly that the failure of competent scientists to engage with the real possibility that their research caused this pandemic will result in a blunt and damaging backlash. We're watching that damage now in real time.
> As we've discussed, the greatest abundance of related viruses occurred around Yunnan and Southeast Asia. Dr. Shi herself didn't expect spillover in Wuhan:
And SARS-CoV-1 occurred in Guangzhou. The closest known relative virus (WIV16) is 96% homologous to SARS-CoV-1 and was found in Yunnan as well, which is over 1,000 km away from Guangzhou. Either the range of the bats carrying these coronaviruses is much larger than anyone in the world (including Dr Shi) knows about, or else the "blast radius" of the animal trade in China is considerably larger than anyone knows about.
I think the usual theory for SARS-1 is spillover from bats to other non-human animals outside Guangzhou. The virus was then brought to Guangzhou by wildlife traffickers, like in the live infected civet cats found in markets there. A similar conduit is possible for SARS-CoV-2, but we still haven't found that proximal host.
I don't think spillover of SARS-1 from bats in Guangzhou is commonly proposed. If you've seen it (and didn't just include that option for completeness), then I'd appreciate the reference.
I agree that unexpected things sometimes happen. Nobody expected spillover in Wuhan pre-pandemic though, and the WIV absolutely wasn't situated based on any such expectation.
You're not clarify anything I said or telling me anything I don't already know.
The SARS-CoV-1 virus moved over 1000km from Yunnan to Guangzhou.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus moved over 1000km from Yunnan to Wuhan.
This is the same fucking problem. One way or another we know it has a solution that doesn't involve WIV due to the SARS-CoV-1 spillover.
If we can explain SARS-CoV-1 without WIV then we can explain SARS-CoV-2 without WIV.
> I don't think spillover of SARS-1 from bats in Guangzhou is commonly proposed.
I never suggested that was definitely what happened, and I kind of doubt it, I think the wildlife trade is more likely. At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if the range of the viruses in bats is larger than we know right now.
> Nobody expected spillover in Wuhan pre-pandemic though
Which doesn't mean it didn't happen.
> and the WIV absolutely wasn't situated based on any such expectation.
The central location made Yunnan a lot more accessible than if WIV was in Beijing, and puts it around about the same distance from Yunnan as Guangzhou is.
I'm aware that you already know everything I've written here. I agree that spillover from bats in Wuhan is not impossible (nature is big and mysterious), but your implication that proximity to such bats affected Dr. Shi's choice of working location just isn't correct. She can be wrong about a lot of things, but she can't be wrong about her own intentions.
I guess we're just endlessly arguing the same uncertain technicalities now. I miss the days when actual new information was becoming available, and appreciated the chance to discuss with someone informed with opposing views. It would be nice to confidently learn the truth someday. Perhaps the new administration will release something, but I think it's much more likely they'll just poison the topic politically even more.
To me it barely moves the needle, specifically because as you have said we have found other remarkably similar viruses in the past.
We have known about coronaviruses for almost 100 years, and we have been studying them due to their dangers for atleast 60 years, and it has likely existed since before humans could be called human. And it has been shown to be a highly virulent numerous times in many different forms. No matter how low the chances of winning the lottery, when literally billions of people are playing it daily, it is only of matter of when, not if, it turns into something more dangerous.
Now none of that comes anywhere near proving anything, but the fact that we have had multiple coronavirus infections in the past, many of which have come dangerously close to pandemic level infections, makes a natural occurrence seem the most likely source.
On top of all that, even if it did come from a lab, why does that matter? A handful of extra lottery tickets were sold and someone won from that pool. This isn't some bioweapon modified virus purposefully bred from a farm of human subjects, you would never be able to get away with such a program in a large publicly known virology lab and we aren't knowledgeable enough in viral genetics to make something like that without testing it on farms of people. There are no markers indicating engineering it in any way that we are actually capable of. And worst case it is something a mere handful of unguided generations away from a sample that was pulled from the public already and the lab got "lucky" with a random mutation on a petri dish they were studying.
You're not saying it, but you're obviously starting with a very different bayseian prior than my 50/50.
As someone that makes forecasts for a living, I'd like to see what you're assumptions are about the base rates there.
As for how the facts produce modifications to the base rate, personally I think that a virus identified in a cave over a thousand miles away popping up in a very urban area right next to a BSL facility that specializes in researching that type of virus moves the needle toward it being more likely a lab escape. You seem to feel otherwise and I don't really agree. In particular, if you take the converse: suppose the virus wasn't known at all to man, you'd probably argue it also pushes you toward the conclusion that it was a natural spillover. (In which case, I'd be in agreement.) So I don't think that argument is really a logical one.
Your objection in the last paragraph, describing this as a "bioweapon modified virus" is really a classic strawman, and since it isn't the argument I was making I see no reason to indulge it. It is indeed a relatively ridiculous notion.
Also, just for precision, my own assessment of the truth value there is about 70% in favor of a lab-leak.
Its origin is at a huge meat market full of both hunted and farmed produce and animals both live and dead from all over the country and attended by thousands of people daily. I find that far more convincing than the fact that there was a virology center in an urban area, there are virology centers in tons of large cities and all of them hold samples of many corona viruses because they are incredibly common. The fact that the one that potentially escaped just happens to be incredibly dangerous would seem like an astronomical coincidence if it wasn't released on purpose, and there are many problems with that idea. But the fact that a market full of both live and fresh slaughtered animal products ends up being the origination point of a dangerous virus does not seem coincidental at all, just a mere matter of time.
A Bayesian prior of 50/50 seems high to me. It assumes that 50% of new disease variants come from lab leaks.
In the last few decades there have been 1-2 confirmed lab leaks per year. And they're often thing like "we found a vial of smallpox we didn't know we had" not new diseases.
Nature very capably produced colds, flus, a bunch of nasty diarrhoeal diseases, the many and varied sexually transmitted diseases, the hemorrhagic fevers, and so on. For "some new disease variant that I don't know anything about", my prior would be more like 1/99 lab leak to natural origin.
Not that it will fit a western centric ideology but there is zero mystery with people going into hospitals in Nov. It would be surprising if it weren’t so.
It’s flu season and Chinese don’t go zoom their Dr, they go and check into the hospital.
In other countries, it would be considered sociopathy to go to work with a flu, but we’re all Real Americans so anything different means… conspiracy.
I'm actually aware of the cultural differences there.
Going to the hospital is not usually the same thing as being "hospitalized" though, and it would be relevant for us to make that distinction to determine how much that tidbit pushes us one way or the other. I had originally read "hospitalized" some time ago, but i just checked the intelligence briefing and it definitely does not indicate actual hospitalization.
So that intel doesn't push us one way or the other very much. Although perhaps the absence of known lab-worker hospitalizations is an argument against the lab-leak though.
If one were either the director or a senior leader of a more-or-less covert biolab doing research that is definitely supposed not to be discovered, would you have done your job if you had not established a procedure for medical treatment of sick or infected employees using local and probably covert resources? - And likely including local isolation of infected or potentially infected people? Whether or not people from this supposed type of biolab turns up at public hospitals does not seem to indicate much.
If something very like smallpox, thought eradicated, suddenly showed up in some random town, it might be surmised that maybe some animal reservoir for it somehow slipped through the gaps. But if that random town happened to be Atlanta, home of the CDC, known to have some of the few samples of smallpox to still exist, then the relative chance of a lab leak must be thought higher. That's basic Bayesian reasoning. It doesn't prove anything but pretending the proximity to a relevant lab doesn't shift the odds at all is absurd.
Smallpox, yes. But another SARS variant (even a somewhat more aggressive one)...
Obviously, it's not impossible.
But, there were even RNA samples from Covid found in other countries, months before Covid really spread in China.
I imagine the main problem with the superspreader event there was more that enough people ended up in the same hospital, and thus it was easier to identify that Covid was a distinct virus.
If it was crawling around in a less dense population, its spread would've been meh, and the hospitals might not even notice the spike much.
> That’s like saying that if a new flu came out of Atlanta, the fact the CDC is there proves it came from a lab, and must be true because someone’s janitor cousin who worked there one summer said it was true.
Well in this case it’s more like if if a new flu burst onto the scene with the following all being true:
- the epicenter of the outbreak being within a few miles of the CDC
- the CDC working specifically on gain of function for new strains of the flu
- the CDC being cited in whistleblower reports to the outbreak for poor safety and security protocols in the years prior to the outbreak
- inability to find the natural reservoir the virus crossed over from, despite years of searching in the biggest virus hunt in human history
- the closest naturally occurring relative of the virus being found in bats that are only native in areas hundreds of miles away (in this analogy, something like the upper Midwest), that also happen to be among the species of bats being studied by the lab at the CDC
- several CDC employees being among the earliest discovered cases, so early that they occurred before the disease was even picked up in the radar and were only discovered when searching for the earliest cases
- the US government preventing any none government health officials in or out of the area of the infection for several weeks after the outbreak
- the sole other identified potential outbreak location, the wet market nearby, was completely sterilized by the US government within the first two weeks of the outbreak, over the protests of international investigators who hadn’t yet been given access to it, thereby preventing them from ever being able to confirm or deny if it was the actual ground zero of the outbreak.
“Low confidence” doesn’t mean there is a lack of evidence, it means there is a lack of direct evidence. Problem is there is a lack of direct evidence for any alternative theory as well. There is, however, and overwhelming about of circumstantial evidence supporting the lab leak. The CIA isn’t going to issue accusations like this without a smoking bullet, which they will never have.
The reality is that had this occurred under any other administration, the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t be so taboo. But Trump is a serial conspiracy theorist and pugilistic nationalist, so the second he floated it everyone on the left, which includes much in academia, immediately disputed it in a knee jerk reaction, despite not having much evidence either way. Since then what evidence exists has increasingly supported the lab leak theory, but many are walking back from entrenched positions. If this had happened when Obama was president I don’t think anyone would be pushing back on this with the evidence that exists.
Coordinating medical information is notoriously hard, particularly when the government doesn't want to acknowledge something. Let's take Florida as an example.
There was a point at the beginning of the covid pandemic where the governor was declaring that the state only hand a few cases, and there was not great need for concern. The pneumonia death rates for the previous months showed a different story. For the previous two months the death rates were 10x higher that normal. Nobody seemed to have noticed that at the state level.
Most outbreaks follow a pattern where the disease shows up in small pockets for many years before it becomes an epidemic. HIV is an example. The first HIV death in the USA happened in 1969. The oldest confirmed case in Africa is in '59. The oldest suspected death in the US is '52.
Crossover tends to happen multiple times, and there is no reason to expect otherwise with covid-19. The problem with finding these cases is that it happened in an area governed by an authoritarian ruler. Authoritarians don't want to admit that there are things out of their control, and by inclination they conceal bad news, or news that makes them look like they're less than omnipotent. They shift blame rather than dealing with problem.
The love of the lab theory in the US seems to be driven by the same desire to push the blame on someone else. It takes the focus away from the incompetent response.
there's a 19 bp sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent (which preceded covid-19 by a decade).
now an exact match of that length isn't impossible, but which is more likely? that this managed to be exactly correct on accident? or some grad student was told to just copypasta every furin cleavage site in the database into a GOF library and surprise surprise the most virulent form that became a pandemic came from the sequence that is engineered to be efficient.
any scientist that has any molecular biology wet experience will tell you this is exactly what they would have done (though us researchers would probably not have pulled from the patented BLAST sequences, since that selector is turned off by default by the NCBI)
The sequence (reverse complemented) matches positions 2751-2733 of sequence ID 11652 attached to the patent: https://seqdata.uspto.gov/seqdetail?docId=US09587003B2&publi... - as the other person said, it's located in the S1/S2 furin cleavage site, and produces no BLAST hits outside the SARS-CoV-2 lineage.
It's not entirely clear to me when the sequence was incorporated into the patent - it doesn't look like it was in the first revision. But it looks like it was added before 2020.
The whole theory still has gaps (even if we assume someone was searching specifically within that patent, what would a screen look like to single out that sequence? It would have to be very high throughput and use very sophisticated modeling), but it's interesting.
no screen necessary. you create a bunch of dnas by robot building from scratch every FCS known to man. the "screen" is "this is the guy that hapoened jump out of the test tube and cause a pandemic". more of a selection than a screen i guess
If SARS-Cov-2 was from a lab, what about the original SARS?
Generally though, China is somewhat better suited to producing pandemics, because they have a larger and more dense population within which a disease can spread.
SARS-1 was found in wild animals, had a long period in which it adapted to human hosts instead of being immediately well adapted, didn't have any weird artificial looking RNA sequences, and didn't emerge right next to a lab experimenting on coronaviruses.
Interestingly it was also clearly airborne and able to spread long distances in aerosols moved by air currents. Investigators traced those air flows in some cases to explain movements of the virus. Yet despite being literally called SARS-2 the WHO and other self-declared sources of expertise all denied that this was possible, and attacked people who pointed out that it was. The desire for lockdowns and masks to be perceived as credible outweighed prior experience with similar viruses, turning those who tried to learn from history into pariahs.
If I said I had cousins that were bankers, I am not sure that it would make me more credible to talk about finance. I mean - to the people who care about expertise.
I had a Chinese colleague in January of '20 saying it was obviously a leak. I hadn't even heard of Wuhan before, and he told me there is a bio lab there.
And what does that tell you? I could probably find 10 people in every country on earth that claim COVID-19 originated in a lab there. I don’t think being Chinese is a good qualification for determining where COVID-19 came from.
This gentleman works in a US national lab, graduated top of his class in a top Chinese school and has friends that, at the time, worked in the Wuhan lab.
He, while very proud of being Chinese, was very critical of what he perceived his countrymen's lax safety standards. Myself, I can't judge that as I am not Chinese or an experimentalist so I deferred to his expertise and experience.
> But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.
Yes, the annoying thing is that "the truth about covid" literally only matters to culture war grievances, it has no relevance whatsoever to the actual world. If it was a lab leak, then China needs to improve their BSL-4 safety... but they need to do that anyway[0]. If it was zoonotic, then they need to clean up the wet markets... but they need to do that anyway. The true origin of covid makes no difference at all, and I wish these people would just come out and admit this is all domestic political peacocking.
[0]: and so does everyone else, for that matter. The US has also had several close calls with BSL-4 leaks; if covid did originate from a lab leak, the fact that it wasn't from an American lab is just sheer dumb luck.
If it were a lab leak then the people especially fearful and distrustful of gain of function research would feel vindicated and try to use that to shut down existing research programs. I don't think that group of people is meaningfully divided along partisan lines, and outside the professional class probably includes everybody.
Conversely, if it were a natural outbreak then that bolsters the case for continuing gain of function research as before. Such research is precisely why we were able to identify the threat and within weeks assemble a vaccine, at least on paper. (Granted, the arc began long before 2019 with a through-line of research going back to the 2002 SARS outbreak.) And it's why we've many other advancements. Creation of CRISPR and related technology emerged in part out of gain of function research with viruses. Gain of function is a critical tool in testing hypotheses about how foundational molecular machinery works, and viruses are a convenient research model for exploring and testing ideas in that space.
But I'm not sure the origin should matter to that debate. And I'm even more sure it probably won't matter, even if we agreed on a definitive answer.
Whenever you have an institutional failure, you need to do a root cause analysis to fix the problem. That includes Chinese labs. That also includes health organizations who may have put aside their objectivity and tried to discredit a theory merely because they disagreed with the politics of those supporting it.
The wet markets were a super spreader event... Doesn't really tell you much about where it started (even if it has animal origin).
People just assumed that the wet markets were the cause of the problem, because they found them digusting (and wanted an excuse to blame it on the Chinese being evil).
In a less dense population, without many people going to the same hospital... You would just not have noticed Covid much.
Wow do we live in the same "actual world?" If we knew for certain that covid began in the Wuhan lab, it would be World War 3.
I get your perspective: an outbreak is an unfortunate byproduct of the risks necessary for scientific progress. No one couldve known how bad it would be. The damage is done, learn from your mistakes and move on. Very enlightened.
In the real world, people will lose their absolute shit. There would be near global demand for sanctions and reparations, and there's enough anti china sentiment that its a real possibility.
Backed into a corner, the world against them, they would have no other choice. It would be a matter of survival.
"Why" because of all the latent anger and frustration from the mass death and pain of the pandemic. Its naive to underestimate it. How it unfolds, think WWI reparations from Germany.
"Cover it up anyway" pretty much. There's precedent for this, we never got the full truth about 9/11 either. To this day the 100 page dossier is off limits to the public, probably for similar reasoning. The USA wants to play the board opportunistically without regard for justice or public outrage. And then people wonder why the public feels abandoned by their government.
> "Why" because of all the latent anger and frustration from the mass death and pain of the pandemic. Its naive to underestimate it. How it unfolds, think WWI reparations from Germany.
Why is a lab outbreak worse than a wet market outbreak?
As the article observes, “the new analysis … began under the Biden administration.”
The new administration has been in office a week. There is a political incentive to release it now, but they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days.
> 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 chance of holding China accountable on it. Parlour talk.
They say that there is no new data. That they are just altering their choice for what assumption is more likely.
Supposedly because they've had more time to think about the conditions of the lab before Covid was released...
But really, nothing has changed except their biases. Nothing has changed on the solid evidence side.
Separately, if there were actual safety issues and stuff was leaking... Then we're incredibly lucky that it was something as tame as Covid, and not one of the more serious kinds of horrors that gain of function research has successfully produced.
1) Multiple departments of the executive branch were saying this under Biden too.
2) The US gov’t funded the biological weapons research lab at Wuhan. Mr Cotton has been a senator for 10 years, and therefore was around when the funding was approved. So if he wants to find someone to punish, maybe he should look in a mirror.
That’s certainly motivation for releasing it, but he’s been in office for five days so the analysis being released was done under the prior administration.
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.
I think people are missing one very sympathizable effect of this joint research, that it prevents either country from gaining an offensive edge from dual-use research that could be used for bio-weapons. You could argue that this has the benefit of preventing a bio-weapons arms race.
Vertiginous to think about the layers of unknowns.
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.
This is an event that saw a lot of the world effectively under house arrest for two years. I think that trying to finding out the underlying reason behind that is a reasonable goal.
Looking for reparations is secondary to that, but maybe not entirely unreasonable either; not that it'll ever happen.
I remember watching the movie War Games (1983 film) and even as a kid when they announced nuclear missiles had been launched and "confidence is high" I thought "That's a really good way to indicate that there are indications that something might be happening, AND indicate how much you believe it when you talk about things that you can't confirm."
Any new theory needs to match evidence for SARS-COV-2 being present in European wastewater during December 2019 [0] [1].
Maybe it leaked from the lab; maybe it was released? As far as I understand (but tbh, I have not kept up as much with immunology news) the alternative theory of the virus hopping from another species hadn't been confirmed, as no reservoir had been found. Does anyone know if that had been the case?
> So... I'm not certain this is a development worth trusting. Maybe it really did originate from a lab! But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.
0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books.
1. China reacted asif they'd accidentally released a bioweapon.
2. China did what it does best, shut the F up on the world stage.
3. Everyone saw China's reaction because this isn't the 1950s and the internet exists.
4. The developed nations freaked out until there was data, hence the first set of lockdowns in Europe very quickly.
5. 2-3 years later after media pantomime, sectarian politics, holier than though preaching from everyone, the WHO declared the "emergency" over.
Some countries achieved 80%+ vaccination rates, didn't see 20% die. Some only achieved 50% and didn't see 50% death rates.
We now have a serious economic tab to be paid because of the BS pushed by developed countries in a panic that might have been less dramatic had there been information available from day 1.
China _has_ hidden and or destroyed a lot of "evidence" making certain discussions mute. (Again they are good at this let's not pretend otherwise).
Western countries, who, _like china_, jumped on a "who can punch themselves hardest with policy?" approach to this unknown now want someone else to blame.
Aka because we can pin a small significance and serious fault on China being a bad neighbour. (Snooze to the sensible this isn't news, china is very private about internal policy and now even more so) We are choosing to blame them for everything to get motivation up to get them to pay the bill...
This unfortunately was clear winter of 2020 and is clear now, it's just taken 4-5yr for politics to go through it's "he said she said" cycle. And I'm not referring to the US or UK political cycles this is the slow bi-partizan we all need someone to blame rather than be introspective and realise __"We should have handled this better"__.
> 0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I found out that my father and his partner had COVID. He lived, at the time, about 12 hours drive from me. Where he lived, his support network was thin (to say the least) - the little family he had nearby needed to keep away because they were responsible for caring for my cousin with a severely weakened immune system. His friends, sadly, also contracted COVID around the same time.
I called him twice a day, and each call he was worse than the last. I decided to rent an AirBnB nearby. My partner and I packed up the dog and everything we needed and drove overnight to get there.
We masked up, and got supplies at Walmart. We brought them to my Dad’s house and left them on the patio - retreated a safe distance - and my Dad came to retrieve them. He was in an awful condition, and his partner was worse.
For the next week I came to their porch every few hours, and called my dad, and we spoke with what little breath he had. He dictated his last will and testament to me. I delivered pedialyte, meal replacement shakes, pulse oximeters, anything to help them make it through. I forced them to get up and move around a little from time to time, and took notes on their condition. They wouldn’t let me in the house.
One day, before I arrived with supplies, my Dad told me they had called an ambulance for his partner. They took his partner to the local hospital… and the hospital turned him away because they had no beds. They essentially sent my Dad’s partner home to die.
By some miraculous turn of events, they survived. They have issues walking and breathing to this day, but they survived.
It’s one of the more agonizing, awful things I’ve ever had to watch. COVID-19 wasn’t harmless; it killed millions. I saw it up close. Especially early on, it was virulent and deadly, and very nearly took my parents from me. It did end up taking a lot of people in my extended social network. They died agonizing deaths.
Yes I am sorry for your loss. Now let's get to the point.
Because I understand statistics and am making sweeping statements I can and will make them from an objective viewpoint. Please do NOT sensor proven facts. I don't care for bible thumping tora humping nonsense that does not match reality. I'll take 2k years of religion and raise you 50 years of tech, oled TVs and microprocessors.
I know someone who ended up hospitalised and several years later does from complications due to a winter flu, doesn't mean we shut down society _every year_.
CV19 was a novel virus introduced into an existing population without any pre-existing immunity. This meant we will see complications, deaths at every age group and people's lives ruined by something that most 4yo, 25yo and 68yo will simply shake off.
Again the statement of millions dead _DOES NOT_ match the real world where several developed nations with populations sub 1B did not have dead numbers into the 10M+ of healthy individuals.
People died yes. This is expected. It is an illness. People die of staph infections. Life is unfair.
That _DOES NOT_ mean that this is equivalent to small pox. It's not a bioweapon it just meant the subpopulations who we identified really early (2020) should have isolated or accepted their risk.
The rest of society should not bend for the risk (again high survivability even in at risk groups). If it did we wouldn't sell guns, scissors or cross the road.
Given the original reason for lockdown in the UK was 20% all cause mortality.
100% expected fatalities above about 70 and hospitals struggling for oxygen supplies. Yes it was not that bad.
No that’s not an exaggeration, that’s why lockdown 1 happened.
After that is just memeing from both sides about microchips and death walkers without masks on.
The it wasn’t that bad is honestly true. Again it was a novel virus introduced into a population with no immunity, but frankly keeping the economy going would have been better than paying people to stay at home and worry.
The cost is starting to come home to roost if we’re not careful and the socioeconomic results of a global depression could genuinely kill more, displace more and lead to political turmoil and violence.
That is not worth just telling gran I’m sorry, the rest of us can go outside but we recommend you don’t.
Again practicing lecturer in applied stats talking so I understand the gritty details of the models and projections.
> Yes I am sorry for your loss. Now let's get to the point
I hope that people do not treat you with the callousness with which you treat others.
> Because I understand statistics and am making sweeping statements I can and will make them from an objective viewpoint. Please do NOT sensor proven facts. I don't care for bible thumping tora humping nonsense that does not match reality. I'll take 2k years of religion and raise you 50 years of tech, oled TVs and microprocessors.
My friend, you are speaking gibberish. I literally have no idea what you are trying to say. Maybe check your house for a gas leak, or something. I don’t mean it in a dismissive way - I quite literally cannot make heads or tails of what you’re saying here.
> Again the statement of millions dead _DOES NOT_ match the real world
The dead are dead whether you like it or not. Sounds like the pandemic didn’t affect you personally. Be grateful for that, and be kinder to others.
You effectively told me to shut up because of the way you feel when talking about facts. This is the ultimate in anti-intellectual, dishonest and selfish statements.
Check yourself before engaging in conversations about FACTS.
> You effectively told me to shut up because of the way you feel when talking about facts.
You waltzed into a thread about the CIA suddenly changing their tune about where COVID came from; and started making assertions that it wasn’t that bad.
I shared a deeply personal story about exactly how bad it was, from my vantage point. I expressed outrage at your dismissal of the suffering and many deaths that occurred. “How dare you” isn’t the same as “shut up.” But it is a strong suggestion that you’re being uncharitable.
> Check yourself before engaging in conversations about FACTS.
I scrolled through your comment history and based on some recent arguments with the mods, it sounds like you’ve have a bone to pick with people on this site.
Touching grass is honestly not a problem for me. But I like that you think I'm trapped behind a keyboard. Must have hit a nerve if we're getting close to name calling. Please refrain from this.
I'm telling you facts because for 4+ years nobody listens.
I've been correct in calling every detail about CV19 because I was involved and shut out of the early criticisms of the modelling based on the data. I'm correct and I'm just shouting into the void so that I can go away and rest easy that "I told you so", I tried ignoring it but frankly shouting until blue in the face helps my conscience easier.
You didn't just share a story you took offence to my position and tried to shut it down. Again, not approaching discourse honestly and openly. Please learn to be wrong. I know I can be. But again not when I'm stating hammer and nail facts. The earth is round, sky blue and water wet. Not the Orwellian everyone has a story type "facts". Words have meanings, please don't let that get lost for the sake of future generations.
Again mostly harmless is met with, the worst story I personally have is discomfort and complications. This unfortunately is not deaths by the millions of healthy people. But it is obviously real, it's just a different thing.
My friend, this is not productive or rational discourse. It’s certainly not empathetic. There is no place for it on this site. Perhaps you would feel more comfortable in a different community, one more amenable to listening to the “facts” that you’ve shared.
I think it is as your engaging which means you'll be more likely to listen to statistics next time they're presented to you with a "non immediately obvious" outcome.
If it were fruitless you wouldn't have engaged from an aggressive stance and I wouldn't be telling you why your wrong. Cognitive dissodence does hurt when it breaks but it's all for the better :)
You haven’t made any compelling case about anything, changed my mind, or altered my behavior. But if it helps you sleep at night to believe that, then go ahead.
For what it’s worth: I continued to engage because I used to be like you - argumentative, hyper assured of my own intelligence, and certain I was correct about everything. I wish someone had pointed out earlier that I was being a massive asshole.
Hence, trying to politely engage with you a bit. I feel like it’s the kind thing to do.
You are choosing to engage which either causes you to double down or reject change.
I'm going to engage in good faith still again and see if we can get past the point of it being uncomfortable for you.
I made a statement aligned with the indisputable reality that COVID did not lead to huge amounts of deaths among the healthy working age population.
Ironically the USA gives us a very good example of this. Their jab rates are close to 50% across multiple age brackets. If COVID was really really bad we would expect to see many more Americans dead than say in the UK where the jab rate hit >80% in most age groups.
This is not a statement about treatment efficacy or safety. This is a statement that we should be expecting to see many more dead without treatment if the treatment were essential comparing 2 relatively comparable subs populations.
This result given the population sizes can also be deemed to be ignorant of the health care model adopted.
This is also not a statement that COVID didn't kill. This is also not a statement that COVID didn't mame. This isn't a statement that water isn't wet or that the vaccine caused autism.
You told me about the worst experience of your relative. It's is unfortunate for them. I did not wish them ill. I did not deny that this happened. You demanded that I change my statement because of their and your experience.
I'm sorry that they may have suffered in the real world not being fair. But let's be clear NO, I will not change a statement of fact.
Again, I'm not wishing them ill, but there is a world of difference between suffering and an uncomfortable hospital visit and death. This fact does not mean I am wishing ill will upon anyone.
I'm not being argumentative, I'm being corrective. Yes I was insulted by being shut down for feelings, but that is a philosophical line I will never cross based on the last 4 years.
Feelings too are important, I'm not saying they're not, but they don't solely define reality.
I think we've been able to reach this point without name calling again so in good faith I'll wish you a good day, week, year and life and too to those you love and care for.
>> 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 damage the things that have escaped its borders have caused, such as greenhouse gases.
Yes, I know that China currently is emitting more greenhouse gases than the US, but since CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for several hundred or even thousands of years the US is responsible for more of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere than China is.
It's 26% US, 16% China, 7% Russia, 6% Germany, 5% UK, 4% Japan, 4% India, 2% France, 2% Canada, 2% Ukraine, 2% Poland, rounded to the nearest 1%. All the rest of the countries round to 1% or 0%.
That's a can of worms I don't think the US wants to open.
2. China could say they they'll consider paying, but only up to the amount of damages that would have been reasonably incurred if the US had handled COVID competently.
There were several distinct patterns in COVID deaths in the US. First, there were states like Washington that had a fairly linear growth in the cumulative number of deaths per capita from the start through April 2022, and then after that continued with a linear growth but not as steep.
Then there were states like New York, which got hit very hard in the first two months, because of a combination of nobody really knowing yet how to treat it and dense populations of especially vulnerable people. New York reached in two months a deaths per capita number that Washington took 22 months to reach.
But after those first two months, New York's deaths grew at about the same rate as Washington's, except during the Delta surge and to a lesser extent the Omicron surge. Washington's rate picked up during those surges, but not very much.
There were states like Florida. Its curve was like Washington's first 3 months, the switched to growing about twice as fast. By the end of 2021 it had almost caught up to New York. From then it and New York both continued at about the same rate was Washington, with Florida slightly higher so it passed New York in August 2022.
Other states tended to be a mix of those three patterns. California was close to Washington up until Delta, which brought it to near Florida, but then after Delta was was similar to Washington. A little better actually. Right after Delta it had about 70 more deaths per 100k than Washington, but by March 2023 was down to 56 more deaths per 100k.
Texas was like Florida until Omicron, which it handled better, and after that it was similar to Washington, or even a little better. It had 140 more deaths per 100k than Washington right after Omicron, but only 115 more by March 2023.
By March 2023, which is when the data I'm using ends, Washington stood at 206 deaths per 100k population, California at 256, Texas at 322, New York at 396, and Florida at 404.
Tom Cotton's state, Arkansas, was basically the same pattern as Florida, except with a higher rate. It ended up at 431 deaths per 100k by March 2023.
A good case can probably be made that somewhere from 25% to 50% of the Florida deaths were due to Florida's lax handling of the pandemic.
That too is probably a can of worms many politicians would not want to open, especially if their state is one of the ones that China would be arguing should get greatly reduced damages.
> 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 because they kept borders open.
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.
Whatever the reason (many reasonable at the time), this was after PRC did a full lock down, with outbound flights limited to repatriation, i.e. they weren't trying to spread the disease, other countries wanted their citizens back while PRC did one of the harshest locked downs in modern history. Can't blame others for thinking CCP was over reacting, but ultimately, PRC locked down during period where covid spread in PRC was minimal and signifant first incidents in many countries were from western travellers, who thought things were going to be fine.
Placing rhetoric in context like you did has a way of cutting through the bs and really getting to the core of what current politicians want covid to be. A minor cold when it was running rampant, and now suddenly a plague. Why could that be? Could it be because during the pandemic it was in their best interest to downplay it while hundreds of thousands died, and now that we've passed it and the USA is facing the rise of a successful nation with a different political system, we need to paint them as the enemy? For what it's worth, the current administration is showing signs of cozying up to nations with weak or non-existent democracies. Just look at the proposed tariffs - they are NOT targeting China but rather Mexico and Canada. Why could that be?
Ultimately the question should be, how can we improve our systems to better respond to future pandemics. Does it matter if it was a lab leak? What will that do for those who died? Will revenge prevent a future pandemic from happening? Viruses and bacteria do not care about their nation of origin, once its out its out.
> I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.
That's fine. The really problem is all debate on such matters was shut down during pandemic. To the benefit of no one (except for maybe Biden trying to cajole to Chinese into something, or other. Or to protect USG's role in this affair by financing Chinese gain of function research).
The real problem is, trying to cover that, they said masks were useless and other elucubrations for which they didn’t have proof, like “Stay inside”. “But they didn’t know it was false” Well, if so, don’t speak.
This is a strange take to me. Of course the search for truth is to some degree a search for accountability. It's not a gotcha to say "They just want to hold China accountable". Of course they do if it seems likely it came from poor procedure, it makes it their responsibility.
> It's not a gotcha to say "They just want to hold China accountable".
Sure, it’s not a gotcha if we divorce such a statement from all of its surrounding context.
But context in communication is incredibly important, and it’s unwise to analyze these kinds of statements in a context-free manner. I find it occurs on this site fairly often; it seems endemic to engineers. I try hard to avoid it myself, but frequently fail.
The relevant context here, of course, is the rabid anti-China sentiment expressed by folks like Sen. Cotton for years, dating back to well before the COVID pandemic. I take no position on whether or not his views are accurate or fair - but a context-informed analysis of the situation suggests that Sen. Cotton (and others) are not simply seeking truth and accountability: rather, they seek pretext to justify their views.
> I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.
There's never going to be any conclusive evidence of the source of covid, and anyone claiming they have certainty (who wasn't a witness to a lab leak) is simply lying to you. What they're doing is going along with everyone else worth listening to, who find the coincidence that we were funding banned research on coronaviruses in a lab a few feet away from the origin of the outbreak unlikely. They also find tales of non-lab origin both speculative and vague, while stories of lab origin are only speculative.
It's so strange to demand so much more proof of lab origin than one does of non-lab origin. The obvious reasons for that demand are that millions died, and that everybody involved with that lab can easily be named. Also weird that this observation is covid-skeptic coded, when in reality the worse you think covid is, the greater the crime that a lab leak entails.
I assumed it was a non-lab origin at first because that's how all previous pandemics have started as far as I am aware. A lab origin (and what precisely that means has never been particularly clear to me), but I have to say that I'd say your last observation cuts both ways - if one thinks this is such a great crime, then perhaps one would have encouraged masking, shutdowns/distancing, and vaccines, but those seem anti-correlated. Perhaps we'll do better next time around?
We won’t, because the judgment of many of our cognitive elites has been impaired.
This is a bit of a digression, but I’m reading a tweet thread by a $2,300/hour attorney who is an MSNBC contributor that is making just basic logical errors in discussing the birthright citizenship EO. Not even on the merits, literally in just summarizing the implications of the argument being made on a page of a filing he screenshotted in his tweet. I’m persuaded that if you had these folks take the LSAT with questions that had a political coding, they’d score a 160.
We need to get back to prioritizing the institutional and values of the different professions above all else. The public should view our scientific and professional organizations as neutral actors staffed by people who put the institutions above their personal beliefs. They shouldn’t be wondering whether medical organizations would be saying the same things about the “Lab Leak” theory if it had involved Russia instead of China.
> a tweet thread by […] an MSNBC contributor that is making just basic logical errors in discussing the birthright citizenship EO
No surprise there. Some people are not, contrary to your apparent assumption, actually trying to analyze something logically and arrive at some form of truth. I very much doubt that this has anything at all to do with COVID.
African green monkeys later found to be carrying the virus were shipped to several labs in Germany and Yugoslavia; the virus hopped from the monkeys to lab workers and then from the lab workers to a small number of others.
If we are looking what we could do better next time, then we should look to the studies that showed what worked and what was most effective. The most effective initial method against the virus was neither masking, shutdowns/distancing (vaccines are not applicable since they didn't exist initially). It was to close down mass transportation. Shared recycled air is a highly suitable transportation mechanism for this kind of virus, with airplanes, trains and busses being mobile centers for outbreaks. We should try to look towards this kind of research next time something like this hit and be more focused on what actually work, rather than what either the governing party or opposing party want to promote. Airborne diseases travel by air and if you want to prevent that you need to make sure that people who are non-infected do not share the same air as people who are. If that is impossible, shutdowns/distancing helps to reduce the risks until a vaccine is developed.
The 1977 flu is uncontroversially accepted to have arisen from a research accident, probably either an inadequately attenuated vaccine or a challenge trial in human subjects. The death toll is typically reported as 700,000, though I don't think that's a very good number and I can't find the methodology. Many fewer people died in the 1977-78 season; but the virus has continued to spread, so the cumulative toll is much higher (and continues to increase).
So how many people have to die before this is no longer an extraordinary claim? Bhopal managed to change chemical manufacturing standards with "only" thousands or tens of thousands of deaths; but the 1977 flu is somehow completely forgotten.
Perhaps the death toll is so high that people simply can't believe it? YouTube's fact-checkers recently removed an unambiguously factual description of the 1977 pandemic, ignoring appeals well-referenced into the peer-reviewed literature with no stated justification.
The argument is not "research accidents categorically do not happen" it was "are they the more common event and therefore the more probable explanation, absent anything else"
Depending how we count, there have been a dozen or so pandemics comparably novel or deadly to the 1977 flu in the last fifty years. Of those, at least one was research-origin.
So are you really saying p ~ 1/12 is an "extraordinary claim"? Is a 6'1" American man "extraordinarily tall"? There's unfortunately no standard map between English phrases and numerical probabilities, but I think most people would understand a much lower probability. If you really want to define it that way, then "extraordinary evidence" is likewise diluted to the point that the circumstantial case (emergence in Wuhan, DEFUSE) brings research origin easily into contention.
> Depending how we count, there have been a dozen or so pandemics comparably novel or deadly to the 1977 flu in the last fifty years. Of those, at least one was research-origin. So are you really saying p ~ 1/12 is an "extraordinary claim"?
Yes, I think it is extraordinary to extrapolate one event in 1977 to a "once every fifty years" rate
Can you quantify what you believe is a correct prior then, and explain how you got that number?
I hope you're not going to count every natural spillover since prehistory in the denominator. The technology to culture and freeze an influenza virus didn't exist before ~1930, and the technology to genetically enhance a sarbecovirus didn't exist before ~2010. The absence of pandemics with such origin before that means nothing. No one had ever suffered a cancer induced by an X-ray tube before 1904; but that doesn't mean the risk wasn't there, and Edison's assistant still died horribly.
I said fifty years because that roughly covers the period during which an accident similar to the 1977 flu was possible. Perhaps I should have said longer, since influenza was first cultured in 1931; but we also need some time in the freezer for the circulating virus to diverge. I don't think much changes if we say a hundred years instead.
Can you explain why 2010 would be a reasonable start cutoff? That doesn't make any sense to me, since it excludes most of the time that a research-origin flu pandemic was possible. We obviously haven't had a research-origin novel sarbecovirus pandemic before maybe SARS-CoV-2; but when new technological developments occur, the most similar old technologies are our best model. Nobody had ever died in a plane crash before the Wright brothers, but anyone familiar with unpowered gliders could predict the risk.
Okay, but your objection was requiring more evidence for the less likely assertion constituted an "arbitrary bar", you cannot argue that and quote _an arbitrary estimate by another commenter_
And there's been mutations in the virus since the initial exposure. How could that happen? How can a virus change its genetic code without a lab to do it?!?!!/s
Regardless of the source, it was dangerous but could have been better mitigated if it was taken seriously as a threat (not just a "common cold").
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 are much more concerned about finding someone to blame for the last pandemic than about preparing for or preventing the next pandemic.
Agree, that's the only sane way to approach things. I worry that it's already relatively rare for people to realize that problems in general can be multi-causal, let alone that we can approach problems as probabilistically multi-causal. Placing blame, on the other hand, is something everyone understands.
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.
I think the parent is arguing that lab leak is plausible, even if it wasn’t certainly the cause. GoF is foolish if you think the lab leak was remotely plausible.
Most folks had no idea about the sort of GoF being done, and the attitude of many researchers (highly dismissive of risks) should worry us a lot.
We should also be more worried about zoonotic transmission too, and press harder to ban wet markets.
I don't think these conclusions compete, that’s the point; the actual fact of the matter regarding origins doesn’t much affect the weight of the damning evidence.
> GoF is foolish if you think the lab leak was remotely plausible.
Even if you don’t think the lab leak was the source of COVID-19 virus, we know for a fact that lab leaks occur even at the highest level security facilities.
I’m not sure about gain of function research one way or the other, I’m just commenting that leaks will happen.
There's a couple of probability distributions we don't know. And whether this leaked in Wuhan or not doesn't affect them.
1. What's the probability distribution and damage distribution of GoF research lab leaks? It's not zero-- it likely has enormous long tail risk. But:
2. What's the probability distribution and damage distribution of not knowing as much about how gain of function happens in the wild? Because nature is doing some of these GOF experiments on its own, without much effort at containment.
Nobody in this thread seems to know what gain of function means. It's a very broad term covering a large percentage of all virology research. If you ban it, you might as well say that we don't want to do any research into understanding viruses from now on.
When you compare the massive risks of spillover from animal populations, which have millions of interactions with humans every minute of every day, with the risks from a small number of highly contained biology labs, the ratio between the two risks is so enormous that this entire discussion is absurd.
You're right that we should still do the research. But we should be doing it on an island, or a ship at sea, with supplies delivered by drone, and as little population exchange as possible.
That depends on whether the research increases the risk of a pandemic by any appreciable amount, compared to all the other things humans do.
It's kind of absurd that he have hundreds of millions of farmers and hunters interacting with infected animals every day, and nobody cares, but then we have a few researchers interacting with the same viruses under highly controlled conditions, and that's what we're worried about.
The reason is that people have watched too many sci-fi horror movies and listened to too many xenophobic / fear-mongering politicians who want to find scapegoats.
The problem with imposing even tighter conditions on research is that you end up making the research much more difficult, expensive, unattractive to actual scientists who have to live their lives. And all that for security theater, just to pander to ignorant politicians who won't actually be satisfied.
I don't know how you can read about the half dozen or more documented cases of lab leaks in this thread - regardless of what you believe about covid - and call heightened restrictions for experimental work with human-infectious viruses security theatre. It's not sci-fi horror movies folks are worried about, it's people making mistakes the way all people do. The way you seem to be doing.
We take the effort to air gap infected or security critical IT systems, but can't be bothered to air gap humanity from existential threats. If protecting all of humanity from the next pandemic is too much work for virologists, maybe it's best that they consider another career?
The examples of "lab leaks" being given in this thread are things like a large-scale human vaccine trial not using a properly inactivated virus. This is not a "lab leak" in anything like the sense of that is being alleged here.
> We take the effort to air gap infected or security critical IT systems, but can't be bothered to air gap humanity from existential threats.
My whole point is that we're not air-gapped in the first place. Millions of humans are interacting with infected animals every day, under conditions that are much less safe and controlled.
Imagine if all of your data had been leaked to the public internet, was mirrored across a dozen websites, and was being downloaded 1000 times a day, but then one security researcher had your data on an encrypted drive, and only read it on an air-gapped computer. Would you be more worried about the one security researcher, or the dozens of publicly accessible websites?
> If protecting all of humanity from the next pandemic is too much work for virologists, maybe it's best that they consider another career?
They are protecting you, and the thanks they get is that you scapegoat them, hound them online, and cheer when they get fired. You should be grateful that people like Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology worked so hard on understanding coronaviruses for decades, and warned about the risks of a pandemic. Instead, without any knowledge of the subject, you're participating in a witch hunt against her and her colleagues.
> My whole point is that we're not air-gapped in the first place. Millions of humans are interacting with infected animals every day, under conditions that are much less safe and controlled.
Factory farming is indeed a dangerous breeding ground for infectious disease which needs to be addressed. Farmers, however, are not performing gain of function research on the diseases in their herd. The largest danger of factory farms seems to be the widespread application of front line antibiotics, which is another issue entirely. Attempts to conflate the two are disingenuous at best. Unscientific whataboutism at worst.
> people like Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology worked so hard on understanding coronaviruses for decades, and warned about the risks of a pandemic. Instead, without any knowledge of the subject, you're participating in a witch hunt against her and her colleagues.
I've worked in science for more than a decade. I have lab experience. I have never named or witch hunted anyone as you seem to have. I have advocated for the most basic level of isolation of potentially dangerous experiments, and this is your response.
Thank you for demonstrating the arrogance which underlies the problem.
> Farmers, however, are not performing gain of function research on the diseases in their herd.
The phrase "gain of function" has become a general-purpose bogeyman, but 99% of the people using it have no idea what it means.
Farmers are interacting with viruses that are far more dangerous than the gain-of-function viruses. Gain-of-function experiments are generally just characterizing properties of viruses that already exist out in the wild. An effective way of doing that is to insert a component of the wild virus into a virus you can already grow and have characterized in the lab. The lab virus gains a function, but that function already exists in the wild.
> I have advocated for the most basic level of isolation of potentially dangerous experiments
Shi Zhengli and her colleagues are taking far more than the "most basic level" of precaution. Yet you're participating in the witch hunt against her and the virology community.
The actual future risks don’t change based on which specific origin happened.
The correct response is likely to spend significantly more on doing actual research and a great deal on making sure everyone is well contained. It’s likely a good idea to locate such labs outside of highly populated areas as part of a defense in depth strategy.
> The correct response is likely to spend significantly more on doing actual research and a great deal on making sure everyone is well contained.
Strongly, strongly disagree. When even a teeny risk of escape means that millions of people could die, I think a much better argument is to simply make certain types of research completely off limits.
I'm certainly not the only person who thinks this. Zeynep Tufekci, who in my opinion had the most rational commentary during the pandemic, argued that much virus research just doesn't work from a cost/benefit analysis. For example, even if the root cause of COVID wasn't a lab leak, it's probably not a great idea having researchers milling around bat caves collecting sick bats and what not - it's very possible a zoonotic virus made the jump not necessarily in the lab but from researchers specifically looking for zoonotic viruses.
Looking at risks alone always biases you to avoid doing anything.
The benefits of research here are also human lives. So doing nothing has a real cost and the benefits extend indefinitely into the future.
Suppose you’re deciding between a 1% chance of a lab leak costing 10 million lives and a 20% chance you save 50 million lives over the next 100 years. That’s heavily weighted towards doing something, while still carrying significant risk. Some people would still say the risks aren’t worth it, but it’s not an obvious decision.
I think you need to discount possible farther future benefits, because so much change can intervene and make the analysis invalid.
That is, when people want to do something-- risks tend to be understated and possible future benefits tend to be overstated.
I don't back the precautionary principle, but I do think risk in cost-benefit analysis has to be viewed from a pretty cautious place, in general (not just science).
Ultimately, we don’t know the actual benefits and I just picked numbers from thin air to illiterate a point. But yea linear extrapolation of such estimates hundreds of years into the future is nonsense.
What is there to research with GoF that could be worth the massive risk? We had a vaccine for COVID in a weekend. Approval and manufacturing where the bottlenecks.
There’s a lot of GoF research on a lot of different diseases with a wide range of goals.
One goal for disease likely to cause pandemics is ultimately to create better treatments for those already infected. There’s a long lag between a vaccine being designed and scaling production and distribution to actually protect people. That means there’s going to be a lot of people infected in an outbreak, including many vaccinated people.
Are there any examples of medication that was developed for a disease that came out of GoF where the medication was approved and preventive mass production took place?
My understanding is success have come more from protocols more than medication.
Take antimicrobial resistance, you need to understand how microbes gain resistance by actually creating resistant bacteria/fungi etc before you can develop efficient countermeasures.
With COVID there was a lot of confusion around using masks and disinfecting public spaces in the early days. A better model of the disease could have been really useful both in the early days and how people responded to mixed messages.
House Republicans on the subcommittee probing the origin of the Covid-19 virus appear to have inadvertently released a trove of new documents related to their investigation that shed light on deliberations among the scientists who drafted a key paper in February and March of 2020. The paper, published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, was titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and played a leading role in creating a public impression of a scientific consensus that the virus had emerged naturally in a Chinese “wet market.”
The paper was the subject of a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, which coincided with the release of a report by the subcommittee devoted to the “Proximal Origin” paper. It contains limited screenshots of emails and Slack messages among the authors, laying out its case that the scientists believed one thing in private — that lab escape was likely — while working to produce a paper saying the opposite in public.
The newly exposed documents include full emails and pages of Slack chats that were cropped for the report, exposing the “Proximal Origin” authors’ real-time thinking. According to the metadata in the PDF of the report, it was created using “Acrobat PDFMaker 23 for Word,” indicating that the report was originally drafted as a Word document. Word, however, retains the original image when an image is cropped, as do many other apps. Microsoft’s documentation cautions that “Cropped parts of the picture are not removed from the file, and can potentially be seen by others,” going on to note: “If there is sensitive information in the area you’re cropping out make sure you delete the cropped areas.”
When this Word document was converted to a PDF, the original, uncropped images were likewise carried over. The Intercept was able to extract the original, complete images from the PDF using freely available tools, following the work of a Twitter sleuth.
I understand how WIV could have caused a pandemic, but I don’t understand the other direction — how WIV doing gain-of-function would help the situation in which there was a zoonotic origin, eg at the wet market.
The person I was replying to said that our opinion on gain-of-function should depend on the origin — but I don’t understand how gain-of-function would have helped at all. Only how it poses a risk, whether or not this particular virus was such an example.
The theory is quite clear, if you know which strains could hop to humans then you can prioritize monitoring them, just like we monitor influenza types in animal populations now.
The problem is just that P(avert catastrophe) is fairly low, and P(create catastrophe) is substantially higher.
I am not in the sector but AFAIK there has been no direct benefit from GoF. There is huge potential which some experts believe outweigh the risks, which is why it is controversial, and that is why it has been politicized.
Protecting the funding and ability to continue the research would explain why scientists have a preference for spillover as opposed to leak. Then there are the politicians...
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.
At the very least, we hopefully learned not to subsidize and encourage gain of function research at labs that were already known pre-Covid to have poor hygiene and containment practices.
The question of whether we should do gain-of-function research is a fairly complex cost/benefit analysis. The precise cause of the 2019 pandemic is only a very minor variable in that analysis, because that specific outcome doesn't change the underlying probability of a lab leak. More to the point, do we realistically believe that everyone will stop doing it, even if there's a credible international moratorium? If not, then we need to plan accordingly.
> The question of whether we should do gain-of-function research is a fairly complex cost/benefit analysis.
Has there ever been benefit to such research? People fall back on wishy-washy "we could learn ___" when trying to defend it, but with how long it's been going on have we ever actually had a solid benefit from it?
Isn't the above-the-board justification for gain-of-function the promise of built-for-purpose microbes? The dream of "we spilled a million litres of toxic soup, here's a jar full of bacteria that eat that stuff and poop out useful compounds" or "let's make a virus that selectively over-infects tumours to weaken them?"
We might have the usual problem with every high-powered technology, from the fission reaction to the silicon fab: the underlying science is viewpoint-neutral, but people will be overwhelmed by doom scenarios associated with it.
Gain-of-function in the virology context doesn’t mean creating helpful microbes/viruses. It means purposely engineering pandemic-caliber viruses so that (the theory goes) we find them before evolution produces them naturally and so have time to study them and create vaccines before they are widespread.
As far as I know you're not missing anything and this is why gain-of-function research was banned in the US for a while. EcoHealth Alliance outsourced it to China in the mid-2010s because of the ban, so technically none of it was happening in the US.
> It means purposely engineering pandemic-caliber viruses
This is not true.
GoF includes any research that amplifies specific characteristics. Transmissibility or severity of infection are just two of those possible dimensions.
For example, the research that enables us to produce insulin (and tons of other biologic medicines) with E. coli is GoF.
I lean on the side of banning GoF that's designed to increase transmissibility of a contagion, but that is indeed just a subset of GoF generally.
Fair enough that it has that meaning more generally in biology. My point is 100% of the policy discussions about it are referring to that particular subset—no one means producing insulin when they talk about the risks of GoF.
Yes but this is what causes confusion when scientists push back against proposed bans which seems like a legitimately insane and evil position to take.
We can sharpen the language and say "ban GoF research that increases transmissibility of infectious disease", for example.
I think the best term of art is ePPP (enhanced potential pandemic pathogens), which clearly limits that scope. Academics use that reasonably often, though politicians and the general public unfortunately don't yet.
There's also GOFROC (gain of function research of concern). That's better than just GOF, but rather vague.
If this wasn't a political problem, but me and my teammates dealing with the aftermath of an incident that cost the company serious money, that's how we'd approach it. But we are technicians trying to prevent a problem, with incentives very well aligned with the company.
Government committees just don't have anywhere near this level of goal alignment, and it's not as if there is a lot of media whose best interests aligns with prevention either. You aren't getting a lot of information in the future out of a group of people you badmouthed a year ago.
> It seems fairly clear to me that a lot of people are much more concerned about finding someone to blame for the last pandemic than about preparing for or preventing the next pandemic.
That's why avian flu was allowed ro spread to cows in 16 states.
Well, assuming you’re part of the “we” that resides in the US, I think we’ve made it pretty clear we’re aren’t taking any of it seriously. Pulling out of the WHO is akin to burying our heads in the sand.
Sure, technically it “isn’t our problem” when some new disease breaks out in another country. But when (not if) it is eventually our problem, it’ll be a very big problem.
"Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time."
The Department of Energy concluded with low confidence that it was a lab leak.
The FBI concluded with moderate confidence that it was a lab leak.
The CIA's new report also concludes that they have low confidence that it was a lab leak.
It's important to note that low confidence is a positive number, not a negative number.
The wet market theory loses some credibility given some data points, but the lab leak theory remains plausible.
China has had lab leak origins in the past, so this would not have been unprecedented.
China obstructed and delayed the investigation.
Whether it leaked from a lab or not, China covered it up. China covering it up is not necessarily evidence that it was a lab leak. If there was any truth to it (which they may not even know), they probably wouldn't want it reflecting poorly on the state. China is big on "social harmony", so you don't have the right to know.
Whatever happened wasn't necessarily intentional. China made some deeply embarrassing and shameful decisions around this time and they won't want to promote them, but they were also not alone in making mistakes.
If China concluded it was a lab leak internally and shared that, there wouldn't have been as much need for the world to speculate, analyze and investigate so much which only hurt China's reputation more.
Coincidences occur, serendipity occurs. Most people have experienced one. As a result, proximity to the lab is not solid proof, but it is not the only datapoint either.
If China was more transparent and cooperative, there could have been more information to make higher confidence conclusions with.
The first large cluster of infections was associated with the Huanan Seafood Market, and retrospective analyses of influenza-like-illness patients and blood donations in Wuhan found no evidence of earlier circulation.
Sampling of many individuals prior to December 2019 showed no positives for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, suggesting that the virus did not spread widely before the market outbreak.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not known to have possessed a sufficiently close backbone strain to engineer SARS-CoV-2, and there is no public data indicating they had undisclosed viruses that match it.
Specific genomic features, like the furin cleavage site, appear suboptimal for an engineered virus (e.g. the PRRAR sequence and an out-of-frame insertion), which fits with a virus evolving naturally rather than through targeted gain-of-function work.
Several closely related bat coronaviruses have partial insertions near the S1/S2 region, suggesting that such changes can occur naturally over time and need not be artificially inserted.
A negative binomial pattern of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, with many zero-spreader events and a small number of superspreader events, is consistent with a spillover followed by rapid amplification in a crowded market setting.
Evidence of multiple potential intermediate animal hosts (e.g. wildlife farmed animals) further increases the probability that a bat coronavirus evolved into SARS-CoV-2 through natural spillover events rather than intentional engineering.
Early cases identified at the market and lack of widespread pre-epidemic infection clusters elsewhere in Wuhan align with the idea of a swift zoonotic jump to humans in late 2019.
The closest natural relative origin of SARS-CoV-2 was in Yunnan ~700 miles away from the market.
The Wuhan lab collected samples from that area and the lab is only ~10 miles away from the market.
Those wet markets are huge vectors for a viral spread, so a virus being spread there doesn't necessarily mean it started there.
Why that market in Hubei and not first at a market closer to Yunnan? It might be more profitable to transport and sell them there, but it's still a long way to travel and avoid spreading during that time just to end up at a market so close to that lab.
A lot of reasoning around whether a lab leak is more likely doesn't require it to be engineered or modified in any way.
The closest _known_. The second closest was found in Laos, also 700 miles from Wuhan (BANAL-52). Except it's in the other direction.
So we know that close cousins of CoV-2 are pretty wide-spread.
> Those wet markets are huge vectors for a viral spread, so a virus being spread there doesn't necessarily mean it started there
The thing is, does it really matter? We can say with a high degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was _not_ engineered. So even if the very first jump was in the lab, it was likely a result of insufficient biosecurity measures. But the virus (and its close cousins) are still out there in nature, and it's a matter of time until a new spillover happens.
>We can say with a high degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was _not_ engineered.
The lab leak hypothesis doesn't depend on GoF research. CoV-2 could have a natural origin, been collected by the WIV, and leaked into the city. This has happened before.
That said, there's no way to evaluate if it was engineered. Some methods of engineering are indistinguishable from natural selection, and fingerprints from detectable methods have a very short half-life in a fast mutating virus.
>So even if the very first jump was in the lab, it was likely a result of insufficient biosecurity measures.
Virtually no one is claiming otherwise. This is a weakman argument.
>and it's a matter of time until a new spillover happens.
At the start of CoV-2, everyone told me that it takes years to develop vaccines. I told them it takes days to develop and weeks to test. Turns out that I was right. If the mortality rate of CoV-2 had been 3%, like early reports suggested, then the mRNA vaccines would have been in production by March.
Yup. This was like finding an alligator virus in Boston and arguing about whether it's nearest relative was in Alabama or Mississippi... they would be in basically the same direction from Boston.
I was curious so I did a quick research on the previous SARS-CoV-1, the one that caused an outbreak back in 2003. Looks like they weren't able to find the natural reservoir for that one either. We did know it came directly from masked palm civets sold at local markets, but we don't know how those civets were infected. They were raised in farms, and no virus was found in those farms.
And the closest natural match? WIV16 at 96.0%, again found on bats in Yunnan, again very far from Guangdong - where that outbreak started.
So I think it must be because Yunnan has a lot of bats? that's why all the closest matches are found there?
Forgive the silly question, but does the lab leak theory entail the virus being engineered in the lab, or simply sampled from nature by researchers then not adequately contained?
I’m not clear on what exactly is being alleged by these agencies?
One of the key parts of the lab leak hypothesis is that, depending on who is advancing it, it ranges from "poor biocontainment of a natural virus" to "engineered and released" with everything in between.
Biocontainment just means that the virus stays in the lab and doesn't move outside it - be that the disposal of lab materials, accidental infections, etc.
Those are both examples of a hypothetical lab leak. The WIV had the largest collection of related viruses in the world sampled from nature. The WIV performed GoF research on some of those viruses. They're both plausible events. I'm not sure how you could ever distinguish between them at this point.
How many times do we need to repeat "lab leak != intentionally lab engineered"? Your most relevant parts are all about the latter. You know this, yet muddy the waters.
Very good summary, but the problem is, like most things, it is impossible to 100% rule out the lab theory. It is always possible to look at one of these evidences and say "yeah, but ...". And given how politicized this question is, people are just going to believe what they want to believe. I am quite pessimistic about this, that people will remain rational.
I have no idea if the report's conclusions are correct, but I doubt a report like that was created in three or four days. Tasking expert analysts, reassigning the manpower necessary and going through legal and secrecy review in 96 hours would be extraordinary for a large bureaucratic agency. Sure, it could happen but that kind of all-hands, crisis urgency is hard to keep quiet. It's something we'd hear about from insider leaks.
I think it's more plausible that the report existed (because we know the CIA did look into it multiple times already) and the previous director had decided not to release it. And now the new director decided differently. Both of those decisions (not release vs release) were probably politically motivated to some extent but we don't have to jump to assuming an entire new report was fabricated with different conclusions practically overnight. After all, most government agencies that looked into it already concluded with low or medium confidence that it was a lab leak. It's not like the CIA report conclusion is an outlier here.
But they also say that there's no new evidence of any kind.
They are just choosing to believe the lab leak hypothesis now, because they spent more time thinking about the conditions of the labs before Covid started.
...
And it's still low confidence... Since there's no evidence.
Sad stuff, really. Any self respecting person would just not express their opinion in such a situation.
Just about the only value of this new report is that it tells Trump what he wants to hear.
> 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 would please the boss.)
> That's too marginal to motivate an adverse conclusion at the CIA.
The decision to not release by the previous director and the decision to release by the new director probably were political to some extent. But I agree with you that the report's impact is too marginal to assume its creation or conclusion was politically motivated. But I think that for a different reason: I doubt adding yet another "low confidence" agency report onto the pile of existing ones changes much - either in geo-political super power negotiations or in the mind of the American public.
The issue has been played out and it's not top of mind or relevant anymore. The majority of people have already made up their minds one way or the other - or decided it doesn't matter anymore and they don't care. Pretty much everyone already acknowledges we'll never know for sure.
> ... 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):
"There’s another scenario that has the Europeans worried: After getting a reluctant EU onside with his anti-Beijing agenda, the famously fickle Trump could U-turn and end up ganging up on the bloc with his “very, very good friend” Xi Jinping, China’s president."
"There’s precedent for that: In 2020, after years of escalating hostility during Trump’s first term in office, Washington and Beijing struck a mini trade deal aiming to increase U.S. exports to China and to ease their trade war."
"Now, Trump has billionaire China dove Elon Musk in his ear — and he needs Washington to retain good ties with Beijing to keep his electric vehicle company Tesla afloat."
My point is nobody at the CIA is winning a promotion for helping on a trade negotiation like this. It's unlikely this was politically motivated in substance. (Timing may be.)
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.
>China covering it up is not necessarily evidence that it was a lab leak.
Yes it is, but the evidence is non-specific. China will attempt to cover up 100% of lab leaks. China may attempt to cover up zoonosis. The cover up is consistent with either theory, but it is the only reaction consistent with a lab leak.
Cover-ups are a cultural thing in East Asia because reputation is paramount. They'll attempt to cover up anything that makes them look bad as means to protect their reputation. So the second part of your statement is not necessarily true.
China attempted information control on SARS-1, but rolled most of it back by April. They still haven't done this for SARS-2. That's not proof, but is a difference. Enough small differences can add up to a large difference.
"China will attempt to cover up 100% of lab leaks. China may attempt to cover up zoonosis."
this is a blind assumption. they may just be covering up 100% of all things, especially when the international community (i.e. Trump) is trying to push/blame them.
You can only assume from this that whatever was going to be found would have been unfavorable to them. Although that would be the case with both the market theory and the lab leak theory.
Or you understand that there is going to be a viral outbreak and you can choose: save the rest of the world from the pandemic or limit information and allow people to spread the virus globally to ensure that your nation doesn’t suffer disproportionately.
I'm not sure what the Department of Energy's qualifications are (I know they're in charges of nukes so maybe also bioweapons?) but I don't see what relevance the FBI's opinion has.
The National Labs, where a tremendous amount of infectious disease work is done for national-scale questions. I've worked with them in the past, and considered taking a job with them - of the various agencies, they're the ones who have weighed in with probably the most expertise.
>If China concluded it was a lab leak internally and shared that,
This insinuates the only reasonable conclusion is PRC lab leak. The only fact is we don't know where covid originated, only PRC was the first to detect and acknowledge it, and for doing so, US under PRC hawk admin tried to weaponize for propaganda war. PRC can still say covid come out of Fort Detrick, and until US opens up soveriegn US soil to WHO investigation (good luck now), then this is all a US coverup and it would be perfecty cromulant position and as "true" as anything CIA claims.
>If China was more transparent and cooperative
If US under Trump and Pompeo wasn't utterly antagonistic to PRC during time frame, there might have been more cooperation. This new CIA spin is continuation of the same geopolitical games.
There are a few things to consider that I’ll add, which further bolster the idea that China has systematically covered up up a lab leak that caused the COVID-19 pandemic:
1. Coronaviruses are hard to contain, even if you have good practices. For example, the earlier SARS outbreak (from the early 2000s) had several documented lab leaks, including multiple within China (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7096887/).
3. The WHO got completely manipulated by China, either willingly or just due to their incompetence. For example, it is well documented now that the WHO publicly praised the Chinese government but privately was concerned and frustrated by the lack of transparency and sharing of vital information, including blocking visits to Wuhan (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-china-blocked...).
4. The NIAID (Fauci’s agency, under NIH) conducted gain of function research through a third party, EcoHealth Alliance. The grants are all public and document gain of function research, which was illegal since President Obama had banned it through an executive order. There was evidence that the NIH helped EcoHealth craft their grant language in a way to avoid oversight processes that would have blocked the grant (https://theintercept.com/2021/11/03/coronavirus-research-eco...). Note that the president of EcoHealth, Peter Daszak, is a listed author on gain of function publications from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. After years of trying to bury this, the Biden administration finally blocked funding to EcoHealth in 2024 (https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/health/us-government-suspends...).
5. China only allowed a WHO visit over a year after they knew of the COVID-19 outbreak, in early 2021. They only allowed specific people to participate in the investigation, and the only person allowed from the US, was the same Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance who participated in the research at Wuhan Institute of Virology (https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/03/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-who-ba...).
> The US government surprised many researchers on 17 October when it announced that it will temporarily stop funding new research that makes certain viruses more deadly or transmissible.
So it's not clear what the actual order entails and how temporary it was. And the whole advisory language ("asked scientists") seems to be kinda distinct from "banned".
> The grants are all public and document gain of function research, which was illegal since President Obama had banned it through an executive order.
In general, these kinds of conspiracy theories just collapse when you start pulling the threads.
>In general, these kinds of conspiracy theories just collapse when you start pulling the threads.
You think it's a conspiracy theory that Obama banned GoF research? OK, it was through an OSTP directive working with the NIH rather than an EO, but that's splitting hairs. It also wasn't banned, but only subject to a higher degree of scrutiny.
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.g. gain-of-function research).
Note that in the first theory, the virus has a natural origin, but the pandemic originates in the lab leak.
These two theories get mixed up constantly, either by accident or on purpose, who knows. For example look at this CNN story:
First paragraph: “The CIA now assesses the virus that causes Covid-19 more likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China, rather than occurring naturally”
Deeper in the story: “Every US intelligence agency still unanimously maintains that Covid-19 was not developed as a biological weapon” and “almost all American intelligence agencies also assess that the virus itself was not genetically engineered.”
So it didn’t occur “naturally” but also wasn’t developed or engineered. Makes no sense.
> 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: you can't use animal-origins evidence as evidence against a lab leak, only evidence against an engineered virus.
Intentionally seeking out potentially harmful natural pathogens from remote locations and placing them in close proximity to people isn't relevant to lab leaks? Then why are they studied under high levels of security in the first place?
GoF research is so obviously a bad idea. The risks are enormous and the rewards are minuscule. But lab leaks of natural viruses are indicative of problems too.
One way to look at the difference is that a "natural Ebola" almost certainly would have spread at some point anyways, and so it wouldn't affect the total number of world deaths in the end, just make them happen some number of years sooner.
Whereas an "artificial Ebola" would never have existed without it being intentionally created, so all the deaths aren't just time-shifted, they wouldn't have happened otherwise. They're new.
I think the natural-virus-leaked-by-lab theory hinges on the argument that, (assuming it was true, then) had the lab leak not have happened, SARS-CoV-2 wouldn't have made to jump to human by itself. And this is where the Ebola analogy breaks down. Because SARS-CoV-2 has a higher basic reproduction number than Ebola, meaning it's more transmissible. And it's also much less deadly than Ebola, meaning it has much more opportunities to spread.
Remember, it is a virus that caused a global pandemic, despite all the efforts made to stop it. Based on that, I think it is highly likely that whether the lab leaked it or not, it would have made its way to humans by itself. In other words, there would effectively be no way to tell one scenario from the other.
It guides policy. If it was engineered, it means this is research we really shouldn't be doing. If it was a wild virus being researched, it means we need to take the threat of spillover more seriously.
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.
The best theory I’ve ever read, wrote about miners working in caves with bat who came down with serious pneumonia, or something like that, in the area that the lab sampled viruses from.
The viruses could evolve quite a lot in an immunocompromised individual.
The virus was then probably leaked as part of the work to sequence its genome. So they wouldn’t have published anything on it yet.
I don’t think they did any GoF research or engineered the virus in any way.
I’m fairly certain China knows a lot more about what actually happened though.
>These two theories get mixed up constantly, either by accident or on purpose, who knows.
You literally just reduced 3 theories to 2: lab leak natural virus, lab leak medical GoF, and lab leak bioweapon. These theories get collapsed because there's no practical way to distinguish between them. A 4th theory, intentional release, is often used as a weakman for all lab leak theories, but isn't actually a leak at all.
>So it didn’t occur “naturally” but also wasn’t developed or engineered. Makes no sense.
Yeah, someone wants to split hairs, but it's impossible without knowing the specific definitions they want.
You've made great points throughout this entire post. This is yet another that I've just upvoted (from having been downvoted). But in each you've been needlessly aggressive and hostile. Everyone here knows how frustrating COVID-19 can be to discuss—as is the case with most topics worth discussing. But it's less frustrating when we all implicitly agree to stick to our thoughtful great points.
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.
> There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests the Wuhan wet market was the origin.
Those are not mutually exclusive theories.
It could have been a lab leak that was then superspread by the visit of an affected lab worker (or someone they came into contact with) at the wet market.
A hypothetical lab worker which only spread it to the market and nowhere else seems implausible.
I suppose that could happen if what they were carrying wasn't capable of human transmission yet, but was capable of infecting some species of the live animals at the market, but that's a big if.
There's till the problem of the second lineage which would indicate multiple zoonotic crossover events.
> I suppose that could happen if what they were carrying wasn't capable of human transmission yet, but was capable of infecting some species of the live animals at the market
Or if infected carrions from the labs were sold at the market – I suppose it only takes a low-ranking employee wanting to make a few bucks.
You are 100% right. Not sure why you are being downvoted.
All of the evidence people argue over can fit together.
Original virus was brought from the south of china, was studied in the lab. Unclear if it was engineered. Somehow in the lab an animal was exposed. Either purposefully for study or accidentally. Animal dies or will die soon so a rouge employee takes it to the market to sell the meat for some pocket money. First cases show up in lab employees they are smart enough to quarantine. Full outbreak starts at market from animal source.
That is possible, but the evidence doesn't suggest that. E.g. if I am reading the paper correctly, they say that there is evidence of two distinct spillover lineages, which wouldn't be consistent with a simple visit from a lab worker.
The current evidence points to at least two different spillover events (of slightly different variants) at the market, followed by spread of the virus in the communities surrounding the market, eventually radiating out to the rest of Wuhan. There is solid evidence now for each of those statements.
If you try to reconcile that with the lab leak theory, you end up with an ever more implausible theory: two different scientists got infected in the lab with different variants (of a virus we have good evidence never existed at the lab in the first place), then both of them went to the market (where the same types of wild animals that caused the original SARS outbreak in 2002 just happened to be sold) and infected people, but somehow they didn't infect anyone else at the lab. It's just one implausibility stacked on top of the next, all with the goal of avoiding what the data is obviously saying: the outbreak began at the market.
Carful when assuming how a lab leak must have unfolded, there’s many possibilities.
A single worker gets infected/accidentally releases multiple variants, sloppy worker messing up twice doesn’t seem that crazy. A lab leak is also consistent with an infection person visiting a location that experienced a separate variant.
And that’s just a few options there’s also things like an intentional leak followed by another intentional leak etc.
I’ve read that the lab was intentionally set near that wet market, so there being overlap like this doesn’t seem extraordinary.
I doubt they are actually related but it’s something I read presumably because:
“Wuhan Branch of the CAS.[4] Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it was founded in 1956 and opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory[5] in 2018.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology
There was also a separate BSL-2 facility that moved right before the outbreak which also got news coverage due to the timing. But I think that was more confusion as they shouldn’t be working on coronaviruses in a BSL-2 facility.
They in fact were working on coronaviruses in a BSL-2 facility, which is another thing that helps make the lab leak hypothesis more plausible. E.g. from Vanity Fair:
Baric testified that he had specifically warned Shi Zhengli that the WIV’s critical coronavirus research was being conducted in labs with insufficient biosafety protections. When he urged her to move the work to a more secure biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab, he testified that she did not heed his recommendation. Because the WIV continued to perform coronavirus research at what he considers an inappropriately low biosafety level, Baric said of a laboratory accident, “You can’t rule that out…. You just can’t.”
In 2004, nine people were infected with Sars and one person died after two researchers were separately exposed to the virus while working at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing. In November 2019, just a month before the first confirmed case of Covid-19, more than 6,000 people in north-west China were infected with brucellosis, a bacterial disease with flu-like symptoms, after a leak at a vaccine plant. [1]
The Chinese facility hosts one of no more than six BSL-4 labs in the world that had been conducting contentious “gain of function” research on bat-related pathogens before the pandemic, according to Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University [1]
Just given the above, the statistical likelihood of coincidence is so absurdly low it alone means there needs to be overwhelming evidence to the opposite to overcome it. At no point has this been the case.
This is how conspiracy theories become unfalsifiable.
You're now positing that a lab worker got infected with multiple variants (which wouldn't exist in the lab, by the way, since they would work with cloned virus), then traveled across town and spread the virus at the market.
The evidence all points towards a spillover (two, actually) at the market, but you can always make the lab leak theory ever more convoluted to keep it alive.
Why do you believe that lab workers only work with cloned viruses? Do you know the exact nature of the research that was going on there?
Two spillovers at a lab that has one spillover does not seem that unlikely. There's a good chance that the lack of safety was in the culture and not just one careless person. In November and December, several Wuhan Institute personnel were reporting unknown illnesses and took standard precautions (weeks of isolation) over it. It sounds like they weren't equipped to deal with a class of pathogens that they were working with.
> Do you know the exact nature of the research that was going on there?
We actually have a very good idea of what research was going on there. The groups in question publish their research, give talks at international conferences, upload the viruses they discover to US databases, talk with colleagues abroad, etc. We have a very good picture of what they were working on, and every indication is that they didn't have any virus closely related to SARS-CoV-2.
> Two spillovers at a lab that has one spillover does not seem that unlikely.
If that were the case, you'd see the outbreak centered on the lab. It wasn't. It was centered on the market, on the other side of town. So you have to start making implausible - and obviously motivated - assertions that two different lab workers went and infected people at the market, without infecting any of their colleagues or anyone else along the way.
> If that were the case, you'd see the outbreak centered on the lab. It wasn't. It was centered on the market, on the other side of town. So you have to start making implausible - and obviously motivated - assertions that two different lab workers went and infected people at the market, without infecting any of their colleagues or anyone else along the way.
There literally was an outbreak among lab workers in November to December of 2019. Many of them got sick with something that looks vaguely like COVID and quarantined over it - this is a standard precaution when you work around weird pathogens. Social media from these workers was suppressed when they talked about getting sick. Chinese whistleblowers discussed this at the time.
I'm frankly surprised you haven't seen any of this evidence given your interest in the subject.
And we only know about the research they published, not what goes unpublished. That includes various kinds of failed research, research that someone did for fun and wouldn't make it past ethics boards (a not-infrequent problem for this type of virus research), and research that was done under the table to nefarious ends.
> There literally was an outbreak among lab workers in November to December of 2019.
No, there wasn't.
The 1st Trump administration leaked a rumor to the press that three workers got a respiratory virus sometime in the winter in 2019. Even if true, that's completely uninteresting. A large percentage of Earth's population gets any number of respiratory viruses every winter.
I have no idea where you're getting the rest of the details that you're claiming ("looks vaguely like COVID," "quarantined over it," etc.). They're not even in the Trump administration's leaks, and I suspect you're getting them from the online rumor mill.
> And we only know about the research they published, not what goes unpublished.
We actually know much more than what gets published. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology regularly go and give talks at international conferences. There are visiting scientists at the WIV from other countries, including the United States. WIV scientists upload RNA sequences that they gather in the field to US-based gene-sequence databases. This wasn't secret research. It was out in the open. They would have had no reason at all to conceal the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 if they had had it. Yet there's no indication whatsoever that they had it. Everything we know indicates that they were just as clueless about the virus when the outbreak began as everyone else.
These labs were putting coronavirus samples into a forcing environment that drove evolutionary development towards the goal they wanted to study. Creating new lineages of the virus that differed from the original was the entire point!
Given that, it’s plausible that sloppy lab handling procedures led to someone being infected with multiple different viruses that were present in the same part of the lab.
None of this proves the lab leak hypothesis of course, but a lab worker being infected with multiple variants simultaneously (or separately) is a perfectly plausible outcome.
Multiple zoonosis events is actually exactly what you expect from natural spillover.
If the virus is spreading in farmed animals, it will have many chances to spill over into humans. In fact, this is exactly what happened with the original SARS in 2002.
It's striking how similar the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is to the original SARS outbreak. Almost every detail of the spillover is identical: unknown coronavirus emerges at market in major Chinese city selling wild animals.
But SARS outbreak was from a single strain, wasn't it? It's not the “two zoonosis” that I find to be low-probability, it's the “two zoonosis of two different strains at the same place & time”.
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.
> You would expect, as was the case with SARS, that we would then find the population of infected animals.
In the case of SARS, the animals were not culled for months. The entire SARS response was slow - the virus kept spreading in farmed animal populations and kept spilling over into humans.
With SARS-CoV-2, the Chinese government immediately ordered all the suspect animals to be culled. No test results for those animals have ever been released, if they were ever even conducted.
> the closest virus in a wild population was a bat coronavirus located 1000 miles away.
Guangzhou, where the original SARS emerged, is just as far away from the bat populations and Wuhan is.
And relatedly - several of the animals sold in Wuhan with proper paperwork were from farms far closer to the closest Covid ancestors including many in the same province - not to mention wherever else the off-the-books animals were being brought in from.
> In the case of SARS, the animals were not culled for months. The entire SARS response was slow - the virus kept spreading in farmed animal populations and kept spilling over into humans.
It's been 4 years. When are we culling the COVID animals? The answer is that there's no culling because there's no animal population with a virus that is close enough that it could have been the basis for COVID.
The closest known wild-type virus - the one in those bats from over 1000 miles away - is still missing several key features (eg furin cleavage sites) that would be exceedingly unlikely to have all evolved multiple times in the few animals that made it to the wet market.
Almost every animal population that has resulted in a pandemic in the past has been pinned down in a matter of months and "dealt with." Obvious examples are SARS, MERS, and the recent influenza pandemics. That hasn't even gotten close to happening with COVID. This is a core competency of public health agencies, much more so than you might have realized.
In 2020, the lab leak sounded like a conspiracy theory to me and I thought it was a matter of time until the animals were found. Now, with it clear that there is no population of animal hosts with a similar virus in a similar area (given huge databases of bat coronaviruses that were developed post-SARS), it's looking increasingly like a virus that has been through a lab IMO.
> It's been 4 years. When are we culling the COVID animals? The answer is that there's no culling because there's no animal population with a virus that is close enough that it could have been the basis for COVID.
The animals were culled right at the beginning of the pandemic. The Chinese government immediately ordered all of the farms that raise the types of animals that caused the original SARS to cull their stock. We have never seen a sequence from any of those culled animals, either because no sequences were taken, or because the government doesn't want them to be published. In any case, culling the potential host population would have been a very effective measure for preventing the virus from spilling over again.
> The closest known wild-type virus - the one in those bats from over 1000 miles away - is still missing several key features (eg furin cleavage sites) that would be exceedingly unlikely to have all evolved multiple times in the few animals that made it to the wet market.
First off, the fact that the closest known virus is in bats 1000 miles away is not at all surprising. With the original SARS virus, the closest known virus in bats was also from a site about 1000 miles away from where the human outbreak started. Second, other coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites, so this is something that has evolved multiple times. Third, we're not just talking about a few infected animals. We're talking about a population of infected animals, maybe on different farms. The few that were brought to the Huanan market in Wuhan seeded the outbreak in humans, but they were part of a larger infected population.
> Almost every animal population that has resulted in a pandemic in the past has been pinned down in a matter of months and "dealt with."
This is not true. It took literally decades to locate the origins of AIDS. We still don't know the origins of Ebola (not a pandemic, but it has caused a series of large regional outbreaks and is the subject of intense study). There is a vast diversity of coronaviruses in bats, and the more scientists look, the more they find.
> it's looking increasingly like a virus that has been through a lab IMO.
Literally every piece of evidence has pointed towards the market, from epidemiology (which has firmly established that the outbreak radiated outwards from the market) to genetic evidence (multiple lineages of SARS-CoV-2 present in the very stalls where wild animals were being sold at the market).
Just wanted to say I appreciate that a few people here have actually been paying attention to the evidence re: lab leak and are willing to bash their head against the wall 'educating' the rest of the community. It's a repetitive, thankless task but I'm heartened that the comments aren't all just the same low-brow "is anyone surprised, it was obviously a lab leak from day-1" nonsense that shows up in almost every discussion of this.
The SARS outbreak was from many zoonosis events of slightly different strains, over the course of months.
The standard zoonosis theory here predicts that multiple spillover events are likely, because there's a population of infected animals that is in close contact with humans.
Multiple zoonosis events from close strains over a couple months from a local animal population strikes high on the probability scale.
Virtually simultaneous, in time and space, zoonosis events from different strains at the same place is still possible, but reaches much lower on the scale.
If it were coming from a farm population, I would have expected the said farm to have been found pretty easily by the Chinese investigation – and they would have had no incentive to hide it, as it would have pinned covid on basically a bad luck case once and for all.
They identified the at-risk farms right away and ordered them to immediately cull their stocks.
The Chinese government has been very sensitive about the idea that the virus came from a farm.
> it would have pinned covid on basically a bad luck case once and for all.
The US would still have tried to make maximum propaganda use of that. If you recall the early "wet market" discussion, it was highly accusatory, and often blatantly racist.
Yes, the “at-risk”, not the “incubator”, and notice the plural form to “farms”. China has never pretended having found a farm that would have been the source of the virus.
> The US would still have tried to make maximum propaganda use of that
The US (the state & government) was very far from having tried to make maximum propaganda use of anything regarding covid.
> it was highly accusatory
Well yes, it was highly accusatory of the typically awful hygienic condition of these markets. That's not racist so, that's just a fact.
> Yes, the “at-risk”, not the “incubator”, and notice the plural form to “farms”. China has never pretended having found a farm that would have been the source of the virus.
Just days after the virus was discovered, the Chinese government would have had no idea which farm the virus came from. They ordered a broad cull. They might have destroyed our ability to trace the origins of the outbreak by doing that, though from an immediate epidemic-control perspective, it was the correct decision. Maybe they did do testing at those farms, but maybe they didn't. In the case of the market, we know that China CDC only came in and did testing after the local authorities shut down and sterilized the place. Officials were probably much more worried about the immediate spread of the virus than scientifically tracing the origins of the outbreak.
> The US (the state & government) was very far from having tried to make maximum propaganda use of anything regarding covid.
The Trump administration went to great lengths to use the pandemic for propaganda purposes. At first, Trump was "nice" to the Chinese and even praised their response. However, after the virus took off in the US and it became clear that the Trump administration had completely mismanaged it, Trump pivoted to yelling, "China! China! China!"
> Well yes, it was highly accusatory of the typically awful hygienic condition of these markets. That's not racist so, that's just a fact.
There was a huge amount of racist "bat soup" discussion in the United States early on in the pandemic, followed soon by racist phrases like "Kung flu." I remember a viral post that showed a random Asian person eating a bat (it turned out the photo wasn't even from China). That's what the atmosphere was like.
This wasn't an informed discussion about the viral spillover dangers of wet markets (which are ubiquitous in much of Asia, not just China, and are often the primary way people buy groceries). It was mostly people who have no idea what they're talking about (and who have never visited a wet market) talking about dirty foreigners.
Read the paper. It claims that this is consistent with 2 spillover events, but it's also consistent with 1 spillover and an early mutation. The mutation between the 2 lineages could happen on either side of the spillover.
But a 2 spillover event suggests there was a pool of infected animals with multiple lineages that were all already capable of zoonosis. So why only a single secondary event? This suggests the pool was small, contact was limited, and that the pool wasn't sustained for long. OK, then it's comparably likely that a mutation would happen on either side of the spillover.
We don't know how many spillover events there were. Just just know that it's at least two. Most spillover events probably do not lead to a sustained outbreak.
The problem with positing that the mutations happened after spillover is that the timeline is way too short. Multiple variants were present at the market just weeks after the initial human cases. That points to differentiation before spillover, probably on the farms where the animals were being kept.
US intelligence likely has more evidence than they will publicly discuss. It is a matter of public record that parts of US intelligence (not CIA) had been tracking COVID in China since at least November of 2019. That they coincidentally happened to be johnny-on-the-spot when the initial infection(s) happened, long before anyone was paying attention or trying to create a narrative, suggests that they probably have more context around the conditions of the initial infections than they will ever disclose. How they managed to be "right place, right time" to observe the initial stages raises all kinds of interesting questions that aren't going to be answered.
However, what the (classified) evidence indicates is somewhat separate from whatever public posture the CIA finds useful to take.
> It is a matter of public record that parts of US intelligence (not CIA) had been tracking COVID in China since at least November of 2019.
What's public record is that ABC News reported[1] that two anonymous officials claimed there was an internal intelligence report in late November discussing an outbreak in China, and that it was briefed up the chain. All other news outlets then picked it up, with attribution (ABC News says someone else says...) buried deep in the text per usual. The report was immediately denied publicly by various officials and in over 4 years has never been corroborated, not even with other anonymous sources.
Plus, even if it were true, what's the relevance? It originally made headlines because it implied the Trump administration was slow to react; in particular, that they possibly had as many as 4 additional weeks in which to begin preparations. But it doesn't speak to origin. Most advocates for both the natural and lab-leak arguments all agree that the COVID-19 outbreak began sometime in Fall 2019. It's not a point of contention except possibly when comparing one overspecified theory against another overspecified, straw man theory. There are so many degrees of freedom to either theory (or rather, group of theories) that an early or late start doesn't significantly weigh in favor of one or the other.
Topic aside, it is often strategically useful in these types of contexts to convey lower confidence than you actually have. Saying you have high confidence without the ability to provide the reason encourages other parties to wonder whence that confidence comes, which may induce them to search for an answer you don’t want them to search for. There are many audiences for these public statements and you have to thread the needle of desired effect without unintended side-effect. Ambiguity is an advantage.
There are also many cases where adversaries both know the true story, and know the other knows the true story, but neither side finds it in their strategic interest to publish the truth e.g. the optics are terrible for both for different reasons.
That said, this particular case of the CIA publishing a report seems performative for domestic politics rather than strategic, which also happens all the time. There was nothing new or novel. The internal view of the intelligence community has been pretty consistent for years.
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.
There will be no major discrediting of China since the bat coronavirus research at Wuhan labs was funded by the National Institute of Health. This was firmly and unequivocally established by the hearing held by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Refer to “Overseeing the Overseers: A Hearing with NIH Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak”.
Dr. Tabak testified in this hearing that the NIH was funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China through a grant to EcoHealth.
Of-course this was in "direct contradiction" of the earlier testimony given by Dr Fauci under sworn oath. But hey - he has already been pardoned for it.
The only thing that can be laid at China's feet is ignorance of what was going on in their labs and the useless attempt at media suppression once the virus got out. However, anyone who has studied the facts in detail would easily form the judgement that a subsection of the U.S. government had the majority share of culpability.
The NIH partially funded GoF research in contravention of policy. The funding for the worst of the GoF proposals was denied, but there is evidence that the WIV performed the research anyway.
Yeah, the NIH isn't blameless if the lab leak hypothesis is true.
> 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.
> US will keep discrediting China as long as there is no conclusive evidence of what exactly happened.
Right, but in 2020 and 2021, the US was doing everything it could to discredit those who were trying to possibly discredit China. And the WHO was doing whatever China wanted. No scrutiny was to be tolerated. That in and of itself is very fishy.
The US funded the Wuhan lab through the EcoHealth Alliance, which was used as a vehicle to steer US government funding into areas of research that Obama had banned the US government from funding.
The idea that this assessment needs a goal is strange, because it is the most reasonable assessment, but the idea that it discredits China more than it discredits the US is bizarre. Maybe it does for the Chinese people, who can see that their government is willing to put Chinese people in danger in partnership with a US that was nominally refusing to put American people in danger. Turns out viruses don't need visas so it didn't matter, but maybe it's the thought that counts.
Eh, sure, the CIA isn't behind honest. China isn't being honest. There's too many parties with ulterior motives to trust anything being said. China has done a great job of looking like they're covering something up.
I read "Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley" and it convinced me the lab leak theory was at least fairly likely. The proximity of the outbreak to WIV -- which was doing gain-of-function research of bat coronaviruses -- is convincing. Occam's razor and all.
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.
What are you talking about? The NIH funded the research through Ecohealth alliance. It was funded from the US and created in the Wuhan lab. We've known the virus was created in a lab and not natural since early 2020.
I think the conspiracy theorist label is associated with common patterns (believing in a cover up in cases where there's no incentive / the cover up would be more expensive than the crime / the evidence would be impossible to cover up, etc) but in this case these patterns don't apply.
The lab leak theory was extremely plausible even assuming no secret conspiracy at all. Lab leaks do happen, that lab did do gain of function research, the State did shut down investigations, etc.
You might be surprised how many things labeled conspiracy theories have strong evidence, incentives, etc. but get scoffed at as kooky impossibilities nonetheless - like the lab leak theory.
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.
There was a huge overlap because within a month it became completely taboo for anyone who cared about not being seen as an alt-right activist to say anything about it. Even freaking Jon Stewart got caught in the instant-cancellation blast [0].
A major problem with our world today is that anything that the alt right supports instantly becomes taboo for the rest of us. People are more concerned with distancing themselves from the alt right than they are with finding and supporting the truth—and that goes for just about anything, not just COVID.
99% of the time there isn't a good reason to censor things, that doesn't stop it from happening constantly though. Especially in China where censorship of anything with bad publicity for the country or government or people is the default stance.
Can someone help me understand why a lab leak looks worse for China than zoonotic spillover? Why would Senator Cotton need it to be a lab leak to give him more leverage?
From what I understand, one theory is that China has for decades tolerated unsanitary wet markets that allowed dangerous diseases to evolve, get stronger, and eventually transmit to human hosts. They'd been warned about this over and over again and had failed to implement the required policies, leading to a preventable pandemic.
The alternative theory has China accidentally letting a disease leak from a lab.
From my perspective, if anything the lab leak theory is the one that makes China look better: at least it emphasizes that it resulted from China's scientific pursuits and not their lack of health codes!
Why would the China hawks need a lab leak in order to China hawk?
Because a lab leak could imply that China had a direct, active role in cultivating or engineering the virus, as opposed to the “mere” disastrous negligence entailed by the wet market theory.
That this is someone's fault and they can be punished is, I think, the reason people want it to be true. Rather than the world is a terrifying place that sometimes kills millions.
Occam's razor in this situation is the people people claiming the lab leak theory is most likely are interested in the truth and feel that a lab leak is the most probable cause. It never made sense either way to see how the virus came into existence to be a political question.
Whether or not someone gets punished is largely irrelevant. It isn't like 1 billion people in China would have sat down and decided to violate lab safety protocols; there'd be some supervisor somewhere who made mistakes. What happens to such a hypothetical person is irrelevant in the scheme of the damage the virus caused.
It sure seemed like a lot of people wanted the other theory to be true also though didn't it? I think the biggest driver for the lab leak arguments is backlash.
Both theories would presumably have people that are culpable due to violating safety rules designed to prevent exactly what happened. But I suppose a lab screwing up is more embarrassing to China than a hick selling wild animals or whatever illegally.
Theoretically, a lab leak should be considered less embarrassing than a hick selling wild animals perfectly legally - wet markets that sell even wild animal meat are legal in China (and other places in the world) in spite of the known dangers of this practice. And people making a mistake while intentionally working with dangerous substances/organisms is also seen as more explicitly culpable than the more distributed blame of people allowing a known dangerous traditional practice to continue, wherein the participants are not aware that they are performing dangerous experiments.
But of course, there is considerable bias to view traditional practices like wet markets more favorably than modern practices like virology labs. So, in reality, the virus leaking from a virology lab would be found far more condemnable than the virus being contracted randomly at a wet market.
The zoonotic theory has no evidence to support it whatsoever. It's the viral equivalent of the 'Magic Bullet.'
- No samples were ever found, nor were any sick animals, in the market where it supposedly started. Period. Nothing.
- No evidence of genetic mutations and variants leading up to crossover, no intermediary host ever found.
- It just happened to start infecting people in the city of a lab which had been doing extremely similar experiments AND had issues with releases before.
- WHO rushed the investigation, involved Chinese scientists in the investigation, and the Chinese government did not cooperate in any way, shape, or form - no samples, no lab data, nothing. It was just "trust us." And everyone dusted off their hands and said "well, no evidence. Done then!"
The world's governments pushed the "zoological crossover" theory because the only alternative would be...what? Accusing the world's largest source of manufactured goods of killing 8 million people? And what would we do, exactly?
Level economic sanctions against a country producing most of the world's stuff? That is by and large quite self sufficient, far more so than most nations?
The initial outbreak cases were clustered around the wet market, not around WIV, and the cases weren't linked to WIV. There was a documented lab leak with SARS-CoV-1 and it killed the affected researcher's mother. That'd the kind of thing you expect to see in a lab leak. Instead you see a cluster of cases that look exactly like it spilled over from the wet market.
And there's zero evidence to support the lab leak. All the research they were doing on live virus was based on SARS-CoV-1. You can't get SARS-CoV-2 out of that. And while they sequenced RaTG-13, there is no evidence they ever had live virus, and RaTG-13 is still around a thousand mutations and a few decades of evolution away from SARS-CoV-2.
The article I read indicated a number of researchers did become ill and die in the right timeframe, with the wet market they routinely visited following that.
Pretty sure I read it on Vox, but it might have been a republishing of the same AP or Reuters source. It was a kind of retrospective of how problematic it is when someone so wrong about so many things is right about something.
> There was a documented lab leak with SARS-CoV-1 and it killed the affected researcher's mother. That'd the kind of thing you expect to see in a lab leak.
SARS-1 had a CFR of 11% over all ages, 55% for >65. That's about 10x as deadly as SARS-CoV-2. The situations are thus not comparable--with SARS-CoV-2, we'd expect much more cryptic spread before someone gets sick enough to seek medical attention, and illness much more easily misdiagnosed as flu.
There's also zero question that the WIV had unpublished viruses during the pandemic, since they just published 56 new sequences collected "between 2004 and 2021". So do you really think it's impossible that they actually had 57?
Failing to enforce basic health codes is not a random act of God, it's a failure to perform the minimum functions of a state. It's not a single individual's fault, true, but these wet markets are not some obscure corner shop that managed to dodge regulation, their existence would not be tolerated in any developed country.
No it wouldn't imply that at all. The same animals ending up in wet markets could have ended up in labs. Nothing to imply it was engineered, which is a whole other level of culpability. Sucks that so many people are itching to make this leap.
Right. It fits well with the Anglosphere’s concept of compensible negligence.
China had a duty to run the lab safely, it breached that duty, and so China is responsible for the harms and losses caused by its negligence.
Missouri actually filed suit against China, and it is set to go to trial next week. It will be interesting to watch. If Missouri were to get a judgement for all the costs created by the virus, it could theoretically collect Chinese-owned assets in the US.
And, the news has been full of stories about one particular Chinese asset the US would like to have held in the US: TikTok.
Most people grasp the reasonableness standard for running a disease lab: you were negligent if the diseases break containment, because lab standards should be in place to prevent that obvious risk.
Under the wet market scenario, it's not instinctively clear to me what was unreasonable about the practices of the vendors at the market. Does selling bats more likely than not result in spreading disease? Or selling bats in proximity to pangolins? It seems like the vendors were doing the same thing vendors have done for millennia, not doing something unusually or obviously substandard.
Think about it this way: if a French tourist gets a severe toxinfection while eating in a seedy restaurant in some corner of the USA, would the French state, or even the family of the person, sue the US government for failing to enforce health codes / not having good enough health codes? Would you seriously imagine that trial happening and being successful?
Conversely, say the same person got equally badly sick while visiting a friend who works in a US government lab that researches and deals with live viruses. Wouldn't you feel the US government has a higher chance of losing a suit on this?
Except for the part they left out which is that the lab was being funded by the US government and its GoF research directed by a US nonprofit entity with strong ties to the NIH.
If it could be blamed on "China", it could as well be blamed on "the US" for having also funded that lab, and likely having been responsible for what security measures it would have.
And more realistically, if it was a lab leak, it was likely some lab technician being careless, or some thing breaking and whoever was responsible, not fixing it quickly enough.
> lab leak could imply that China had a direct, active role in cultivating or engineering the virus, as opposed to the “mere” disastrous negligence entailed by the wet market theory
Same reason Senators claimed American blood was spilled on American soil in ~1835 in the Mexican state of Tejas, which we now call Texas. Notably, Abraham Lincoln demanded proof, but the senate was too happy to see manifest destiny come about even on lies. Fast forward ~200 years and you're starting to hear the same things.
The lab in question is BSL-2* while viruses like this are supposed to be researched in BSL-3*. If it was a lab leak, they were using insufficient safety protocols to keep the virus contained. It also implies they're probably still doing the same for much worse viruses.
*I think these were the levels, I'm going from memory.
There are two campuses in Wuhan. One has BSL-3 facilities, the other BSL-4. Not all work is done at the highest BSL available for cost and practicality reasons though. American rules were that research on agents in the same classification as COVID is BSL-3, but routine diagnostic work is only BSL-2. Chinese researchers classified both at BSL-2.
That's one way to look at it. Another is that a lab leak makes the government seem much more culpable, since they would presumably have more direct control over the activities of government funded scientists. In any case, I think world governments have been reluctant to endorse theories that place more blame on the Chinese government for fear of forcing them into a defensive posture and risking a larger confrontation. But there are also those who desire such a confrontation. That makes it hard to trust the motives that any given party might have for promoting one theory or another.
At the end of the day, all that any sane person should care about is preventing another similar pandemic.
It may be true that other states don't want to antagonize them, and that may also be why we don't see enough emphasis placed on how absurd it is that China has allowed these wet markets to exist so long. Imposing a basic set of health codes is a very fundamental task of any government, and their inability or unwillingness to do so does not reflect well on them.
If anything, one reason why the China hawks may prefer the lab leak theory is because it makes China look more threatening than the alternative: the we-couldn't-enforce-basic-health-codes version of the story doesn't mesh well with the image we have in the West of the CCP as an all-powerful Big Brother that has complete control over every aspect of their citizens' lives. It instead projects a CCP that can barely perform the minimum functions of a state, which is harder to be afraid of.
It's the difference between burning down the house because you were playing with fire indoors vs burning down the house because some cheaply bought electric appliance malfunctioned.
Lax health codes mean the virus came about through sheer (bad) luck, by a bunch of "dumb hicks". The US doesn't have to do anything to compete with a bunch of yokels with bad hygiene. We have those in the US too. But if it came from a lab, using advanced technology that the west doesn't have, China goes from being more than where shitty knockoffs come from, to a much scarier boogieman that requires us to give more money to the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, I think this hits closer to home: the zoonotic origins story makes the Chinese government look incompetent. They actually are much less competent than Western popular culture likes to paint them, but emphasizing that doesn't provide a very effective external threat to rally the masses against.
A lab leak plays into the stereotypical German or Russian mad scientist trope of the 20th century: the incredibly powerful supervillain who in their hubris (nearly) destroys the world.
I wrote this awhile ago on a previous thread about this:
To my mind, there are a few reasons why people are so fixated on the lab leak thing
1) It makes the pandemic deterministic (bad lab security means an outbreak) instead of stochastic (wildlife spillover). That is, to be frank, even as an epidemiologist who is very skeptical of the lab leak hypothesis, a comforting thought.
2) It's a popular topic in the Substack/Medium set, because it moves the pandemic back into their wheelhouse of expertise, international relations, policy, etc. It becomes a human problem with human solutions.
3) It appeals to the contrarian mindset.
4) All of the lab leak papers at least attempt to show definitive proof. In contrast, actually finding the source of spillover events is the work of decades (and isn't always or even often successful). "Science is slow and uncertain" is a less compelling narrative.
Even in the wildlife spillover case don't you still blame it on people doing business with bat carcasses or was there some kind of obviously fine as an animal product intermediary between the bats and the people?
The WIV had the single largest collection of novel sarbecoviruses in the world. There's zero question that the UNC and WIV wished to engineer those sarbecoviruses to produce an enhanced virus broadly similar to SARS-CoV-2, in their unfunded DEFUSE proposal. An unconfirmed intelligence leak further claims that work was actually performed, at the WIV only.
Lots of cities have "a lab doing virus research". There's no reason to shift to that broader category except willful obfuscation, though.
As to prior spillovers, proximal hosts have been identified for those other two coronaviruses (SARS-1 and MERS), for both within a ~year of emergence. For SARS-CoV-2, we're still waiting.
If the work on coronaviruses that WIV was doing was at BSL-4, I'd be more skeptical of a lab leak origin. It was being done at BSL-2; see Ralph Baric's testimony covered in this Vanity Fair article:
I don't understand why determinism comforts you, but you do you. Unfortunately, a lab leak is totally stochastic, and I hope this revelation doesn't keep you up at night.
>It's a popular topic ... because it moves the pandemic back into ... policy, etc. It becomes a human problem with human solutions.
Zoonosis is a wet market hypothesis, not a random encounter. China failed, and continues to fail, to ban or regulate the wet markets to solve the problem. Zoonosis is clearly policy and human problem.
>It appeals to the contrarian mindset.
The lab leak appeals to anyone who groks statistics. Wet market zoonosis could happen at any one of 40,000 Chinese wet markets. But a lab leak could only happen at one of ~2 Chinese laboratories. Zoonosis happens more overall, but lab leaks are more probable in the direct vicinity of the lab specializing in collecting and studying samples of this exact family of viruses.
>finding the source of spillover events is the work of decades
The reservoirs for both SARS and MERS were found quickly with much less interest. The probability of the lab leak increases every day that we don't the reservoir. Worse, at this point even finding a reservoir isn't definitive, because we would need to establish that the reservoir predates the pandemic, and that it didn't spillover into the animal population from humans.
Given all publicly available information, the lab leak is far more likely. The uncertainty is very high, because China destroyed or concealed the data. Unless someone's memoirs leak it in 50 years, it's unlikely that we'll ever know.
I don't think it's an attack on China. It's a political attack on Fauci, who became public enemy #1 for conservatives early in the pandemic. They've been looking for reasons to blame him (oh, who just incidentally helped protect those dirty gay people during the AIDS crisis), and now our President has stripped him of security detail and announced he wouldn't feel responsible if something bad happened to him.
I had a pretty long post about this here before, due to the politicization of the issue it is highly unlikely any of us will ever know “the truth” without a surprise smoking gun. There are good reasons to believe the natural or the lab leak hypotheses.
I think you have to accept it is now unlikely we normies will ever know the truth.
Thanks for the dose of epistemic humility. I'm willing to go one step further: It's plausible that no one knows the truth. Keeping secrets is hard. If someone knew they might've died in the early stages of the outbreak.
There’s an asymmetry of potential evidence for each of the theories as well.
• If it was a lab leak, then even if the people responsible are dead, there was likely data that could trace it back. It is unlikely that data still exists or is findable, for obvious reasons.
• If it was not a lab leak, it may be impossible to find evidence to prove that is the case.
People always talk about early covid like it was some hyper-lethal virus. Remember, if you were a mostly healthy, non-elderly adult the death rate was like 1 in a thousand. I've read a few of people's amateur investigations about the early days of the virus and there are many cases where people point to potential witnesses whose testimony and evidence is lost because they apparently died from the virus. Did the virus greatly moderate in it's lethality in the first weeks? Was the Chinese government initially freaking out and euthanizing the infected?
My hypothesis is that it did not become less deadly, it is that a combo of demographics and response (both positive and negative) played more of a role than we are ready to admit, mostly because we still seem to feel like everyone did a bad job when the response was probably closer to “fine.”
The response in China, once things got out of control, included locking sick people in their homes. This form of quarantine is probably good to reduce spread, but it is also probably bad for the health of the patient. If there are multiple people in the home, it is probably worse for all of them. China also has a lot of multigenerational households (grandparents, adults, children) which means the vulnerable are together with people who are lower mortality risk, but higher risk for traveling and getting infected. I don’t know what percent of households in Wuhan were like this, but it probably played some sort of role.
We also forget that it wasn’t only China that got wrecked - Italy also had substantial challenges.
On the other hand, if your healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed, people are wearing masks so initial exposure is low, and you are caring for/separating the sick from the healthy, the outcomes are probably exponentially better.
It certainly seems that later strains were less dangerous though.
It would be trivial for the Chinese to determine if covid 19 matches with what they were investigating in the lab, and if the people in the lab were among the first infected.
The lab leak is more likely than zoonosis. Uncertainty still dominates.
The take away is not that we'll never know. The take away is that governments conspired to obscure the truth, control public opinion, and censor dissent.
> There are good reasons to believe the natural or the lab leak hypotheses.
Given the ridiculous response from everyone involved, I'm just going to assume it was an accidental biosecurity breach of a natural specimen. It happens frequently enough and enough puzzle pieces seem to fit. Not that I care or think anything should come of it, other than hopefully learning better biosecurity procedures.
No sorry necessary. I just think it is interesting how hard it is to not have an opinion about something beyond "I don't know." We all seem to feel more comfortable making an assumption and picking an answer, even when it won't change our behavior and not picking has no cost.
> I just think it is interesting how hard it is to not have an opinion about something beyond "I don't know."
I hadn't thought of this before. I wonder if we naturally formulate an opinion or hypothesis when we're curious about something. Which I did again just now.. huh.
I feel this is a great summary, and really calls out the issues that we are certain of — namely the politicization and the resulting uncertainty. IMO, everything else is difficult to know with high confidence, because of those two issues.
So there’s a new president and the main intelligence agency changes its position radically in alignment with the new government. Why should we be confident in any other claim they made in the past?
Changes its position radically? The FBI came out saying it had moderate confidence in the lab leak theory in 2023, right in the middle of the Biden administration [0]. The DOE came out with their own assessment a few days earlier [1]. The CIA's position was hiterto "we're not yet sure", and now it's "we still aren't sure but we're leaning towards lab leak". That's not a radical shift, it's a very slight shift in the direction that other three-letter agencies have been leaning for years.
There were almost certainly some politics involved in the decision to release the report now, but it's not like the CIA were staunch advocates for zoonotic origins up until now, and again: Biden's FBI and DOE were already leaning this way!
Or, in a parallel universe, there's an old president who preemptively pardoned the person who might have been involved in GOF research leading to a lab leak.
It is an interesting angle, because now he could potentially be subpoenaed by Congress or anyone else, and it seems unlikely that he would perjure himself over anything after 2014.
Unless there's another crime outside the scope of the pardon. For example, crimes within the statute of limitations prior to the pardon, new crimes after the pardon, or state level crimes during the period of the pardon.
Considering what is known about that agency's activities under Reagan, I think everyone lost confidence about any claims they made before I was even born.
I'm missing the part where there has been institutional reform since then. Otherwise, the mandate and policies that fostered those affairs are still in place, no?
Doesn't feel like a radical change in position to me. They said they weren't sure either way previously. In this statement they're explicitly calling it "low-confidence."
The FBI & Energy Department have both said that they think it's a lab leak.
> The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.
From "we don't know if it was a lab leak or spread from the market" to "we think it maybe is". Sure, they started this investigation with Biden, but just released it a couple of days ago AND they have even low confidence on it. So, why release it if the confidence is low? Why now? The answer is: new government, new conclusions.
They went from uncertain to low certainty. It's hard to imagine a smaller shift in position than that, and thus the dog-pile. You're trying to drag me into some other debate entirely.
Normally I would disregard their findings. However, the FBI, former head of the CDC, and Congressional panel all came to the same conclusion: Covid was made in a lab.
Even if the lab leak theory is true, why Trump was so confident about it? Does he have sources that CIA does not? I would be so confident in it only in the case if I myself caused that virus leak...
Only one lab in the world doing GoF experiments on this specific furin cleavage site AND a random natural mutation happens within a few KM of this lab on this specific furin cleavage site. What are the odds of this happening? Very close to zero.
Trump wasn't confident in the theory. He is not confident in anything. He does not care about the truth or falsity of anything he says. He only cares about it serving his interests.
Don’t you people tire of this? Do you really not realize why he just won every contest we have?
He was the president at the time - yes - he had better info than you. The people saying it wasn’t a lab leak had motivation to do so - and the head of that group just took a president pardon for their efforts.
Yes that's what I thought but it does say it was an analysis project started by Biden. The timing is suspicious, true.
But yeah this topic is extremely politicised (not just by the US mind you, but also by China). So it's hard to say what's the truth. I doubt we'll ever find it.
The lab leak theory does make sense though IMO. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. But yeah, I take this at face value. And to be honest I'm just really happy that this is all behind us.
The U.S. government, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provided funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, an American non-profit organization focused on studying emerging diseases. The EcoHealth Alliance, in turn, provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for researching bat coronaviruses.
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 got to brainwash their population into that for a few years and then they find any convoluted reason to get in while pretending they're merely defending them or others.
>US did not allow any outsiders to check out Fort Detrick which means they knew it was a US engineered bioweapon. US has no credibility here.
PRC maintains covid came from outside of PRC, they have no reason to let their labs be scrutinized by outside actors just because Mike Pompeo / CIA made up antiPRC propaganda. That's want weak idiots do. Reality is PRC already waste effort entertaining WHO, until US reciprocates by openning up US biolabs for international access to entertain PRC propaganda, they nor their narrative or people that endorse them have credibility either.
Likely Spanish Flu. People thought H1N1 started in US because US reported it first. Later it was thought to have originated from Mexico. PRC propaganda notes strange pneumonia with covid like symptoms in Fort Detrick area prior to covid going global. Is that enough propaganda for US to open up their sovereign soil for international investigation? The point is CIA claims has just as little credibility as PRC claims, except US has done even less to dispel PRC propaganda than vice versa and historically just because a country was first to identify and warn of a disease, doesn't mean they originated it. Some patient zero / traveller / trader from Laos where the bats are from goes to Wuhan, one of the largest transit nodes in PRC and the virus cultivates is just as plausible. Or a CIA released bioweapon from Wuhan w military games months prior if one eats extra dose of CCP propaganda. But then reminder Pompeo was head of state at the time and he'd go full retard on PRC.
Because it validates US propaganda that virus originated in PRC, instead of PRC position that they were merely first to detect and warn. There is no reason to give WHO unfettered access based on US/western propaganda - that's stupid amount of soverign leverage to cede because Trump/Pompeo wants to pressure PRC via WHO. PRC has also asked WHO to investigate Fort Detrick, until US reciprocates, which they haven't? Does US have something to hide? Why are they trying to deflect? See how easy it question motives / intentions / credibility based on inaction. Ulimately no one has to believe the CCP propaganda, but in this scenario the alternative is literally from "we lied, we cheated, we stole" Pompeo, uttered when he was director of CIA no less. Hence CIA pointing fingers mean nothing on PRC credibility, if anything it reinforces it.
The narrative is Fort Detrick was temperorily shutdown in 2019, later determined via congressional testimony because they were "cutting corners". At around the same time, from april 2019, series unusual respiratory illnesses similar to convid, later categorized as related to vaping related killed ~50, infected a few 1000s across 30+ states. PRC asserts this was origin of covid or something, and coverup by US gov (CDC/FDA linking to vapes) and thus US should open up sovereign oil for WHO investigation.
The video is September 2019. Before December 2019. Hence PRC narrative that there were signs of covid like infections in US before PRC. I'm clarifying the propaganda. You can look up EVALI to see full timeline, which starts early 2019, in line with PRC narrative.
Watch that video again, it's very interesting that all those people who got sick had vaping in common and none of their doctors fell sick while when the virus leaked from the lab and infected people those people infected doctors in Wuhan as well.
As as I said when you are trying to spread propaganda, at least do it right.
In PRC's accusation, the vape is a cover up for what was leaked that eventually developed into dangerous strains of covid. Hence origin starts in US, hence US should open up biolabs to WHO investigation. Me linking AJ video merely shows it's consistent with PRC propaganda timeline. If you're trying to interpret propaganda, at least do it right. Regardless, this is not a discussion interrogating the validity of the propaganda - because it doesn't matter, it's about geopolitics. There's no reason for PRC to entertain US propaganda any further if US doesn't entertain PRCs. If you're trying to follow a discussion, at least do it right.
Why didn't Saddam Hussein allow the American to inspect it's weapon of mass destruction facilities ?
I hope you're too young to have lived through that 2001 era propaganda because it was the exact same narrative. Put the burden of proof on your opponent with demands that you know can't be accepted.
If you're not too young then you failed twice at the very same propaganda technic. Congrats.
If you were old enough to have lived through that propoganda then you would have realised that other countries did not share the same opinion as the US.
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.
I found this recent interview with Christian Drosten [1] very interesting, he explains very good scientifically why it is much more probable that the origin is not from a laboratory.
(1) The area where the Nyctereutes spec. (german: Marderhund, I have no idea how it is called in english) where kept, there where a lot of DNA of Nyctereutes and a lot of nucleinacid of SARS II.
(2) From the beginning there a two lines of the corona viruses laboratory-confirmed. From the evolutionary speed of virus mutation it is nearly certain that the separation had to be taken place months before. About 8 times a corona-variation had been aquired by man. From this infection chains 2 virus-types had survived to be confirmed in Wuhan. A person who works in the laboratory would have been working with a clonal virus that is not mutated in that way.
(3) The market is the center of all infections even if you take out everybody that is known to be at the market, not the laboratory.
(4) For the animals at the market a analysis showed that they had been ill/infected (not specifically corona)
These are all separate published aspects that points to the same thing.
The part starts at 2 hours 23 minutes 30 seconds - you have to use auto-translated subtitles which are unfortunately not very good (german language)
there's a 23? bp sequence that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent (which preceded covid-19 by a decade).
now an exact match of that length isn't impossible, but which is more likely? that this managed to be exactly correct on accident? or some grad student was told to just copypasta every furin cleavage site in the database into a GOF library and surprise surprise the most virulent form that became a pandemic came from the sequence that is engineered to be efficient.
any scientist that has any molecular biology wet experience will tell you this is exactly what they would have done (though us researchers would probably not have pulled from the patented BLAST sequences, since that selector is turned off by default by the NCBI)
I wanted to learn more about where this claim comes from and found this article [0].
The linked commentary [1] raises several interesting points.
"Unfortunately, the authors did not provide details of their BLAST research. The patent database that they used contained 24,712 sequences. Yet, by querying BLAST, we obtained a database of 46,121,617 patent sequences with an average length of 560 nucleotides. The authors should give more details and justification for their query, especially if they queried the full database but a posteriori restricted their computation. Of note, with such a large database, and despite the fact that the average sequence length decreased, the probability of finding at least one sequence containing one of the 16 patterns previously mentioned may rise to 68% under assumption 2."
The absence of CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG from any mammalian or viral genome in the BLAST database makes recombination in an intermediate host an unlikely explanation for its presence in SARS-CoV-2. You can verify for yourself that there are no other sequences with an exact match.
The subsequent comment about statistics of blast searching is irrelevant.
So the conclusion of the comment-article cited in the parent of your comment is false?
"According to the current phylogeny, FCS appeared independently six times in the Betacoronavirus lineages, demonstrating that FCS insertion is compatible with natural evolution (2, 7, 8).
[...]
7. Wu Y, Zhao S. Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses. Stem Cell Res (2021) 50:102115. doi: 10.1016/j.scr.2020.102115"
"Unfortunately, the authors did not provide details of their BLAST research. The patent database that they used contained 24,712 sequences. Yet, by querying BLAST, we obtained a database of 46,121,617 patent sequences with an average length of 560 nucleotides."
just do the BLAST yourself and see. it's a publically available database. you will find zero other exact matches. note that today in 2025 there are a shit tonne of sequences that are resequencing of covid variants so you'll have to filter those out
rough estimate worse than 1 in 3^7 (based on # of wobble codons) but its even lower likelihood if you also allow AA variation in the universe of all furin cleavage sites
> there's a 23? bp sequence that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent (which preceded covid-19 by a decade).
could you cite this? not because i'm questioning the statement's credibility, but because i'm curious (and you could save me a lot of time from even knowing where to begin to look for credible information for myself—full disclosure, lol).
Apart from directing anger for political reasons, I don't see the big importance.
It's like wondering why a single building caught fire, when the shocking thing was that the whole world caught fire. Surely the lessons to learn are with 'how to deal with a spreading fire', and not with 'how to prevent a fire'.
The biggest irony in this is that apparently the lesson the current US government learned was "let's cancel all the fire stations and fire all the fire fighters!"
The NIH under Fauci may have been funding gain of function research in China in violation of an Executive Order (EO), and this research may have caused the pandemic.
If so, I think it's pretty important to investigate, how the NIH could violate the EO without appropriate oversight, and to hold those who made those decisions to account.
"Fauci claims — in a curious echo of Trump — that he is the victim of partisan threats of investigation and prosecution. “Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he said in response to Monday’s news. Yet it was noticeable that the pardon is backdated to 2014. This is, coincidentally, the same year that the US three-year ban on gain-of-function research took effect and also the start date for an NIH grant to Wuhan that biosafety experts such as Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, believe is linked to the “reckless” research that sparked global pandemic. “The pardon is a travesty,” he told me.
The evidence has shown clear efforts to avoid such scrutiny. One memo disclosed that “Tony” had told David Morens, a senior adviser to Fauci, how to avoid requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), suggesting that he stop using government-issued phones for his gmail accounts. A leaked email indicated that Morens was coached on evasion of FOIs by Margaret Moore, Fauci’s long-serving assistant — who pleaded the fifth when asked to testify. “I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” he wrote. Another senior aide to Fauci misspelled key conspirators, presumably to avoid searches intended to fulfil FOIA requests."
Sorry, I don't care about Fauci. From my perspective he stood up agaist trump, the all sorts of attacks appeared. They're always contradictive. He and his people don't care about consistency, because his followers only focus on what resonates with their fears and anger. They'll take that storyline and will find things to make that story work. For example on Biden in Gaza, he was both too pro Israel, and too pro Muslim, depending on the audience.
If you have lots of data, you can find all sorts of patterns. Now your looking at misspellings and inferring things from it..
More importantly, I don't care about 'getting justice' on an indvidual. I want lessons learned on how to deal with a new pandamic.
I'm not an American, I don't give a shit about Fauci. I do give a shit about institutions that violate the law performing dangerous experiments that pose extreme risk to mankind. Oh, and those same experiments may have caused the pandemic. This is why its important to get to the truth on this.
The fact that you Americans are playing politics with this, is the most shameful fact of the whole thing.
No. It doesn't matter, because just like with fire, with new virusses it is well known that these will happen regardless of people having bad intent.
You can't prevent someone with mental problems setting a tree on fire to smoke out the deamons in their head. It's a huge distraction and waste of energy that could be spent on the things I wrote about earlier.
We will probably never know what happened unless the CCP collapses and all the documents leak out.
China had a bit of a freak out when the pandemic first started and pretty much silenced everyone close to the lab and kept everyone else out. It was until months/years later that China started allowing chosen data out, and who knows the truthfulness of it.
Authoritarian regimes, especially China, are the furthest thing from transparent.
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 spun as more "racist" than the wet lab one.
Accusations of racism were always a lie used simply to silence those who said it was a lab leak. Our governments failed us, lied to us, censured us, and demonized those who didn't bend the knee.
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.
I understand why the NIH (who appears to have funded this) would want to spin this.
What was in it for CNN and MSNBC to spin this as racist when, IMHO, blaming COVID19 on culinary habits is far more racist? What was in it for Rachel Maddow to lecture America about the lab leak when she could have more effectively lectured us about financing the whole thing?
I'm not American but there seemed to be some strange Republican vs Democrat thing going on where the Repubs said lab and Dems said natural. Why so I'm kind of puzzled myself. In England where I live covid questions were not especially partisan.
The partisan thing was so weird. Im right wing adjacent, and I remember that early on in the pandemic being concerned about COVID19 was a right wing thing.
Yes, but we can assume - Trump and his people have openly communicated, planned, and followed through on it - that the actions of executive branch agencies are politicized.
Here we are told that the "C.I.A.’s new director, John Ratcliffe, ... wants the agency to get “off the sidelines” in the debate."; that he's long favored the lab-leak theory (which is a politicized issue); and of all the things a brand new new CIA director must do, we see that this was Ratcliffe's first priority. We know that the CIA did not choose to release the report before the Trump administration.
I think the overwhelming evidence is that it's a politicized action. Would Trump or his team lie or mislead? Of course. We can't give them the benefit of the trust until proven false; they have embraced deceit.
Unfortunately, even though they weren't always credible before, I think that means that these things are now meaningless, other than as clues to Trump's and others' intents: Why prioritize this messaging? Whose idea was it? And always, cui bono - who benefits?
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the following statement about the CIA’s findings on the origins of the Coronavirus:
“I’ve said from the beginning that Covid likely originated in the Wuhan labs. Communist China covered it up and the liberal media covered for them. I’m pleased the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab-leak theory is the most plausible explanation of Covid’s origins and I commend Director Ratcliffe for fulfilling his promise to release this conclusion. Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.”
Having no other information, the fact he went out of his way to associate it with Biden makes it seem actually politically driven by Trump/Republicans.
He wants to give it a "it's a bipartisan conclusion, so it's sane!".
Considering it's "with low confidence", someone else could've published the findings focusing on the low confidence rather than the fact that their needle is pointing more towards "lab leak".
"Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.”
Is that really true? Even supposing it was a leak from a lab, is punishing China really our top priority? What does it accomplish? What does it look like?
That sounds like the goal isn't to find the actual cause, but to seek excuses to justify whatever it is he wishes to inflict on China.
Specifically, we now have internal emails dating to 2020 from the CDC (NIH? Who remembers, it's been literally two years since this came out) about how it was probably a lab leak and then about the importance to bury the lab leak theory.
It was started under Biden, but the decision to publicize it is the new director's decision.
Worth noting is that this is a low-confidence report. I'm not accusing the director of divulging a low-confidence report under the belief that the public will accept it as categorically true because they have no sense of how CIA confidence levels work, but they're willing to believe the director wouldn't publicize it if it wasn't true.
... you should have low confidence in the truth of my last statement.
+1, the question of origin in general is politicized. I don’t think individual theories are taboo, it’s just very difficult to truly evaluate the evidence at this point, unless perhaps you are an expert and can do all the fact checking yourself.
Heliocentrism was politicized. The Galileo affair had a lot more to do with Church authority during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation than about cosmology. Galileo went out of his way to antagonize certain key players, and his punishment was primarily a political matter, not a scientific or even theological one.
The thing is that unlike political science, virology is an actual science. Scientists have found little evidence of coronavirus at the labs and there is record of them failing even to culture the virus which would be required for any research including gain of function research. In dramatic contrast samples from the wet market were easily cultured into multiple related strains which strongly points to the wet market as the source.
That said, "lab leak" still doesn't mean "virus built or engineered by humans for nefarious reasons."
I think the conversation about this has been repeatedly horrendous because it seems like people don't really understand that there are lots of degrees between "virus in research lab" and "genetically engineered bio-weapon." Though obviously there's more embarrassment and culpability on China's side (by most standards) with a poorly controlled lab situation than some rando, basically serf by implication, selling bush meat at a bazaar.
The house oversight committee investigated for 2 years and came to this conclusion. The CIA is falling in line with the rest of the government.
>The single most thorough review of the pandemic conducted to date
>The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include:
>The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.
>Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.
>Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels.
>Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.
>By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.
One thing I've always wondered is: how many labs are there in the world doing gain-of-function research on coronavirus, as the Wuhan Instutute of Virology was?
Intuitively, it seems to me like there aren't that many, so it's a pretty interesting coincidence that the virus started right next to such a lab.
However, if coronavirus labs are common, then it's not an coincidence. Can anyone point to research that answers this question?
From a political and public safety standpoint, I think the US government and WHO probably felt they had a moral obligation not to point the finger at China during the height of the pandemic. And now we have the opposite -- a cult of hate has taken over the US government, and they have much to gain by preaching hate against China (Trump was in power in 2019, but he only had presidential powers. Now he has absolute power.). So, in either case, it's quite hard to get undistorted information.
I'm not aware of teams other than Dr. Baric's at UNC and Dr. Shi's at the WIV proposing to enhance sarbecoviruses by genetic engineering. If anyone knows of more, then I'd appreciate a link.
SARS-CoV-2 might also be a naturally-evolved virus collected and accidentally released by researchers. The field for that is a little wider. I believe the WIV had the world's biggest collection, and the closest relative published before the beginning of the pandemic; but the BANAL viruses collected by the Institut Pasteur du Laos are now closer. I think there's a few more teams, though with smaller volumes of work.
Naively, I'd think "an American-funded lab in China with American collaborators had an accident" blames China less than "Chinese wildlife traffickers supplying Chinese tastes for exotic wildlife had an accident". The political perception is generally not too tethered to reality, though.
My present take: As an infectious disease epidemiologist whose expertise lies in the dynamics of infections a week or so after an initial spillover event, I am much more cautious with my opinions on the lab leak hypothesis than a lot of people who took a single biology class as a distribution requirement in undergrad.
Are you equally cautious with your opinions on zoonosis?
The problem is that huge swathes of the medical community politicized the pandemic for a specific political purpose, especially in the USA. For example, the Moderna vaccine trials were delayed 2 weeks to change the protocol to appease a political activist in the medical community accusing Trump of trying to ram an unsafe vaccine through. Naturally the trial results were available immediately after the election.
I have a question for you: do you trust the provenance, integrity, and completeness of data from the earlier stages of the outbreak in Wuhan?
"I have a question for you: do you trust the provenance, integrity, and completeness of data from the earlier stages of the outbreak in Wuhan?"
Nope.
And yes, I am equally cautious with my opinions about it being a zoonotic spillover event. I consider it the more likely of the two explanations, but far from definitive.
Given that epidemiology features no biology whatsoever, being these days purely a matter of playing with statistics, why would you feel qualified to discuss anything related to labs, leaks, or GoF research?
I read dozens of epidemiological papers during COVID - the ones controlling policy - and didn't see microbiology feature in any of them. They were all just various forms of curve fitting. Where are these epidemiology papers that are built on a firm foundation of microbiology?
Obviously I don't know either way. But remember when saying "lab leak" god you banned from social media?
I don't think anybody ever explained why exactly it was "racist" to think that labs can leak in China just like has happened many times all around the world, but wet market theory and the dangers of the Chinese food customs is "not racist".
Does anybody know? There were many people online who more than went along with this. Why was it not the other way around?
Organisations I understand, they have whatever hidden motives. But normal people in the "lab leak theory is racist" mob, they never explained why it wasn't "wet market theory is racist" instead.
> Putting these together, we believe that there is a close evolutionary relation between 2019-nCoV and bat coronavirus RaTG13. The four insertions highlighted by Pradhan et al. in the spike protein are not unique to 2019-nCoV and HIV-1. In fact, the similarities in the sequence-based alignments built on these very short fragments are statistically insignificant, as assessed by the BLAST E values, and such similarities are shared in many other viruses, including the bat coronavirus. Structurally, these “insertions” are far away from the binding interface of the spike protein with the ACE2 receptor, as shown in Figure 2, which is also contradictory to the conclusion made by Pradhan et al.
I simply cannot use this as signal to update my priors on the theory given how politically charged this issue is and the new administration.
We cannot ignore the timing or the fact that the release appears to be the direct consequence of the previous director not believing the information he had passed the evidential bar and the new directory believing it does.
It's new signal on the question, which is always nice-to-have, but I'll be digesting it with a huge grain of salt given its pedigree.
Society is like a meta-brain. One neuron may believe something to a different degree than the others - i.e. different priora. Highly-reported channels like this are the society brain updating its priors at large.
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.
A lab leaking wouldn’t do any harm to the CCP. The harm they caused themselves was a mixture of lying and trying to cover up the whole thing. Downplaying it. Etc. The WHO says any unknown phenomena must be treated as airborn until proven otherwise. But they followed the CCP in telling us it was fine, it wasn’t transmissible.
That's still highly contentious, hence the "low confidence" the CIA assigned to their conclusion. There's apparently a lot of evidence for the zoonotic original, though I personally don't understand said evidence.
It has, since day one. The fact that the WIH was one of only 6 institutions in the world that had been conducting GoF research on bat-related pathogens before the pandemic gives such strong statistical evidence towards it that any theory holding the WIH is unrelated, would require very strong evidence. At no point has there been such strong evidence.
I don’t know why it isn’t obvious to everyone how this happened. The lab leak theory is true the outbreak started in force in the market where lab employees sold animals used for testing. They probably didn’t know the animals were infected. Earliest cases were among lab employees. Likely the ones who handled and sold these animals.
I understand that this is based on an evaluation that started when Biden was president. But, given the timing and the weak confidence level, what's the likelihood that this being made public is just the CIA signalling their alignment with the Trump administration?
"Rootclaim" then bet $100,000 on being able to back that claim in a independant structured 18 hour long debate of their own devising .. and lost the $100,000.
Or watch the entire 18 hour debate in which that claim was shredded.
Given your user profile about: it's easy to see why you might give weight to Saar Wilf's Rootclaim project .. championing this particular result while ignoring its full history seems professionally questionable.
Which means this; it gives further weight to the lab leak theory, and shows the reasoning behind it.
I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate or read all of that article (which makes some misrepresentative statements, and like your response, is rather venomous in tone), but here is the response from rootclaim about the debate outcome: https://blog.rootclaim.com/covid-origins-debate-response-to-...
I also know from experience that scientists, and people in general, are often not well trained in the kind of probabilistic reasoning that is required for combining and weighing up multiple sources of evidence.
I had a look at Eric Stansifer's write-up of his decision, but I didn't read all of it (83 pages!).
He does seem to have a good understanding of Bayesian decision making and hypothesis testing.
What confuses me however, is his dismissal of two pieces of evidence in table 2 which he says should be ignored "following the presumption that HSM is the first SSE", and yet earlier, in footnote 24, he states "We are very specifically NOT conditioning on that place being HSM" (talking about the first SSE location).
Can anyone enlighten me about this seeming contradiction?
Another point: while both judges are qualified scientists, their expertise is in microbiology/virology not epidemiology, but it is the epidemiological aspect of the situation that is the most contentious part of the analysis, and AFAIK the part that swung the decision in favour of zoonotic origins for both judges. Without prior assumptions they both agree that the DNA evidence favours the lab leak theory.
There are animal markets all over China. This isn’t just any market. It’s a market that happens to be near a virology lab that studies bat coronaviruses, which had been investigated for questionable safety practices by u.s. inspectors.
I suspect that most people are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because they've been infected by Covid, probably multiple times, and have decided to stop taking precautions. To accept that you've been infected with a bioweapon is a pretty upsetting prospect.
> I suspect that most people are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because they've been infected by Covid
Sorry, but that borders on historic revisionism. People are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because millions of posts regarding it on social media were suppressed and blocked across Facebook, Twitter, and others; and because high-level US officials pressured scientists to claim that it was more likely natural origin than a lab leak despite their actual beliefs; and because a vast section of media and academia blithely swallowed and pushed Daszak's paper in The Lancet despite obvious flaws and massive conflicts of interest. Dissenting views and evidence were heavily suppressed, no matter how convincing or reputable.
The narrative was so forcefully shifted that any discussion of a lab leak was often met with hatred.
And all that was well before most people were infected multiple times.
Your memory is accurate. Yet elsewhere we have an infectious disease researcher claiming
> At the same time, I've come to distrust many of the voices who push the lab leak hypothesis, either because they're obviously doing so for geopolitical reasons, or because they've become addicted to being "the lone voice in the wilderness", despite it not being a risky position to take.
It's an incredible phenomenon, the collective memory blackout that seems to have taken place regarding the vibe in 2020-2021. Never before, or even after (so far), have we seen a more strictly coordinated ban on discussion of a specific topic across all major US social networks. It even reached as far as Wikipedia.
Here's what Yishan Wong (ex-Reddit) has said about it
> Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic because the "debate" included ...massive amounts of horrible behavior, spam-level posting, and abuse that spilled over into the real world - e.g. harrassment of public officials and doctors, racially-motivated crimes, etc.
There are many problems with this reasoning, but the biggest one is that if true, it should have rightfully caused mob behaviour.
Gaza War (2023-present): <100k deaths
Ukraine War: <1 million deaths
Korean War: 2-3 million deaths
Vietnam: 1.3-3.4 million deaths
Covid: 6+ million deaths
It is close to my degree, and it was always the most likely explanation. I am not saying there was purpose, I am not saying there was gain of function, but the connection to the Wuhan lab was obvious.
Don't suspect maliciousness if something can be explained by stupidity!
Doubt. You appear to be Canadian, and their major zoos all have polar bears. Plus you live in Canada, where polar bears run amok. How do I know you're not looking at a polar bear right now, with their iconic black fur?
pro lab leak:
1, WIV being 10 miles from the outbreak area
2, WIV housing dozens if not hundreds of strains of coronaviruses
3, poor bio security / laboratory technique amongst WIV staff
4, previous incidents of accidental leaks in Chinese labs
does it conclusively establish that the virus leaked from WIV? no. but i’d say it at least moderately probable…
It's not like we will ever have a chance to do a useful reassessment of what happened in Wuhan when everyone involved is scared of being designated the scapegoat and executed. And I do mean executed. If the CCP feels that it's useful for the state to find someone there and give them a lethal injection, they'll do it. So it's ridiculous to expect any cooperation from anyone there.
And ultimately it doesn't matter. If a contagious virus is coming to your country, your best response is independent of its origins. And if your response was a complete shitshow, finding a scapegoat in Wuhan won't make your response any less of a shitshow.
The US's response to covid under Trump was a ridiculous shitshow. Nothing more to it.
Mankind for some reason is blind. Doing CTRL F for the magic word in this Hacker News thread yields no results. There was a political conflict amongst Chinese people which had it's peak at the moment the virus appeared. If not for the virus, that conflict would have ruined China's image for decades and centuries to come.
After Tiananmen, the CCP planned many contingents next time something similar happened.
Cue, the [2019 Hong Kong Democracy Protests][1]. The MSS releases Covid19 at the peak of the protests (actually they do pick Wuhan so they can use lab leak as a plausibility if needed) in Sep 2019 and later they use the lockdown laws to completely clamp down the protests.
It's funny how everyone's opinions have changed now Trump is in power. It just shows how much of what people say is to advance their own interests rather than to say the truth.
Personally I'd guess it was almost certainly a lab leak doing research similar proposed by Ralph Baric (the world's leading researcher on this stuff) as described in his testimony to a congressional committee. His work was proposed for US funding and didn't get it but probably the Chinese conducted much the same research themselves and the research pretty much is to make covid for research purposes. One of the viruses he mentions interest in has an insert amino acid identical to covid.
Re. what the sensible authorities at the time have to say I give you the head of the CDC at the time and the chair of the Lancet covid enquiry:
CDC Redfield: "[The US] contributed to the research that led to it and that's to say is that the US government was very involved in funding the Chinese lab that did this research..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMlhvnMpRU0&t=119s
Lancet, Sachs: "Where do you think Covid came from".. "Covid
um the question is which lab and in which way. It almost surely did not
come out of nature uh it almost surely came out of uh a
deliberate research project ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg&t=6493s
Also amusingly on of the scientists most active in implying anyone suggesting a lab leak was a crank or conspiracy theorist at the time of the outbreak was Kristin Anderson. Later his slack chats were subpoenaed and he was saying in them “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.” He then got a $7m grant from Fauci totally unrelated to saying the research Fauci funded couldn't have been the problem.
I mean which country benefited from COVID? China controlled the virus first then lost a lot from strict lockdown, western had many death cases not to mention developing countries. If some Bie Inc made COVID, I don't think they have the courage to piss all governments.
It very much does. China is a political opponent, and casting blame on China allows the US more freedom to act against them.
American involvement is barely an inconvenience. For those most eager to blame it on China, it was the fault of one American. They would like to punish him, too, but he has received a preemptive pardon. (Either to avoid political persecution of an innocent man, or to cover up the dastardly deeds of their domestic political opponents; take your pick.)
Wasn't this one of those "forbidden" conspiracy theories, censored from most social media, while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?
In short a few prominent people claimed it was racist to suggest that China's research or wet market contributed to the origins of COVID. They were mistaken but with the highly politicized environment, it helped distort opinions at a critical time. The claims of racism have since been demonstrated to be at least partly false (that is, there is a legitimate case to be made that China's researchers or wet market did contribute to the origin of COVID, and that China's leadership hid most of the evidence that would be used to make a case).
Conflation of very different factors. Animal origin was always going to be the most likely explanation, so wet market tracks. Lab leak after secret gain of function research is much more of a speculatory accusation than the existence of wet markets.
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.
There were very good arguments that Covid (probably) leaked from a lab as early as April 2020 at the latest (and in January if you were a virologist included in top-level NIAID emails). HN largely went along with the shunning of debate, which helped give everyone the impression there was "zero evidence" of a lab leak compared to solid evidence of zoonotic origin, which was simply never true.
Censoring views that it came from a lab leak with zero evidence isn't any better. In fact I remember being lied to by major news outlets at the time saying that the evidence points to a non lab origin.
There was a nucleotide sequence in the covid strain that did not show up in any of the proposed hosts or progenitor viral sequences, which is where leaked documents showed NIH (Fauci included I believe) discussing the non-natural origin of the nucleotide sequence. It's possible to search for articles about the Fauci NIH emails, and whether they mean anything scandalous.
Here's a technical article at NIH discussing the theory of no known natural origin for a nucleotide subsequence
This is an open access journal by two people whose publication history you can look up if you want to draw your own conclusions. Read the disclaimer at the top of the link. Don’t bootstrap its credibility by linking it to being at NIH (which does mean something) anymore than saying something found on Google is from the company itself.
Don’t imagine any bootstrapping of credibility is stated. It’s a citation to one article of many with no assertion otherwise. That’s how science discussions work.
I'm confused, do you mean the animal origin had no evidence either, but was favoured? But not having evidence for 5 years suddenly makes the other theory favoured instead?
So basically neither had real evidence, but one was favoured?
Animal origin does not contradict a lab leak however. Especially if you have a biolab studying coronaviruses in bats in the city identified as ground zero.
It does favor an accidental lab leak over a targeted weaponization and release, but it doesn't contradict a lab origin.
That is not true at all. Some scientists at the time suspected a lab leak, talk of which was deliberately shut down.
"Dr Robert Redfield, who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Trump administration, told Vanity Fair that he received death threats from fellow scientists when he backed the Wuhan lab leak theory last spring.
"I was threatened and ostracised because I proposed another hypothesis," Dr Redfield said. "I expected it from politicians. I didn't expect it from science."[1]"
The US State Department were told to not to explore claims of Gains of Function research:
"According to an investigation in Vanity Fair magazine published on Thursday, Department of State officials discussed the origins of coronavirus at a meeting on 9 December 2020.
They were told not to explore claims about gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab to avoid attracting unwelcome attention to US government funding of such research, reports Vanity Fair.[2]"
We may never know the truth, but its clear that there was politics being played since the beginning of the pandemic to obscure the truth, and not just by China.
Wasn't it? Most of the earliest cases had a link to the market, many of whom were vendors including the very first known case. The early cases which had no known link lived/stayed clustered around the market. The market sold live wild animals which were known reservoirs for the previous coronavirus break (SARS).
There was also no evidence against it. If there is neither solid evidence for nor against something I find it perfectly reasonable to apply the balance of probabilities. At least as long as you qualify your statement with a "probably".
And with the main competing theory (covid spreading from a wet market in a city that contains a biolab) also being consistent with the hypothesis that it was an accidental lab leak, to me the balance of probabilities always seemed to favor the lab leak hypothesis.
Yet saying that Covid probably originated from a lab leak was once branded as dangerous misinformation, with seemingly no evidence to support that claim
At the time, there was essentially a 50/50 chance it was a lab leak or from a wet market. The issue with saying it was a lab leak at that time is that you are essentially gambling the US's relationship with China should it come out that it was a from a wet market. Also, a lot of the discussion regarding the lab leak theory early on seemed to me like it wouldn't be sated even if the US presented sufficient evidence that it was from a wet market.
It was forbidden since users were banned for talking about it. That is what is meant by forbidden. When an authority exercises their power over you to stop you.
> while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?
Exactly right. Remember any comment daring to question the authorities was shouted down to oblivion. Anyone daring to question lockdowns or other draconian measures were met with fire and brimstone. I lost a lot of respect for HN during Covid.
I feel it’s important to not forget the level of adherence to authoritarian rule that infected the population during Covid. Even places like HN were not immune. “Just following orders” was SOP even here.
The furin cleavage site in the virus was synthetic. The peak prosperity guy blew the lid off of this in early 2020. I guess that was a "conspiracy theory" though?
I think this is unfortunately a vindication for the conspiracy theorists and a massive failure for all the journalists/TV show hosts of the mainstream media who openly mocked/refused to investigate this possibility back 2020.
The trust in the media was already low before this and I can't imagine that this news will make things better.
We can conclude nothing, except that humans do stupid stuff and usually conspiracy theories are incorrect. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Do we actually know if NIH was doing gain of function research (on Corona viruses) in the Wuhan lab? It sounds like another right wing conspiracy theory but if people have high quality sources for this being true I’ll happily change my mind.
The demonization of the Ecohealth Alliance is one of the more depressing aspects of the response to the pandemic.
EHA has been warning for decades that a coronavirus pandemic is likely, and that governments should be taking steps to prepare for it and to make it less likely. Then, they're proved right, but instead of society thanking them, they're subject to a politically motivated witch hunt, with the aim of distracting from the US government's disastrous pandemic response.
It's begging the question to claim they were proven right. Sure, they were proven right in some respect, but if the research itself caused it (and let's be real, it did) then they were proven right in a manner that doesn't really speak well of their record. And yes, they were influential in arguing for continued grant money to study coronaviruses. They were also influential in arguing against the Obama administrations restrictions on gain of function research and seem to have sought ways around the restrictions (we know from comments on the DEFUSE paper). They didn't publicly disclose the DEFUSE paper, a whistleblower in the DoD had to leak it. It is relevant because it suggested adding a FCS to natural coronaviruses to make it more virulent to humans. It seems like as soon as a virus with FCS appeared on the scene, their first reaction should have been "oh no, did someone do that research we proposed somewhere? We have to tell someone!" -- but, alas, no. Let's keep crying that they're being demonized, though.
The scientific evidence that the outbreak began at the market is overwhelming at this point, and there's never been a shred of evidence for the lab leak.
If you think otherwise, then you have not been following the scientific publications on the subject for the last 5 years.
So yes, EHA has been proven right, and you're hounding the very people who dedicated themselves to warning the world about the threat of a pandemic.
This is a fascinating exhibit. To effectively summarize favorite take on Covid, “the peasants will go to their graves before they admit they were fools”.
But the fact checkers back in 2021 labeled the lab leak theory as false/misinformation. Meanwhile anyone who suggested it was labeled a conspiracy theory by the main stream media.
That's absolutely false. If people claimed that it was definitively lab leak in origin, it was (correctly) labelled as false. Can you cite me examples, with wording, of people positing it, but not claiming it outright, who were censored?
It's pretty wild to me that a good portion of commenters here seem to think that only one side can politicize Covid's origins when the cited article itself says that the conclusion predates the new administration.
The natural origin bitter-clingers are still citing papers that claim to lean towards natural origin with the thinnest possible evidence. I admit I'm not a virologist, but I am a bit skeptical that this community would be completely forthright with us.
I can't shake the feeling like there might be fire where there's smoke: the Chinese government has not provided access to the WIV's data, for instance. The Chinese government deleted the virus's genome sequence from GenBank before later releasing it publicly. The closest relative to Covid-19 in known databases is RatG13, a virus from bats that was discovered in caves thousands of miles away, a complex that the researchers at WIV had used to collect samples. Peter Dasnak of EcoHealth alliance had previously submitted a plan to the DoD to introduce furin cleavage sites to existing coronaviruses to do gain-of-function research (or some euphemism for GOF to evade restrictions), a proposal that was declined, but within which there are still comments extant where they discuss outsourcing the riskiest research to China. Peter Dasnak led the delegation from WHO to China but never publicly disclosed that he had, only several years earlier, been interested in research that would have produced a virus that very specifically resembled Covid. A small group of influential scientists and bureaucrats were discussing via email that it certainly appeared to be a lab leak to them until they met in person to speak with Dr. Fauci in February 2020, after which they abruptly stopped discussing the possibility of lab-leak and worked to submit the Proximal Origin letter to Nature that claimed a consensus among scientists that it must be natural origin -- based on the airtight logic that if a lab wanted to make a coronavirus it probably would have done it differently. Those authors did not disclose the influence of Peter Dasnak and Dr Fauci in drafting the letter. Subsequently, the US government used the existence of the letter as authoritative evidence of a natural origin in order to lean on social media companies to censor speech about the potential of a lab leak. Meanwhile, the fact remains that in order for Covid to have made a jump from an animal species, it would have to be extant in the population of an animal species -- or a variant clearly one mutation away would need to be. It's been 5 years and we haven't found an animal with Covid.
Of course we'll never get the smoking gun because the data you'd need -- the experimental data from WIV -- is likely gone forever. Why would that be? Why wouldn't a leading research center on coronavirus virology -- perhaps the foremost in the world -- hide its records when the big event that represents its entire reason for existence -- a coronovirus pandemic -- has shown up in the world, conveniently on its doorstep? Shouldn't that be their time to shine? Are you going to blame that on Trump's rhetoric? Why hasn't all of Baric's data from UNC been released to the public yet, then?
It is really pretty amazing to me that many people will likely go to their grave thinking "oh, no, no scientists released a paper that says the natural origin is still a live theory, I don't have to listen to any of this conspiracy nonsense" simply because they can't live in a world where Trump was right.
> oh, no, no scientists released a paper that says the natural origin is still a live theory
Not to mention that the main paper cited for this was written by ... Daszak, yet again. And it was endorsed by 26 other people who all had conflicts of interest, under a Lancet editor who since admitted that he knew Daszak had a massive conflict of interest, which wasn't admitted publicly for a year.
Ain't it odd that media never really ran with that story? That neither Dems or Republicans had much to say about Daszak? It didn't too viral on social media, there were never any TV interviews where they showed people reacting to being told that, no documentaries about the flaws of the Lancet paper and how it was pushed; it was never part of any drive to change policies, etc. Seemed odd to me anyway.
The 18-hour video debate
The Rootclaim debate was structured over 3 days with 3 thematic blocks;
* the first block was about the geographic location and the evidence for the Huanan market versus the Wuhan Institute of virology being where the virus came from
* the second block was about the SARS-CoV-2 genome and whether its genetic features more likely arose in nature versus gain-of-function research
* the third block was about probability; how can the evidence be grouped and what probabilistic assumptions should be taken to accurate reflect odds of the evidence occurring
Each side first got 90 minutes to lay out their cases, then another 90 minutes together to respond to questions.
No matter how you slice it, this is a serious effort and time investment, as the preparation alone of materials and research into it probably consumed hundreds of hours from speakers and judges alike.
For anyone who believes that the pandemic was a "natural zoonotic spillover," please read the following sections of the DEFUSE proposal, highlight copied below:
"Synthesis of Chimeric NovelSARS-CoVQS: We will commercially synthesize SARSr-
Cov glycoprotein genes, designed for insertion into SHCO14 or WIV16 molecular clone
backbones (88% and 97% S-protein identity to epidemic SARS-Urbani. These are BSL-3, not
select agents or subject to P3CO (they use bat SARS-CoV backbones which are exempt) and are pathogenic to hACE2 transgenic mice. Different backbone strains increase recovery of viable:viruses identification of barriers for RNA recombination-mediated gene transfer between strains™. Recombinant viruses will be recovered in Vero cels, or in mouse cells over-expressing human, bat or civet ACE2 receptors to support cultivation ofviruses with a weaker RBD-human ACE2 interface. "
In vitro testing of chimeric viruses: All chimeric viruses will be sequence verified and evaluated for. i) ACE2 receptor usage across species in vitro, ii) growth in primary HAE, iii) sensitivity to broadly cross neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies that recognize unique epitopes in the RBD. Should some isolates prove highly resistant to our mAB panel we will evaluate cross neutalzation against a cited number of human SARS-CoV serum samples from the Toronto outbreak. Chimeric viruses that encode novel genes with slower potential will be used to identify SARSr-CoV strains for recovery as full genome length viable viruses.
In vivo pathogenesis: Groups of 10 animals will be infected intranasally with 1.0 x 106 PFU of each
vSARSr-CoV, clinical signs (weight loss, respiratory function, mortality, et) followed for 6 days..."
S2 Proteolytic Cleavage and Glycosylation Sites:
... We will analyze all SARS-CoV S gene sequences for appropriately conserved proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for the presence of potential furin cleavage sites".... Where clear mismatches occur, WE WILL INTRODUCE APPROPRIATE HUMAN SPECIF CLEAVAGE SITES AND EVALUATE GROWTH POTENTIAL IN VERO CELL AND HAE CULTURES."
I apologize as the copy and paste from a PDF is not ideal. If anyone ever wanted a smoking gun, this is it. The WIV proposed to build SARS-COV2 in 2018/2019. The key point is that when someone proposes this type of research, they often have already done the work and the funding will be used to generate the next result needed for future funding.
Also, one item that the world conveniently forgot was that half of the specialists in this field believed passionately that the only way to prevent the next Pandemic was to create super viruses in the lab (this is in the public record). Given the extensive history of lab leaks and suspected lab leaks, this path is absolute and complete hubris and folly. The same folks who were pushing this agenda (and the DEFUSE proposal is filled with little notes as to how certain rules could be skirted) were the folks who immediately claimed that it was absolutely impossible for this to be a lab leak.
This proposal was shopped to a number of different US agencies in 2019. This means that there were likely dozens of individuals in multiple agencies who reviewed this proposal and said absolutely nothing when the pandemic broke.
There is no evidence or plausible scenario to support this, but it’s an incredibly useful story for the incoming regime to promote for the purposes of hampering consensus reality.
It also gives conspiracy theorists and low-trust communities a bone to chew on, since UFO hysterias are proving to have an increasingly short shelf life.
There is no evidence. Period. Just a dozen contrived situations that “might have been” being aligned for political ends.
Meanwhile in reality they’ve all but named the goddamn specific animal that brought it from the zoonotic pool and introduced it to mankind.
Handwringing about the existence of a somehow malign bio lab in a city LARGER THAN NEW YORK that has DOZENS is preposterous. There’s no evidence, no scenario, no whistleblower, no documentation, nothing. It’s a chew toy for low-information busybodies who need this to be an evil foreign plot.
And it’s boring and sad, particularly when America’s first dictator is installing a profoundly corrupt lunatic who is here to overturn germ theory.
From xAI: Gina Haspel (Director of the CIA) who was the, allegedly authorized bonuses for six CIA officers to change their assessment from a lab leak to a non-lab source for the origin of COVID-19.
Sources documenting this: National Review, New York Post & Daily Express US.
US government lies, and then calls "misinformation" on people who call out the truth. Now they are being held accountable to go back to the truth. Which is why the CIA is now switching 180-degrees from a Lie to the truth (non-Lab to Lab).
Pretty safe to say this is a politicized nothingburger:
The announcement of the shift came shortly after Mr. Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency “on the sidelines” of the debate over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Mr. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology....
Another senior U.S. official said it was Mr. Ratcliffe’s decision to declassify and release the new analysis. There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift. Rather it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing over for months.....
To boost the natural origins theory, intelligence officers would like to find the animal that passed it to a human or find a bat carrying what was the likely ancestor of the coronavirus that causes Covid.
Similarly, to seal the lab leak, the intelligence community would like to find evidence that one of the labs in Wuhan was working on a progenitor virus that directly led to the epidemic.
Neither piece of evidence has been found.
Fauci has been preemptively pardoned for gain of function research (lying or funding), so the bureaucrats can now pander to Trump. Anyway, we have always been at war with Oceania and China is now our enemy! Next week the NYT will use the term "Wuhan Virus".
This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now? I feel like I'm watching The Godfather.
FWIW, the pardon doesn't mention gain of function research. (https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/dl). This pardon applies every bit as much to him parallel parking while attending a Chief Medical Advisor meeting as it does to gain of function research.
> This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now?
No; this is 100% new. This is in no way a normal Presidential transition of power.
It's crazy for a Trump loyalist to complain about "politicization" of this process when declassifying and releasing a report with no hard or new evidence is quite clearly a political decision.
The US is clearly setting up China to be the next Big Enemy, the USSR 2.0. The US establishment expects--and arguably is fomenting--economic and possibly eventual military conflict with China. The "lab leak" declassification neatly fits into that narrative.
We may never know the truth or it may take decades to find out.
There's really only two likely theories here: zoonotic origin and lab leak. There are many variants of "lab leak" but the most likely is that it was accidental. It's more fringe to claim it was intentional. This sort of thing has happened before [1].
There is circumstancial data for this like China not cooperating with a WHO investigation back in 2020 and 2021 and a Wuhan Institute of Virology virus database in SEptember 2019. To my knowledge, that has never been recovered or examinted by external parties. My theory is, like every government (including the US), China doesn't want to know the answer to this question. There's literally no upside. Would you want to be the official who oversaw a leak like this? Would you want to be in charge of the government at that time? Nobody wants that. Governments love ignorance.
The zoonotic origin is still more likely but it has the obvious problem that we haven't (yet) identified the host animal. Also, Wuhan is quite far from the bats that might be the likely source.
It might be a complicated origin, such as a person or animal being infected with multiple strains and a replication error creating the virus from multiple sources.
But the main point here is we're going to see a lot of anti-China sentiment being drummed up by the US in coming years. This is bipartisan too.
I have some opinion on this: despite whatever was the source, the reaction that was made by countries (i.e. complete global lockdown of population) means that they were scared as hell. And I haven't seen any govt scared so much on any flu that came out in my life, however some of them were baddest in my life (not mathematically speaking, I know that every set has a supreme element, what I mean that flu can be dangerous to people incl me, with asthma)
Based on their reaction we may know that they either knew something very bad (i.e. failed experiment) or were suspecting something so bad that could, at least in their theory, kill the population or massively decrease it.
In other words something was fishy and they overreacted.
https://archive.ph/DaBme
> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.
---
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.
So... I'm not certain this is a development worth trusting. Maybe it really did originate from a lab! But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.
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 wrong.
Go watch "A Bridge Too Far" (WWII). Read the story of the Son Tay raid (Vietnam). The many overestimates of Soviet capability during the Cold War. The underestimates of North Korean missile capability. Sometimes uncertain intel really works, as with the attack on the bin Laden compound in Pakistan.
Retrospective intel questions may never be answered. It's known that the US atomic bomb program had another Russian spy who is mentioned by code name in VENONA transcripts, but that spy was never identified. There are still arguments over whether the explosion of the Maine in Havana harbor in 1889 was an accident or a hostile act. It's still not clear why Turret 2 of the USS Iowa blew up in 1989. Huge amounts of effort were expended on all three of those questions, all of which were important at the time, and yet they remain unsettled.
[1] https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Article-Principles-...
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.
There's not an equivalence between post-Cold War Democratic and Republican administrations manipulating intelligence. My evidence is the Iraq War and Valerie Plame.
Except those guys are all democrats now. My evidence is the Hunter Biden laptop CIA letter.
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 Republicans. Also many "Democratic" signatories signed a letter against Obama when he revoked Brennan's security clearance, so how in the tank can they really be? Also the main way the Hunter Biden emails were "authenticated" was via DKIM, which would allow you to mix fake emails in with real emails (we recently learned you could do this with $8 of server time). Too farfetched? The Russians did it to Macron in 2017. Also let's not equate creating a false basis for a full on war with 51 intelligence professionals raising doubts.
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 has no credibility and are just trying to get us into war with Russia. That letter never should’ve been taken seriously by real democrats.
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 identity is invested in how well they do their job. But the attempt to generalize this out to the parties themselves rankles, and is trollish.
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 because of, in part, the current hawkishness of that part of the leadership.
I would clarify that there’s a disconnect between what the party leadership thinks (Schumer with his “we’ll pick up two moderate republicans for every working class white we lose”) and the base. My dad is a straight ticket Dem voter and he stayed home this year, and Cheney and Blinken were part of the reason. But I also think the base is a little in denial about how many Romney 2012 folks are now in their coalition. Obama-Trump voters were 13% of Trump’s coalition in 2016. They were obviously replaced by a bunch of Romney-Clinton voters because the race was close overall.
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.
No. That’s not the full quote. The full quote was minutes long and rambling. But you removed this for instance that was near that quote “You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'Oh, gee, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy”.
Cheney comes from a family of chicken hawks and lots of people have had similar quotes about them.
I don't think this was as boneheaded as you both do. I think the Cheney political legacy overall is odious, but none of Liz Cheney's recent supporters are there for her foreign policy; it's because she sacrificed her political career to stand up to Donald Trump, which is admirable, and because Trump took the bait and cast her as an enemy of the party, which raised her profile. The idea was that there was some material faction of the GOP that was persuadable by dint of Liz Cheney's mistreatment by GOP nominee.
The Cheney thing reminds me of people's attitudes towards John McCain. His history in the GOP: also not great. But in the end, he did have some principles; it's not unreasonable to celebrate them.
None of this is really germane to the thread, I just get irritable when directly partisan Democrat vs. Republican politics end up here.
I'll mea culpa: I try pretty hard to not backseat campaign manage. My defense is I was posting after midnight and wine and I'm trying to find a balance between not suffering right wing talking points and offering olive branches. I do agree we should celebrate the kind of courage Cheney showed, especially given the kinds of threats she's experienced since.
I mean, you can't expect me to paste multiple paragraphs as a quote here. If you think Trump's clumsy ersatz nod to "Fortunate Son" contextualizes putting Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, OK then. If you can find elected officials threatening to execute other electeds who were pro-Iraq War (so, so many people), go ahead and post it.
But the quote is clearly referring to a theater of war, not a “firing squad.” Why misrepresent the quote?
I think reasonable people can disagree about this. Trump is pretty good with the "flimsy excuse", like "look I said 'stand back' as well as 'stand by'" or "hey I said 'peacefully and patriotically'". Probably whether you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on these kinds of things is some kind of political ink blot test, but to me, he definitely has the instinct and pattern of "say it without saying it".
Most leaders are aware that people might cue off of what they're saying and do something very bad, so they stay far away from rhetoric like this. Trump (deliberately IMO) does the opposite for political gain. So even if I agree this is about combat, what's the difference? He's once again engaging in his pattern of dehumanizing his opponents and advocating violence against them, which has led to actual violence.
Elsewhere you pointed out this is pretty similar to Vietnam War protests. I think generally that's right (again "Fortunate Son"), but there are some differences. First is there isn't a draft; we have an all volunteer force (though there's a big discussion to be had about economic exploitation and multi-generational military families). Second, she wasn't even in Congress during Bush 2 and AFAIK had no policy making power where she was at State.
Do I love Liz Cheney? Hell no; her policy positions are one disaster after the next. I believe she should be vigorously opposed in every election she runs in. But do I think she should be subject to wink wink "sure would be a shame if something happened to Liz Cheney" rhetoric from maybe the most powerful person on Earth? Absolutely not; no one deserves that.
Like many Trump quotes, this isn’t an “ink blot” test:
> I don’t blame (Dick Cheney) for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual, very dumb. 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.
She has a rifle, and there are nine other guns pointed at her. When are people facing a firing squad given their own weapon? The quote is literally a textbook “what if the war hawk’s shoe were on the other foot” trope.
I know I skipped my usual edit sweep and my post above was pretty wordy as a result, but TL;DR I think giving her a rifle fits with Trump's pattern of "say it without saying it". If you don't agree, I'm fine conceding this is about combat. Trump is still dehumanizing and advocating for violence against his political enemies. The reason other politicians avoid this kind of rhetoric is they don't want to take the political gain at the risk of causing violence. Despite his rhetoric having led to violence multiple times, Trump continues to take the risk. Draw whatever conclusion you want from that.
I think the “pattern” is that Trump speaks plainly instead of using corporate HR speak and people read whatever they want into that. But regardless, we shouldn’t be more upset about how Trump is criticizing the war monger than we are about the war mongering.
I'm a Democrat; I'm upset about both.
There's a difference between talking like you're an LLM trained by focus groups and endangering your political rivals with your rhetoric. A lot of Democratic senators are/were good at that. Don't make yet another false equivalence here.
Trump threatened to invade and/or take over Denmark, Mexico, Canada and Panama.
> 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.
Isn't this practically an American election tradition at this point? The designated Republican at the DNC, and Democrat at the RNC?
Yes. And they chose a war hawk instead of all the others they could have grabbed.
It seems to me they chose the highest-profile Republican who would serve the role.
I understand democrats have kicked all the social conservatives out of the party but I didn’t think it was retroactive! I was a registered Democrat until 2017. I went to Wingdings in Iowa in 2019 as a Tulsi Gabbard supporter.
Hawks are by no means the majority of democrats, but Romney 2012 types are the margin democrat voter. And while the majority of democrats aren’t hawks, the party’s dominant principle as of late seems to be trusting credentialed experts, which makes them suckers for the intelligence community.
Romney 2012 types are obviously not the marginal Democratic voter.
The Harris 2024 coalition is a lot closer to the Romney 2012 coalition than democrats want to admit: https://x.com/patrickjfl/status/1854645395856482568. There’s been a huge swing of college educated whites, who Romney won decisively, to Democrats.
Also, Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney suggests that her campaign thought that Romney 2012 voters were their marginal vote.
A truly intelligent person is independent and not attached to a political part. By doing so, this latches to the "Yes men" mentally where those in power are always right even when wrong and probable through the most simplistic means. [0] Polarization leads to stupidity and ignorance to real world statistics and out comes, even in medical treatment.
Self identifying with a political party erodes critical thinking skills. Unless you can criticize the stupidity of all, including those you vote for, you are limited by your own stupidity.
Self identity ignorance is prominent in religious cultures where the church must be protected. The congregation will protect a priest or pastor that is sexual predator and pretend their actions didn't take place to protect their community. They loose their identity when their church is harmed, same with latching to political parties.
[0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216179120
Majoritarian democratic systems require group coordination to achieve desires outcomes. Political parties are just a vehicle for doing that. If you care about outcomes, you should have some party identity, because that facilitates compromising less important goals for more important ones to achieve a coalition that can carry a majority.
I agree parties shouldn’t be so ideologically rigid, and for the most part they aren’t. Jamie Dimon and AOC are both in the same party, as are Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard. People who refuse to work within a party unless the party agrees on every issue are simply not interested in outcomes. That’s fine too!
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?
> 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.
Haha well, I think we're in the same cohort? I was a senior in HS when 9/11 happened. I've worked in Democratic politics in some capacity for over a decade, although I recently took a break to have kids. I know Russia's our enemy because I was working on the Hillary Clinton campaign when Trump asked them to hack into Hillary's emails and watched them actively trying to hack us; and they've since compromised a bunch of (dumb, like crunchyroll) accounts of mine.
I don't want to parse through everything here, and you definitely won't find me defending the intelligence establishment. All I'm saying is what tptacek said up there: stretching the Hunter Biden laptop letter signatories into "Democrats" stretches too far, and if that's the evidence you're bringing against the Iraq War and Valerie Plame you're coming up short. You have a big platform here; I think if you were a little more judicious about the claims you make you could do a lot of good, and I think we need that right now.
We must be the exact same age. You saw what I saw. How could you trust Clinton on foreign policy after that? I don’t think she even regrets the Iraq War, and wishes we were still in Afghanistan. She sounded like the Weekly Standard the way she went after Tulsi Gabbard for trying to keep us out of a war in Syria.
I don’t know what’s in the inner minds of other democrats. But out of the two parties, they’re cuddling up to all the ones who have been wrong for the last 50 years about foreign policy.
> We must be the exact same age.
See I knew there was something I liked about you haha.
Hopefully this doesn't come across as deflecting or whatever (HRC has a lot of takes I disagree with, I think she would have been a very good president, but I'm more of a Warren or Booker guy). I think being an effective leader in the US at the level HRC was for decades is a lot harder than people really know. I'm not talking about the mechanics (though those are also hard), rather I'm talking about the effect it has on you as a human. I think the act of building a mental model of public opinion is fundamentally corrupting, but if you don't do it, you'll almost certainly lose power to someone who does (or you could be in a super safe seat, but that's not an option for everyone). You probably also think a big part of your job is representing your constituents, so there's a huge amount of balancing divining and representing their positions vs. leading them to where they might not necessarily be. The stakes are also bananas: you're talking about the lives of tons and tons of people. This is all very hard; I can't really overstate how mindfucking it can be.
So to come back around to your point, let's take an incredibly cynical view and say HRC authorized the Iraq War because that was the obvious power politics move. It's not wrong to consider, "I'm pursuing values I think are important, I'm effective at it, the odds of someone doing better or being more principled than I am are very low--after all this game is by itself deeply corrupting to even the best of us, taking a stand here has almost no upside, I do want to be president one day, OK I vote yea". This all really reasonable, then you throw on the pile her changing her vote would've made absolutely no difference, and she's the junior Senator from New York where 9/11 happened, and at least I start having a lot of sympathy for her vote. I don't mean to diminish the full on tragedies Iraq and Afghanistan were, but these are the kinds of stakes and incentives we're working with here.
So I try to be pretty kind to electeds, even on both sides, because the incentives are truly nutso. Maybe you're Trey Gowdy and you don't love having 5,000 Benghazi hearings, but you've got this plum committee assignment you don't want to lose, so here we go. Maybe you're John Boehner and you don't love being asked vaguely racist questions about Obama's birth certificate constantly, but you're finally Speaker and this is the zeitgeist. Anyway, I earnestly think we urgently need some kind of deep governance reform or whatever. It's almost impossible for the system to produce good outcomes. I'm not saying get the torches; I am saying start putting it in party platforms and get candidates on record about it.
Finally, you ask how I could trust her after her Iraq war vote, but Democrats are pretty used to not having our policy preferences represented in office. Again while I think HRC would have been a very good president, there are other people I'd have preferred. But that's what primaries and party politics are for, and that process is... imperfect. I voted for Obama in the '08 Iowa caucus largely because of her Iraq War vote and--hilariously--I liked Obama saying you wouldn't need an individual health insurance mandate (oh to be young). But, to resume a partisan stance, I think the Republican party--and Trump in particular--is dangerous enough to merit fierce and vigorous opposition in a general election. It's hard for me to imagine a Democratic candidate that was so bad I'd stay home on eday.
> I don’t know what’s in the inner minds of other democrats. But out of the two parties, they’re cuddling up to all the ones who have been wrong for the last 50 years about foreign policy.
I'm bad at foreign policy and mostly stay out of it. But my uninformed opinion is that while Democrats haven't done a bang up job, Iraq and Afghanistan aren't on us, and Trump's banging on NATO and creating some kind of comic book villain council of strongmen seem like obvious bad ideas. Strong disagree that Dems are now taking direction from Iraq/Afghanistan architects; I just don't see any evidence of that at all. Biden withdrew from Afghanistan at great political cost, after all.
So I guess it depends on why you think the Iraq War was bad. To me, the Iraq War was bad because, even if the intel had been correct, the notion that you could create a democracy in Iraq was fundamentally foolish, along with the idea that it was America’s job to do it.
To me, the Iraq War was a predictable disaster rooted not in bad intel, but the mistaken concept of liberal universalism (emphasis on universalism, not liberal). Clinton is a smart, probably well meaning person. But what she shares with George W. Bush is liberal universalism, and that’s a bad and dangerous idea. It’s been a bad and dangerous idea that’s gotten us involved in countless non-defensive wars over the last 50 years.
In that respect, the Democratic Party today is a lot closer to the bad old GOP than it was 20 years ago. Between Ukraine, helping overthrow Assad, what Blinken allegedly did in Pakistan, rabble-rousing about “human rights” in Bangladesh—the Democratic Party today is full of liberal universalists. They’re not literally the same people who got us into the Iraq War, but the ideology isn’t any less dumb today, and will result in similar disasters.
What Trump understands that democrats don’t is that non-Americans aren’t Americans. The conceit underlying the Iraq war is that Iraqis were Americans. If you overthrew the dictator keeping them down, they’d build a democracy. And it was a monumental error. And the same is true for Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc. This is a conceit that liberal universalists cannot let go of.
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” George W Bush.
The Iraq war was not about bringing democracy to Iraq. It was bad intel about a nuclear weapons program in Iraq. The intel for a nuclear weapons program was weak and flimsy and the disagreement within the intel community was strong, but the White House pushed hard to support the pro-nuclear program viewpoint.
While I agree we should not have gone into Iraq, I disagree that it was an inevitable disaster. Iraq was a disaster because there was zero post invasion plan in place. The government was purged of “regime loyalists” which was basically everyone. This did two major things that shaped the country. First, it put thousands of police and soldiers out of work, giving the later insurgency a large employment pool of trained personnel that needed money and resented the US for destroying their lives. Second, it created a security vacuum directly after the invasion, creating crime waves throughout the country when it needed stability. Iraq was a primarily urban society used to central governance (unlike rural/tribal Afghanistan, for instance) and it is likely it could have transitioned to a new government.
While it is dangerous to think everyone can be like Americans, it is just as dangerous to think Iraq and Afghanistan are basically the same, or that all interventions and goals are the same (nation building in Afghanistan vs minimizing genocidal civil war in Syria).
This is the only comment you made so far that made sense, with clear assertions and references. Everything else was unfounded or inflammatory without any concrete assertion, which is why it vibed like "Fox News talking points."
While I do think what you describe under the label of "liberal universalism" mostly makes sense, I do challenge it's consistency. By all measures, some countries are trending towards becoming liberal democracies. Why shouldn't we help them?
Ukraine being a viable liberal democracy, a useful geopolitical ally, and in opposition to a destabilizing and dehumanizing autocracy, makes for a perfect candidate for support beyond naive global liberalism. It is in our interests in many practical terms, separate from ideology.
Ukraine I think is a pretty good example of where we've learned our lesson. We're working with allies, we aren't involving US or NATO troops, we're broadening our coalition and isolating our adversaries, etc. I think we could do better (Russia is super winning the propaganda war inside the US), but it's a positive trend from Iraq/Afghanistan.
I 90% agree on the foreign policy stuff. I'd even go further and say advocates for invasion never considered Iraq was actually pretty good for a country in that region. Not only were they a key counterbalancing force to Iran, they were relatively religiously and culturally moderate (I'm sure there's a lot of nuance here; again I'm pretty ignorant). Advocates full on ignored or misrepresented intelligence about Iraq's WMD program though (I'm pretty sure even HRC ignored it or at least weighed it way too lightly).
I agree the Iraq War was premised on deeply faulty assumptions and complete naïveté about other cultures. Governments grow out of culture (a popular saying is "people tend to get the governments they deserve", which is maybe a little insensitive re: stuff like minority rights but not otherwise totally wrong); you can't really just poof a democracy into being; you can't just assume people will adopt your values. I do think we're way more circumspect on this now than you do though, I mean we haven't done another Iraq/Afghanistan. I'll also say that even though Republicans snicker at it, Jake Sullivan's foreign policy for the middle class is a pretty big departure for the establishment. That's a substantial positive change.
I also agree you can't 100% import "Americans". But, my worry with Trump's rhetoric here is that he ignores you can 99% import Americans, the children of the remaining 1% are fully assimilated, and that this has always been the case. There's so many ways we could make our immigration and asylum systems more humane and sustainable, but the GOP has ratfucked our immigration and asylum systems for decades to win elections (this is their move: break a part of government and then be like "look government is broken"... well yeah) so things will be trash for the foreseeable future.
You can't tell someone you respect them in the same paragraph where you're accusing them of bad faith.
Maybe, but I think we're all subject to the temptation to make bad arguments to get one over on people we disagree with. I can respect some things about someone and not respect other things. I guess this comes from being low-key terrified I've been as bamboozled as conservatives have, and I hope if I started parroting various propaganda someone here would have respect enough to tell me respectfully. But, also I get the internet makes cynics of us all.
Baldly accusing someone of bad faith is serious business, and I believe against the rules of this forum. It is way worse than calling out what you believe are bad arguments, as it's a slur against someone's integrity and character. Rayiner doesn't deserve that.
I might be misusing bad faith, but honestly I don't think so. I felt like trying to equate the Hunter Biden Laptop letter with the Iraq War was way too polemic to be good faith, designed solely for gotcha purposes rather than to continue or deepen a discussion. I think a good faith discussion would have had some standard by which they were categorizing Hunter Biden laptop letter signatories and wouldn't have equated the letter with all the intelligence fraud behind the Iraq War. I think it's not unreasonable to expect someone with Rayiner's platform on this site (and intelligence) to know that stuff. Maybe (probably?) you clearly take good/bad faith more seriously than I do; I think it's really easy to prioritize winning the argument or mindshare vs. participating in a discussion that benefits us all, and I think that comment had all the hallmarks of it. I don't think Rayiner's a bad person, just that he--like all of us--sometimes could do better (I'm also guilty of this, probably even recently who knows). I'm fine not agreeing on this, but I try pretty hard to criticize behavior and not people, and I think I've held to that standard here.
EDIT: I reread and I definitely gave the impression that Rayiner posts in bad faith a lot. I don't think that, and I apologize.
Also in one article I read the intel or reading hadn’t changed? Just the reporting is open now
> 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?"
Not quite, and you can't possibly capture all of that paper in that sentiment. For instance, there's this excerpt:
> People’s judgments and willingness to accept analytic findings are framed by multiple factors, including backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs. Every decisionmaker has cognitive biases, including theories that guide them (e.g., the liberal international order), beliefs about how the world works (e.g., the arc of history bends in a particular direction), or sacred beliefs (e.g., all things happen for a reason). Thus it is essential for the analyst to understand as much as possible about the decisionmakers and the environment in which they operate.
Military intelligence will happily give you high confidence leads that are entirely wrong because, by all appearances, the information came from a source in the right place with the seemingly right motivations when in reality they can be playing 4D chess better than the analyst.
The confidence level can only be expressed in finite ways but it can be analyzed in almost infinite, one of them being that the information needed to develop "high confidence" has disappeared and the window of opportunity to gain insight has long passed. Personally speaking, I do not think we will ever find out the origins because a whole gaggle of people with various interests had a vested interest in a particular answer at the time. This is the byproduct of a democracy and bureaucratic system which has not been functioning nominally for quite some time - doubly so now.
I would go so far as to describe the events at the time as parallel construction.
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 assessment and previous assessments
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 corresponds to something like 20 years (?) of evolution.
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.
Although it's not specified in common dictionary definitions...
"...zoonosis (a disease communicable from animals to man under natural conditions)." —Laurie Garrett, _The Coming Plague_ (Ch 14, section IV)
Which is naturally how the word is used virtually all the time.
Transmission from lab animals kept for study in a biolab, you could argue either way. Transmission from humanized lab animals purposely subjected to serial passage is not really zoonosis in any reasonable sense.
Most accurately, lab leak and spillover event are not mutually exclusive theories.
...and the most likely scenario is that it was leaked due to a mistake. Sloppy lab procedures. If anything, this should point to MORE regulation around GLP principles with more transparency and oversight, not less. And while I see some merit in determining potential risk, it should be only done with computation and computer modeling now, not an actual virus.
Are the FBI or DOE assessments public? What I last read in the peer-reviewed public literature seemed to point strongly to animal origin and not from a lab.
> Are the FBI or DOE assessments public?
Yes (DNI) [1] and no (State) [2].
[1] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Declass...
[2] https://oversight.house.gov/release/classified-state-departm...
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.
I think you're referring to this paper (or other similar analyses):
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(24)00901-2.pdf
It found that viral RNA and DNA from potential zoonotic hosts (palm civets, raccoon dogs) occurred together in some samples from the Huanan Seafood Market. But there's no question that infected humans were present there, and nothing in their study can distinguish an infected palm civet from a healthy palm civet near an infected human.
A different study by Jesse Bloom found that of all the animals present, viral RNA correlated most strongly with DNA from "catfish and largemouth bass":
https://academic.oup.com/ve/article/9/2/vead050/7249794
So were those the proximal hosts? Obviously not, since SARS-CoV-2 can't infect fish--the point is that this is all just noise. Live, unquestionably infected proximal hosts were found for both SARS-1 and MERS, within about a year of the first human cases. For SARS-CoV-2, we still have nothing beyond those tortured metagenomics.
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.
They sold lots of animals, but they found no viruses in the animals themselves right? Sampling found it in the environment, but not in the animals?
I might be wrong but I swear I read they never found cov 2 in an animal that could transmit to humans
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06043-2
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.
I have pretty much given up on trying to discuss this rationally on any Internet forum. The only people who seem to engage have very strong priors that are impervious to new data. But it's been a year so I guess I needed a reminder to myself in the futility of the endeavor
> 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.
You're just repeating the conclusions of papers that made ridiculous leaps of logic based on circumstantial evidence. For example [1], which is the likely source of the argument you're (mis-)remembering, bases this conclusion on:
1) case histories from reported, hospitalized cases, which were probably incorrect (i.e. they just assume that the cases they know about are, in fact, the first cases), being "geographically centered" on the market in December (not November) of 2019 [2].
2) positive environmental samples near animal stalls in the market, of which they found two strains.
Neither of which is dispositive of anything, and more an indictment of the motivated reasoning of the academic literature at the time than anything else. If you bother to read any of the subsequent analyses, you'll find that there are a bunch of different lines of evidence (genetic and case reports, at the least), pushing the date of the first infections well before December.
In short, the first/WHO case reports were probably wrong, the virus likely broke out earlier and was circulating in Wuhan before these samples were taken. If that's true, it wouldn't be surprising, at all, to find positive environmental samples in a food market, and the tortured logic of this paper would fall apart.
[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
[2] Seriously. Not joking. Here's the "methods" they used for this oh-so-rigorous analysis:
> The 2021 WHO mission report identified 174 COVID-19 cases in Hubei Province in December 2019 after careful examination of reported case histories (7). Although geographical coordinates of the residential locations of the 164 cases who lived within Wuhan were unavailable, we were able to reliably extract the latitude and longitude coordinates of 155 cases from maps in the report
They then take this data and blend it through a kernel analysis, wave their hands, and voilá! This this The Science (tm) upon which your confidence is based.
...oh, and by the way: the market in question just happens to be right next to the Wuhan CDC, and a major city hospital [3]. Weird, right? I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Certainly nothing worth including in a putative "probability analysis" of geographic distribution.
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-Huanan-Seafood-Ma...
Your guessing of my sources are wrong, thus your message is a strawman fallacy from beginning to end.
There are studies pre SARS-CoV-2 about coronavirus in natural environments (like bat caves), and they found motifs that we found also in SARS-CoV-2. Zoonotic infections are very common and specially for coronavirus, so it should be our first guess unless overwhelming evidence shows that the virus was originated in a lab (leaked or engineered).
Maybe it was a lab leak, but there is not stronger evidence for that, than for the zoonotic event.
Here is your bad science:
- H0: The origin is the lab.
- H1: The origin is a naturally ocurring zoonosis.
As evidence for H1 cannot convince you, you accept H0 without any proof. Great science! Problem is your H0 is wrong. H0 should be the most easy explanation, which is a zoonosis that has happened before thousands of times, and for which we have also evidence (you call it circumstancial, as this was a trial) like similar sequences found in bats nearby. You must get better evidence to prove the unusual lab leak hypothesis. Your H0 and H1 are reversed.
Well, I cited a canonical paper making the argument you're advancing, so if it's not that, then...
As for the rest of your comment -- oy, talk about a straw man fallacy. There's absolutely nothing I said that requires the false dichotomy you've presented between H0 and H1 (i.e. there are other plausible hypotheses that aren't as extreme as the ones you've presented). Also, I don't "accept" H0. I just can't rule it out.
> H0 should be the most easy explanation, which is a zoonosis that has happened before thousands of times, and for which we have also evidence
Neither hypothesis is easy (i.e. likely). Natural, human-optimized zoonosis is incredibly rare in viruses. Making humanized viruses in a lab, starting from natural viruses, is actually straightforward. But when one of the world centers for doing that kind of work, on very similar coronaviruses, was right there in Wuhan...
You provided no references, and you've made your claims in generally nonstandard terms. Given that, I don't think it's reasonable to criticize other users for guessing incorrectly what you meant to say.
> There are studies pre SARS-CoV-2 about coronavirus in natural environments (like bat caves), and they found motifs that we found also in SARS-CoV-2.
You're doing it again here, but I think you're probably referring to Andersen's Proximal Origin:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
But nobody disputes that SARS-CoV-2 evolved mostly in bats; the question is whether its path from bats to humans included a trip through the lab. No genomic evidence can distinguish between a novel natural virus and a chimera of two novel natural viruses. As Davis Relman wrote:
> Some [that's Andersen] have argued that a deliberate engineering scenario is unlikely because one would not have had the insight a priori to design the current pandemic virus. This argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that two or more as yet undisclosed ancestors i.e., more proximal ancestors than RaTG13 and RmYN02) had already been discovered and were being studied in a laboratory—for example, one with the SARS-CoV-2 backbone and spike protein receptor binding domain, and the other with the SARS-CoV-2 polybasic furin cleavage site. It would have been a logical next step to wonder about the properties of a recombinant virus and then create it in the laboratory
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2021133117
The WIV had the biggest collection of novel sarbecoviruses in the world.
The disease might have already been global at that point, it doesn't exactly have conspicuous symptoms. Wuhan was a place where somebody thought of looking for anything unusual.
Doctors in Wuhan first identified the pandemic due to the unusually high volume of sick and dying patients, not by any sophisticated means. There's no public evidence that the WIV was involved in the initial discovery of the novel virus. Zhang Yong-Zhen was the first to publish a genome, in Shanghai.
If the disease had already been global, then retrospective testing of wastewater samples, nasal swabs obtained for other purposes like the Seattle Flu Study, banked blood, and other stored samples would have revealed that. There were some scattered claims that it did, but none that held up very well under scrutiny.
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.
The peer reviewed literature is written and reviewed by the people who were funding/doing that kind of GoF research, so it isn't a reliable way to decide what's true.
My priors include none of the agencies having expertise in epidemiology.
You are wrong, something that you could have easily checked yourself. There are many sophisticated epidemiology groups throughout defense and intelligence. It is a longstanding critical part of their mission, for a variety of end purposes.
While I am very skeptical of the lab leak hypothesis as an infectious disease epidemiologist, the DoE has a fair amount of expertise via the national labs.
Can you please share the reasons why you are skeptical?
A few reasons, though as I note in another comment, I'm not an expert in spillover events, my area of interest kicks in about a week later. So there's a few:
1) People I trust are skeptical, including people who are opposed to gain of function research. I've found Angela Rasmussen to be one of the better voices in terms of discussing the evidence for a natural origin, but she's far from the only one.
2) We have had two naturally occurring coronavirus epidemics during my career. A third is all but inevitable -- I wrote a grant in October 2019 suggesting a novel coronavirus as an example case for a modeling exercise, for example (sadly, said grant didn't get funded). So for me, there's a very strong prior on coronaviruses emerging as significant public health threats.
3) At the same time, I've come to distrust many of the voices who push the lab leak hypothesis, either because they're obviously doing so for geopolitical reasons, or because they've become addicted to being "the lone voice in the wilderness", despite it not being a risky position to take.
4) The lab leak hypothesis, in terms of evidence, relies on WIV, the Chinese Government, the WHO, etc. being broadly incompetent except when it comes to the characterization of the initial cases when SARS-CoV-2 emerged, which is arguably the hardest part of any outbreak.
> or because they've become addicted to being "the lone voice in the wilderness", despite it not being a risky position to take.
This frankly makes me distrust you; in 2020-2022 this was absolutely a risky position to take for most public figures, let alone those on academia, let alone those connected to epidemiology. This remains the only time and topic I've seen blanket banned from discussing across all major US social platforms. Try looking up what the vibe was like in 2020-2021 especially.
I got death threats for suggesting that mandatory vaccination for school kids wasn't well justified not from the people who wanted vaccination, but from the people who decided I wasn't sufficiently opposed to it.
That's obviously bad. Vaccination and COVID origins are different topics, though.
Opinions do correlate in the general public, and I guess that's why you've made that link. I don't think that trend holds among scientists, though--Deigin, Chan, Ebright, Bloom, etc. all have quite ordinary views on vaccine risk and efficacy.
Lol people were getting called racist for suggesting it was anything less than the spawn of a bat and an asian water racoon.
It still isn't even acceptable to acknowledge the (blatant) possibility that Omnicron was intentionally leaked because of low vaccine effectiveness.
Let's be honest, if their is a global conspiracy to spread disease I think it's to kill off the masses due to AI replacing jobs and lowering the amount of green houses gasses people produce.
Can you elaborate on point 4? Your comment is interesting but I don't entirely follow.
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.
I agree with that statement. Even with prior warning, and knowing the virus could be introduced only at an airport or seaport, Western public health authorities managed to trace approximately zero cases to their introduction. So it's hard to believe the same tools would succeed at the much more difficult task of tracing the very first cases in China.
That makes it odd that you're promoting an author who has claimed such evidence shows conclusively that spillover into humans--and not just a super-spreader event--occurred in the Huanan Seafood Market. I suspect that if you looked personally at the methodology behind the conflicted (Rasmussen's doctorate was under Vincent Racaniello, a longtime proponent of high-risk virological research) authors' claims, then you'd find them much less worthy of repetition.
I think her arguments are solid, I'm just not certain they're definitive. But I do find her presentation of those arguments to be both detailed and accessible.
You might not be certain they're definitive, but she is:
> There’s really no explanation other than that the virus started spreading in the human population at that market
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/13/angela-rasmuss...
The claim that the location of spillover can be definitively localized within hundreds of meters from epidemiological data is core to the predominant theory of natural zoonotic origin, from an overlapping set of authors including Rasmussen.
Theories of a research accident almost never assume such localization is possible, not least because the earliest known cases weren't particularly close to the WIV. (If anyone's claiming otherwise, they've probably confused the WIV and Wuhan CDC.) So it's odd that you'd correctly note the near-impossibility of that localization, but then cite that as evidence against unnatural origin.
This makes me think you haven't looked much in the details yourself, and two of your four points above are explicitly arguments from authority. If you did look yourself, then I think your assessment might change.
Doesn't the same difficulty of finding the first case also apply to the wet market theory?
Indeed, so it could be some unidentified third place. There are few labs and many other possibilities for people to come into contact with animals, so that third place was probably not a lab.
Yep.
My prior is that it is a zoonotic spillover event. Not necessarily that one, though there is some good evidence for it.
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.
The main database of samples and viral sequences of the Wuhan Institute of Virology went offline on Sep 12th 2019.
Satellite images of Wuhan may suggest coronavirus was spreading as early as August 2019:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52975934.amp
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/08/health/satellite-pics-cor...
Would it mean it was active earlier but a critical mass was needed to cause a pandemic? Or it evolved in humans while circulating Wuhan?
That's a smoking gun. And next month it was likely already circulating in Wuhan (https://www.reuters.com/world/china/first-covid-19-case-coul...), coincidence.
> A joint study published by China and the World Health Organization at the end of March acknowledged there could have been sporadic human infections before the Wuhan outbreak.
No, it doesn't. Quote from the article:
> Researchers from Britain's University of Kent used methods from conservation science to estimate that SARS-CoV-2 first appeared from early October to mid-November 2019, according to a paper published in the PLOS Pathogens journal.
>no similar reports
Covid detected in wastewater samples
December 2019 in Italy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7428442/
>November 2019 in Brazil: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20140731v...
They found covid in samples of the sewage system in SC state Brazil in November. 2 months before it came out of wuhan
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/saude/novo-coronavirus-ja-estav...
>March 2019 in Spain: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v...
Brazil recorded its first COVID death April 15, 2019. Initially taken as a data entry error by some, data for 2019 is still published nearly six years after the fact.
https://transparencia.registrocivil.org.br/dados-covid-downl...
Spain paper was not peer-reviewed.
November Brazil could happen because December is when rumours already circulated in China and October is when it was out in Wuhan already per your link.
April Brazil I don't know what to tell you, no sources support the wild claim that it was NOT a data error.
> 2 months before it came out of wuhan
Source? I bet it came out earlier. It was circulating in Wuhan before the pandemic according to WHO. Just people in China who are more likely to get infected are less likely to travel abroad (social class/sanitary conditions/etc) but maybe one person brought it out.
I believe these agencies may have other kinds of intelligence data such as satellite photos of the (empty?) Wuhan Institute of Virology carpark, spikes in mobile phone activity in the area etc. So assessments are made on more than just biological principles.
The hospital was full.
The institute would never be full.
There is no "bring your child to work day" in China.
Weird conflation, unlikely... uunless you mean to muddy the waters and sow dis-information.
I would argue you are sowing disinfo and I honestly dont know what point you are trying to make. Spikes and/or significant reductions in activity as indicated by external data sources, and particular the timing thereof, will obviously be very useful for determining the sequence of events.
The hospital, sure.
Why would Wuhan center being empty represent anything?
People don't rush to a random (unrelated) building when they get sick at the "market".
Coincidence, surely?
What are the chances of having a specialized infectious disease center next to where that type of disease spontaneously emerged?
More or less likely than a bat having sex with a panda possum?
No one, not even the cowardly academics, believed it.
Is Rasmussen really in favour of a GoF ban and destroying the academic value of the background of the majority of her professional friends in the field? Cause I can't really find her calling for a ban, quite the opposite really.
This is the problem with virology, it IS GoF. Expecting virologists to be objective in this is expecting the impossible, like expecting the WHO to apologize for sending Daszak as head of the fact finding mission. They were either THAT incompetent or THAT self interested in maintaing GoF/virology, damn the truth.
I suspect virologists still see themselves as guards on the wall and that we can't handle the truth. Which we already know from the early emails is how they thought early on, why should I assume their propensity for dishonesty has changed?
The virus evolved in an AIDS patient.
“as an infectious disease epidemiologist”
Yet you propose no thoughts of your own. You only base it on your belief in people around you and your disbelief of people you assume are political. This sounds not scientific at all. Are you really an epidemiologist?
I was honestly hoping for more given that you’re supposedly an epidemiologist.
I base it on my evaluation of the arguments of those people as an epidemiologist. And their expertise - as I've said, my expertise focuses on a different aspect of outbreaks, with its own theories and methods, and I know enough to recognize that addressing this requires a good deal of specialized knowledge.
Well, that sounds more reasonable, but the prior comment seems to be relying mostly on reputation and political viewpoints rather than the arguments themselves.
My priors include all the agencies (the Intelligence Community, arguably the deep state) having ulterior political and personal motives. Does noone remember the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax that the CIA cooked up for GWB?
I would not trust any of these agencies to provide objective findings or conclusions, there is a lot of power on the table that's at stake.
The CIA did not cook up the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction hoax. Paul Wolfowitz had to create an entirely new intelligence agency with hand-picked analysts to get that result, because the existing agencies refused to make that claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans
According to Iraq general, WMD were moved to Syria about 6 month prior to invasion, then Syrian government used them against rebels.
HANNITY: So he had them.
SADA: Yes.
HANNITY: Where were they? And were they moved and where?
SADA: Well, up to the year 2002, 2002, in summer, they were in Iraq. And after that, when Saddam realized that the inspectors are coming on the first of November and the Americans are coming, so he took the advantage of a natural disaster happened in Syria, a dam was broken. So he — he announced to the world that he is going to make an air bridge...
HANNITY: You know for a fact he moved these weapons to Syria?
SADA: Yes.
HANNITY: How do you know that?
SADA: I know it because I have got the captains of the Iraqi airway that were my friends, and they told me these weapons of mass destruction had been moved to Syria.
BECKEL: How did he move them, general? How were they moved?
SADA: They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.
“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” George W Bush.
We went into Iraq because the White House latched on to insufficient and contested intel of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq (the yellowcake and the aluminum tubes). It wasn’t about some rusted old artillery rounds with chemical weapons in them.
The CIA was very skeptical about the WMD story and there were lots of leaks that made that clear.
Seriously, I remember the Bush admin going after the wife of a CIA operative by leaking her identity after he spoke out about the war intel being bullshit. As someone who was following the Iraq war from the left side and pretty disgusted by it it definitely seemed like it was being pushed hardest by the GOP with anti-war information coming out of the CIA or even military. Granted leakers don't represent the opinions of an agency but this narrative that the CIA was the real villain (not that they aren't) that hoodwinked the poor GOP strikes me revisionist whitewashing.
I feel that that could've been an honest mistake too.
The intelligence networks there were weak, and if people were talking about it, they may have assumed wrongly that there was something there.
Politicians hunting for excuses to do what they already want to do though, is definitely a thing.
In the run-up to the second Iraq war there were a steady trickle of articles documenting the corruption of the intelligence process.
>Politicians hunting for excuses to do what they already want to do though, is definitely a thing.
Just to be clear: The people in charge are the CIA, not GWB. GWB was simply the right useful idiot at the right time in the right place.
That is very literally the opposite of what actually happened.
I don’t know where you are getting your information from but it’s absolutely incorrect.
It was Cheney specifically who was relying on Chalabi whom the CIA had repeatedly dismissed as a fabricator which is what was used as evidence.
Here’s an actual account from someone in the room that lays out the entire situation. https://youtu.be/5iNrGhmr5p0
> I feel that that could've been an honest mistake too.
There were a lot of indications that it was wrong even at the time, like the inspectors’ reports. We knew about the unreliability of the dodgy dossier and how baseless Khidir Hamza was. The satellite evidence was sketchy and the rest was contradictory. Al-Qaeda was also not there and we also knew that. Let’s not rewrite history: there is no certainty in intelligence, but anyone not in the CIA’s pocket knew it was most likely wrong, a far cry from what you need to legitimately attack a country.
Everyone is a Bayesian these days; it's become so fashionable to throw "priors" around like it means anything.
My prior includes neither agency can provide genetic analysis which would be the easiest way to convince a professor of virology that this theory has any merit.
Why would you think that?
It's obviously false if you just think about it, but you can also do some searching if you need some authority to tell you.
I have previously shared this little known, but factual, event on Hacker News. It is simply a Wikipedia article--the 1977 Russian Flu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu). This is not my statement, note this well dang, and read or argue with the editors of Wikipedia if you want (not me), but the following statement stands firm:
"Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian flu have prompted many researchers to say that the virus was released to the public through a laboratory accident, or resulted from a live-vaccine trial escape"
> Reanalysis of the H1N1 sequences excluding isolates with unrealistic sampling dates indicates that the 1977 re-emergent lineage was circulating for approximately one year before detection, making it difficult to determine the geographic source of reintroduction. We suggest that a new method is needed to account for viral isolates with unrealistic sampling dates.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2887442/
I will have to have a discussion with the editors of that page.
Read carefully, "...have prompted many researchers..." To change the text, one would need to change the minds of all of the many researchers, and have them administer retractions. Argue over what happened in that year, I guess, but the fact remains that the genetic clock of viral mutation does not stop unless a virus is kept in storage. Also, was the year of mutational change accrued from 1976 to 1977 or from 1918 to 1919? Either way, no question, the virus that caused the 1977 Russian flu spent time in a lab.
Exactly. The paper linked in the grandparent is questioning the exact date of reintroduction, not whether reintroduction occurred. The usual guess seems to be
> the result of vaccine trials in the Far East involving the challenge of several thousand military recruits with live H1N1 virus (C.M. Chu, personal communication)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm1141
That part is genuinely uncertain though, and probably unanswerable. Historical surveillance was weak, and those who do have information may not wish to implicitly confess to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
No one is seriously questioning that it spent ~20 years in a lab freezer. There was some speculation about virus frozen in the Arctic or such; but since that's never been observed to happen any other time, and multiple labs were known to be working with frozen and thawed virus, I think that's pretty abandoned.
Tangentially, risks like that are why I'm really frustrated-with/exasperated-by certain mRNA-vaccine scaremongers: Ones who act as if older techniques were already fine and sufficient.
Ex: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/vaccine-derived-p...
It can both be the case that old methods have risks and new methods have greater risks, eg, underestimating mRNA distribution in the body, leading to mRNA replication in heart tissue, and higher than expect dangerous side-effects.
In general, people prefer understood risks to new risks because the system is better adapted to them — both biologically and politically.
I have family that have worked on developing NBC equipment for the military. The first thing they said when covid was spreading was that it was most likely from a lab. That was before anyone in the news was saying that. So an independent first-look assessment by someone with experience, followed by later finding out that there was in fact a lab there, has me heavily leaning towards it being true. But it doesn't really change anything unless there's hard proof. Even with hard proof, do you think China would pay for anything? I don't think so.
You should realize experience in a tangentially related field and there being a lab somewhere in the area is not the same as insight and evidence. That’s like saying that if a new flu came out of Atlanta, the fact the CDC is there proves it came from a lab, and must be true because someone’s janitor cousin who worked there one summer said it was true.
“Low confidence” means that there is a lack of evidence and the statement is ambiguous; that it could be completely true, or completely false. The only lower confidence would be direct evidence that it is outright false. Given, as you said, how nearly impossible it would be to prove true, wouldn’t you think it equally nearly impossible to prove false?
Believe what you want, but even the CIA doesn’t lean on the side of you being right.
There's a paper from 2014 that tried to estimate the annual chance of a pandemic from a lab leak. They estimated it at 2%.
I assumed they overestimated a bit for effect and put it at around 1%.
Pandemics have historically happened somewhere around ever 100 years. What's that annual probability? 1%.
So if you knew NOTHING else, from a bayesian standpoint, if you have to differentiate a once in a 100 year spillover or a lab leak, you would put it at 50/50.
Now add in the fact that the outbreak occurred right next to a BSL lab. Now add in the fact that this lab specialized in the exact type of virus that caused the pandemic. Now add in the fact that lab workers at that lab got hospitalized with respiratory symtpoms in November. Now add in the fact that China responded with tons of secrecy, pulled down their genomic database of known viruses in their Wuhan lab, Xi issued a proclamation in February that they were revamping safety at BSL labs to prevent leaks, and that the virus in question is remarkably similar to one they found in 2013 thousands of miles away, and add the fact that there was a proposal to modify cornaviruses to have a furan cleavage site to perform gain of function research and that the COVID virus has just such a furan cleavage site, and this virus emerged remarkably well adapted to humans very very quickly. Now how about the fact that China pushed the wet market theory even after they'd figured out that probably wasn't the case? Now add in the fact that China let SARS escape from the lab TWICE in the previous decade.
How does that affect your truth value? All the facts above push the probalistic truth value toward a lab leak. There are a few facts that push it back a little the other way, but there aren't very many that I've found.
> Now add in the fact that the outbreak occurred right next to a BSL lab.
The outbreak was likely to happen in a large population center near where the bats were. The actual probability that it went north and happened in Wuhan was probably 1-in-12 or so. And the first time there was a coronavirus spillover and pandemic, it happened in Guangzhou. So we rolled 1d12 once and didn't get a 1 and then rolled it again and did. Not that mind-blowingly improbable.
Also, not surprising that the lab was in a major city somewhat central and closer to the bats than e.g. Beijing. Because that is what it was set up to study.
> Now add in the fact that lab workers at that lab got hospitalized with respiratory symtpoms in November.
This has been asserted by a story in the NYT, but never proven and denied by WIV. There's literally no evidence of this.
> and that the virus in question is remarkably similar to one they found in 2013 thousands of miles away,
Still roughly a thousand base pairs and a few decades of evolution away from SARS-CoV-2. You can't get from RaTG-13 to SARS-CoV-2 in a lab, and there's no evidence they ever had live virus RaTG-13 in the lab.
> and that the COVID virus has just such a furan cleavage site
It had a novel PRRAR furin cleavage site which had never been seen before. Not one that humans would have ever guessed. That is actually strong evidence AGAINST it being lab-made.
> Also, not surprising that the lab was in a major city somewhat central and closer to the bats than e.g. Beijing. Because that is what it was set up to study.
As we've discussed, the greatest abundance of related viruses occurred around Yunnan and Southeast Asia. Dr. Shi herself didn't expect spillover in Wuhan:
> We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210727042832/https://www.scien...
Wuhan was "closer to the bats" only in the sense that New York City is "closer to the alligators" than Boston. There's little reason to choose that phrasing except to deliberately mislead.
I've warned repeatedly that the failure of competent scientists to engage with the real possibility that their research caused this pandemic will result in a blunt and damaging backlash. We're watching that damage now in real time.
> As we've discussed, the greatest abundance of related viruses occurred around Yunnan and Southeast Asia. Dr. Shi herself didn't expect spillover in Wuhan:
And SARS-CoV-1 occurred in Guangzhou. The closest known relative virus (WIV16) is 96% homologous to SARS-CoV-1 and was found in Yunnan as well, which is over 1,000 km away from Guangzhou. Either the range of the bats carrying these coronaviruses is much larger than anyone in the world (including Dr Shi) knows about, or else the "blast radius" of the animal trade in China is considerably larger than anyone knows about.
I think the usual theory for SARS-1 is spillover from bats to other non-human animals outside Guangzhou. The virus was then brought to Guangzhou by wildlife traffickers, like in the live infected civet cats found in markets there. A similar conduit is possible for SARS-CoV-2, but we still haven't found that proximal host.
I don't think spillover of SARS-1 from bats in Guangzhou is commonly proposed. If you've seen it (and didn't just include that option for completeness), then I'd appreciate the reference.
I agree that unexpected things sometimes happen. Nobody expected spillover in Wuhan pre-pandemic though, and the WIV absolutely wasn't situated based on any such expectation.
You're not clarify anything I said or telling me anything I don't already know.
The SARS-CoV-1 virus moved over 1000km from Yunnan to Guangzhou.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus moved over 1000km from Yunnan to Wuhan.
This is the same fucking problem. One way or another we know it has a solution that doesn't involve WIV due to the SARS-CoV-1 spillover.
If we can explain SARS-CoV-1 without WIV then we can explain SARS-CoV-2 without WIV.
> I don't think spillover of SARS-1 from bats in Guangzhou is commonly proposed.
I never suggested that was definitely what happened, and I kind of doubt it, I think the wildlife trade is more likely. At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if the range of the viruses in bats is larger than we know right now.
> Nobody expected spillover in Wuhan pre-pandemic though
Which doesn't mean it didn't happen.
> and the WIV absolutely wasn't situated based on any such expectation.
The central location made Yunnan a lot more accessible than if WIV was in Beijing, and puts it around about the same distance from Yunnan as Guangzhou is.
I'm aware that you already know everything I've written here. I agree that spillover from bats in Wuhan is not impossible (nature is big and mysterious), but your implication that proximity to such bats affected Dr. Shi's choice of working location just isn't correct. She can be wrong about a lot of things, but she can't be wrong about her own intentions.
I guess we're just endlessly arguing the same uncertain technicalities now. I miss the days when actual new information was becoming available, and appreciated the chance to discuss with someone informed with opposing views. It would be nice to confidently learn the truth someday. Perhaps the new administration will release something, but I think it's much more likely they'll just poison the topic politically even more.
To me it barely moves the needle, specifically because as you have said we have found other remarkably similar viruses in the past.
We have known about coronaviruses for almost 100 years, and we have been studying them due to their dangers for atleast 60 years, and it has likely existed since before humans could be called human. And it has been shown to be a highly virulent numerous times in many different forms. No matter how low the chances of winning the lottery, when literally billions of people are playing it daily, it is only of matter of when, not if, it turns into something more dangerous.
Now none of that comes anywhere near proving anything, but the fact that we have had multiple coronavirus infections in the past, many of which have come dangerously close to pandemic level infections, makes a natural occurrence seem the most likely source.
On top of all that, even if it did come from a lab, why does that matter? A handful of extra lottery tickets were sold and someone won from that pool. This isn't some bioweapon modified virus purposefully bred from a farm of human subjects, you would never be able to get away with such a program in a large publicly known virology lab and we aren't knowledgeable enough in viral genetics to make something like that without testing it on farms of people. There are no markers indicating engineering it in any way that we are actually capable of. And worst case it is something a mere handful of unguided generations away from a sample that was pulled from the public already and the lab got "lucky" with a random mutation on a petri dish they were studying.
You're not saying it, but you're obviously starting with a very different bayseian prior than my 50/50.
As someone that makes forecasts for a living, I'd like to see what you're assumptions are about the base rates there.
As for how the facts produce modifications to the base rate, personally I think that a virus identified in a cave over a thousand miles away popping up in a very urban area right next to a BSL facility that specializes in researching that type of virus moves the needle toward it being more likely a lab escape. You seem to feel otherwise and I don't really agree. In particular, if you take the converse: suppose the virus wasn't known at all to man, you'd probably argue it also pushes you toward the conclusion that it was a natural spillover. (In which case, I'd be in agreement.) So I don't think that argument is really a logical one.
Your objection in the last paragraph, describing this as a "bioweapon modified virus" is really a classic strawman, and since it isn't the argument I was making I see no reason to indulge it. It is indeed a relatively ridiculous notion.
Also, just for precision, my own assessment of the truth value there is about 70% in favor of a lab-leak.
Its origin is at a huge meat market full of both hunted and farmed produce and animals both live and dead from all over the country and attended by thousands of people daily. I find that far more convincing than the fact that there was a virology center in an urban area, there are virology centers in tons of large cities and all of them hold samples of many corona viruses because they are incredibly common. The fact that the one that potentially escaped just happens to be incredibly dangerous would seem like an astronomical coincidence if it wasn't released on purpose, and there are many problems with that idea. But the fact that a market full of both live and fresh slaughtered animal products ends up being the origination point of a dangerous virus does not seem coincidental at all, just a mere matter of time.
A Bayesian prior of 50/50 seems high to me. It assumes that 50% of new disease variants come from lab leaks.
In the last few decades there have been 1-2 confirmed lab leaks per year. And they're often thing like "we found a vial of smallpox we didn't know we had" not new diseases.
Nature very capably produced colds, flus, a bunch of nasty diarrhoeal diseases, the many and varied sexually transmitted diseases, the hemorrhagic fevers, and so on. For "some new disease variant that I don't know anything about", my prior would be more like 1/99 lab leak to natural origin.
Maybe bio weapons could be tested on organ-on-a-chip/body-on-a-chip systems?
Not that it will fit a western centric ideology but there is zero mystery with people going into hospitals in Nov. It would be surprising if it weren’t so.
It’s flu season and Chinese don’t go zoom their Dr, they go and check into the hospital.
In other countries, it would be considered sociopathy to go to work with a flu, but we’re all Real Americans so anything different means… conspiracy.
I'm actually aware of the cultural differences there. Going to the hospital is not usually the same thing as being "hospitalized" though, and it would be relevant for us to make that distinction to determine how much that tidbit pushes us one way or the other. I had originally read "hospitalized" some time ago, but i just checked the intelligence briefing and it definitely does not indicate actual hospitalization.
So that intel doesn't push us one way or the other very much. Although perhaps the absence of known lab-worker hospitalizations is an argument against the lab-leak though.
If one were either the director or a senior leader of a more-or-less covert biolab doing research that is definitely supposed not to be discovered, would you have done your job if you had not established a procedure for medical treatment of sick or infected employees using local and probably covert resources? - And likely including local isolation of infected or potentially infected people? Whether or not people from this supposed type of biolab turns up at public hospitals does not seem to indicate much.
If something very like smallpox, thought eradicated, suddenly showed up in some random town, it might be surmised that maybe some animal reservoir for it somehow slipped through the gaps. But if that random town happened to be Atlanta, home of the CDC, known to have some of the few samples of smallpox to still exist, then the relative chance of a lab leak must be thought higher. That's basic Bayesian reasoning. It doesn't prove anything but pretending the proximity to a relevant lab doesn't shift the odds at all is absurd.
Smallpox, yes. But another SARS variant (even a somewhat more aggressive one)...
Obviously, it's not impossible.
But, there were even RNA samples from Covid found in other countries, months before Covid really spread in China.
I imagine the main problem with the superspreader event there was more that enough people ended up in the same hospital, and thus it was easier to identify that Covid was a distinct virus.
If it was crawling around in a less dense population, its spread would've been meh, and the hospitals might not even notice the spike much.
In fact, if a new flu came out from Atlanta I would immediately suspect an Emory grad student working in the CDC labs.
(Not to knock Emory students, I love them, but Emory has a relationship with the CDC and grad students can be cavalier)
Actually, it's more difficult to prove a wild origin than a lab origin, because labs have papertrails and witnesses.
I never said I was right. I said it makes a lot of sense and I believe it's probably true.
This is the sort of thing that neither of us can prove to the other at this point. You seem awfully aggressive to prove something though.
>because labs have papertrails and witnesses
If you have access to the labs. Second hand information and extremely delayed visits to labs in a one party state are a whole other matter.
Chinese lab paper trails are as trustworthy as Trump’s toilet paper roll trails if we are being honest.
> That’s like saying that if a new flu came out of Atlanta, the fact the CDC is there proves it came from a lab, and must be true because someone’s janitor cousin who worked there one summer said it was true.
Well in this case it’s more like if if a new flu burst onto the scene with the following all being true:
- the epicenter of the outbreak being within a few miles of the CDC
- the CDC working specifically on gain of function for new strains of the flu
- the CDC being cited in whistleblower reports to the outbreak for poor safety and security protocols in the years prior to the outbreak
- inability to find the natural reservoir the virus crossed over from, despite years of searching in the biggest virus hunt in human history
- the closest naturally occurring relative of the virus being found in bats that are only native in areas hundreds of miles away (in this analogy, something like the upper Midwest), that also happen to be among the species of bats being studied by the lab at the CDC
- several CDC employees being among the earliest discovered cases, so early that they occurred before the disease was even picked up in the radar and were only discovered when searching for the earliest cases
- the US government preventing any none government health officials in or out of the area of the infection for several weeks after the outbreak
- the sole other identified potential outbreak location, the wet market nearby, was completely sterilized by the US government within the first two weeks of the outbreak, over the protests of international investigators who hadn’t yet been given access to it, thereby preventing them from ever being able to confirm or deny if it was the actual ground zero of the outbreak.
“Low confidence” doesn’t mean there is a lack of evidence, it means there is a lack of direct evidence. Problem is there is a lack of direct evidence for any alternative theory as well. There is, however, and overwhelming about of circumstantial evidence supporting the lab leak. The CIA isn’t going to issue accusations like this without a smoking bullet, which they will never have.
The reality is that had this occurred under any other administration, the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t be so taboo. But Trump is a serial conspiracy theorist and pugilistic nationalist, so the second he floated it everyone on the left, which includes much in academia, immediately disputed it in a knee jerk reaction, despite not having much evidence either way. Since then what evidence exists has increasingly supported the lab leak theory, but many are walking back from entrenched positions. If this had happened when Obama was president I don’t think anyone would be pushing back on this with the evidence that exists.
Actually, my first though would be that there were other outbreaks, but we only documented the one in Atlanta because the CDC happened to be there.
We should expect that the first outbreaks documented are those that happen to be close to facilities capable of identifying and documenting them.
wiv was not documenting them. Hospitals were documenting flu like cases increasing at exponential rages. And there are hospitals everywhere
Coordinating medical information is notoriously hard, particularly when the government doesn't want to acknowledge something. Let's take Florida as an example.
There was a point at the beginning of the covid pandemic where the governor was declaring that the state only hand a few cases, and there was not great need for concern. The pneumonia death rates for the previous months showed a different story. For the previous two months the death rates were 10x higher that normal. Nobody seemed to have noticed that at the state level.
Most outbreaks follow a pattern where the disease shows up in small pockets for many years before it becomes an epidemic. HIV is an example. The first HIV death in the USA happened in 1969. The oldest confirmed case in Africa is in '59. The oldest suspected death in the US is '52.
Crossover tends to happen multiple times, and there is no reason to expect otherwise with covid-19. The problem with finding these cases is that it happened in an area governed by an authoritarian ruler. Authoritarians don't want to admit that there are things out of their control, and by inclination they conceal bad news, or news that makes them look like they're less than omnipotent. They shift blame rather than dealing with problem.
The love of the lab theory in the US seems to be driven by the same desire to push the blame on someone else. It takes the focus away from the incompetent response.
there's a 19 bp sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent (which preceded covid-19 by a decade). now an exact match of that length isn't impossible, but which is more likely? that this managed to be exactly correct on accident? or some grad student was told to just copypasta every furin cleavage site in the database into a GOF library and surprise surprise the most virulent form that became a pandemic came from the sequence that is engineered to be efficient.
any scientist that has any molecular biology wet experience will tell you this is exactly what they would have done (though us researchers would probably not have pulled from the patented BLAST sequences, since that selector is turned off by default by the NCBI)
> there's a 19 bp sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent
Sigh. Here's the first line from the patent: "The present invention provides a cDNA of a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus".
You don't think that two coronaviruses just might have similar structural proteins?
No. The patent in question: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9587003B2/en
The article: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/virology/articles/10.33...
The sequence (reverse complemented) matches positions 2751-2733 of sequence ID 11652 attached to the patent: https://seqdata.uspto.gov/seqdetail?docId=US09587003B2&publi... - as the other person said, it's located in the S1/S2 furin cleavage site, and produces no BLAST hits outside the SARS-CoV-2 lineage.
It's not entirely clear to me when the sequence was incorporated into the patent - it doesn't look like it was in the first revision. But it looks like it was added before 2020.
The whole theory still has gaps (even if we assume someone was searching specifically within that patent, what would a screen look like to single out that sequence? It would have to be very high throughput and use very sophisticated modeling), but it's interesting.
no screen necessary. you create a bunch of dnas by robot building from scratch every FCS known to man. the "screen" is "this is the guy that hapoened jump out of the test tube and cause a pandemic". more of a selection than a screen i guess
If SARS-Cov-2 was from a lab, what about the original SARS?
Generally though, China is somewhat better suited to producing pandemics, because they have a larger and more dense population within which a disease can spread.
SARS-1 was found in wild animals, had a long period in which it adapted to human hosts instead of being immediately well adapted, didn't have any weird artificial looking RNA sequences, and didn't emerge right next to a lab experimenting on coronaviruses.
Interestingly it was also clearly airborne and able to spread long distances in aerosols moved by air currents. Investigators traced those air flows in some cases to explain movements of the virus. Yet despite being literally called SARS-2 the WHO and other self-declared sources of expertise all denied that this was possible, and attacked people who pointed out that it was. The desire for lockdowns and masks to be perceived as credible outweighed prior experience with similar viruses, turning those who tried to learn from history into pariahs.
> If SARS-Cov-2 was from a lab, what about the original SARS?
And MERS. It’s not like coronaviruses causing epidemics were very surprising at the time.
If I said I had cousins that were bankers, I am not sure that it would make me more credible to talk about finance. I mean - to the people who care about expertise.
>That was before anyone in the news was saying that.
May be in the west? It was certainly well publicised in other regions.
I had a Chinese colleague in January of '20 saying it was obviously a leak. I hadn't even heard of Wuhan before, and he told me there is a bio lab there.
And what does that tell you? I could probably find 10 people in every country on earth that claim COVID-19 originated in a lab there. I don’t think being Chinese is a good qualification for determining where COVID-19 came from.
You're right of course.
This gentleman works in a US national lab, graduated top of his class in a top Chinese school and has friends that, at the time, worked in the Wuhan lab.
He, while very proud of being Chinese, was very critical of what he perceived his countrymen's lax safety standards. Myself, I can't judge that as I am not Chinese or an experimentalist so I deferred to his expertise and experience.
> But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.
Yes, the annoying thing is that "the truth about covid" literally only matters to culture war grievances, it has no relevance whatsoever to the actual world. If it was a lab leak, then China needs to improve their BSL-4 safety... but they need to do that anyway[0]. If it was zoonotic, then they need to clean up the wet markets... but they need to do that anyway. The true origin of covid makes no difference at all, and I wish these people would just come out and admit this is all domestic political peacocking.
[0]: and so does everyone else, for that matter. The US has also had several close calls with BSL-4 leaks; if covid did originate from a lab leak, the fact that it wasn't from an American lab is just sheer dumb luck.
If it were a lab leak then the people especially fearful and distrustful of gain of function research would feel vindicated and try to use that to shut down existing research programs. I don't think that group of people is meaningfully divided along partisan lines, and outside the professional class probably includes everybody.
Conversely, if it were a natural outbreak then that bolsters the case for continuing gain of function research as before. Such research is precisely why we were able to identify the threat and within weeks assemble a vaccine, at least on paper. (Granted, the arc began long before 2019 with a through-line of research going back to the 2002 SARS outbreak.) And it's why we've many other advancements. Creation of CRISPR and related technology emerged in part out of gain of function research with viruses. Gain of function is a critical tool in testing hypotheses about how foundational molecular machinery works, and viruses are a convenient research model for exploring and testing ideas in that space.
But I'm not sure the origin should matter to that debate. And I'm even more sure it probably won't matter, even if we agreed on a definitive answer.
Whenever you have an institutional failure, you need to do a root cause analysis to fix the problem. That includes Chinese labs. That also includes health organizations who may have put aside their objectivity and tried to discredit a theory merely because they disagreed with the politics of those supporting it.
The wet markets were a super spreader event... Doesn't really tell you much about where it started (even if it has animal origin).
People just assumed that the wet markets were the cause of the problem, because they found them digusting (and wanted an excuse to blame it on the Chinese being evil).
In a less dense population, without many people going to the same hospital... You would just not have noticed Covid much.
Wow do we live in the same "actual world?" If we knew for certain that covid began in the Wuhan lab, it would be World War 3.
I get your perspective: an outbreak is an unfortunate byproduct of the risks necessary for scientific progress. No one couldve known how bad it would be. The damage is done, learn from your mistakes and move on. Very enlightened.
In the real world, people will lose their absolute shit. There would be near global demand for sanctions and reparations, and there's enough anti china sentiment that its a real possibility.
Backed into a corner, the world against them, they would have no other choice. It would be a matter of survival.
> If we knew for certain that covid began in the Wuhan lab, it would be World War 3.
1. why?
2. that attitude strongly disincentives the discovery of the truth. If that were true I would support a cover up!
"Why" because of all the latent anger and frustration from the mass death and pain of the pandemic. Its naive to underestimate it. How it unfolds, think WWI reparations from Germany.
"Cover it up anyway" pretty much. There's precedent for this, we never got the full truth about 9/11 either. To this day the 100 page dossier is off limits to the public, probably for similar reasoning. The USA wants to play the board opportunistically without regard for justice or public outrage. And then people wonder why the public feels abandoned by their government.
> "Why" because of all the latent anger and frustration from the mass death and pain of the pandemic. Its naive to underestimate it. How it unfolds, think WWI reparations from Germany.
Why is a lab outbreak worse than a wet market outbreak?
The same reason arson is worse than a wild fire.
Arson implies intent, leak does not
Intent is a good word, and the right question. What's the intent of a bio security lab? What's the intent of gain of function research?
Some say the intent of a firearm is self defense, as the intent of a nuclear bomb is a deterrent.
Finally, what role does intent play in the poker world championship?
And for record of the court, arson by negligence is a criminal offense.
As the article observes, “the new analysis … began under the Biden administration.”
The new administration has been in office a week. There is a political incentive to release it now, but they couldn’t have meaningfully created the analysis for political reasons in five days.
> 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 chance of holding China accountable on it. Parlour talk.
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.
Could be that too. But that’s not a flattering comparison!
They say that there is no new data. That they are just altering their choice for what assumption is more likely.
Supposedly because they've had more time to think about the conditions of the lab before Covid was released...
But really, nothing has changed except their biases. Nothing has changed on the solid evidence side.
Separately, if there were actual safety issues and stuff was leaking... Then we're incredibly lucky that it was something as tame as Covid, and not one of the more serious kinds of horrors that gain of function research has successfully produced.
What change in “biases?” You think a government agency put together a new assessment in four days?
Sure they could, they seem to be using chatgpt for executive orders so why not this.
This assumes operatives haven’t been working on this plan long before the regime took office.
Two things to note:
1) Multiple departments of the executive branch were saying this under Biden too.
2) The US gov’t funded the biological weapons research lab at Wuhan. Mr Cotton has been a senator for 10 years, and therefore was around when the funding was approved. So if he wants to find someone to punish, maybe he should look in a mirror.
Sources?
What is clear is that Ratcliff wants the lab leak theory to be true
That’s certainly motivation for releasing it, but he’s been in office for five days so the analysis being released was done under the prior administration.
And, as per the article, the Biden admin did order reinvestigations.
Because they didn’t get the answer they wanted. lol.
or maybe this is one of a thousand studies they performed, and they threw it out because it wasn’t found to be credible
Could be.
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.
I think people are missing one very sympathizable effect of this joint research, that it prevents either country from gaining an offensive edge from dual-use research that could be used for bio-weapons. You could argue that this has the benefit of preventing a bio-weapons arms race.
Vertiginous to think about the layers of unknowns.
There is nothing wrong with that. You should worry about those, who do such experiments secretly. (Russians)
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.
Seriously, wouldn't have it been appropriate to do just the minimalistic wikipedia search before contributing to this thread?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology
This lab was an international cooperation, from back in the days where there were such things.
This is an event that saw a lot of the world effectively under house arrest for two years. I think that trying to finding out the underlying reason behind that is a reasonable goal.
Looking for reparations is secondary to that, but maybe not entirely unreasonable either; not that it'll ever happen.
It's also pretty clear in the article that the newly appointed head of the CIA is very politically motivated to endorse this conclusion.
I remember watching the movie War Games (1983 film) and even as a kid when they announced nuclear missiles had been launched and "confidence is high" I thought "That's a really good way to indicate that there are indications that something might be happening, AND indicate how much you believe it when you talk about things that you can't confirm."
Any new theory needs to match evidence for SARS-COV-2 being present in European wastewater during December 2019 [0] [1].
Maybe it leaked from the lab; maybe it was released? As far as I understand (but tbh, I have not kept up as much with immunology news) the alternative theory of the virus hopping from another species hadn't been confirmed, as no reservoir had been found. Does anyone know if that had been the case?
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53106444
[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7428442/
Sigh again this is where we were ending up.
> So... I'm not certain this is a development worth trusting. Maybe it really did originate from a lab! But the real goal of the constant back-and-forth over where it came from is not about finding the truth; that much seems quite obvious to me.
0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books. 1. China reacted asif they'd accidentally released a bioweapon. 2. China did what it does best, shut the F up on the world stage. 3. Everyone saw China's reaction because this isn't the 1950s and the internet exists. 4. The developed nations freaked out until there was data, hence the first set of lockdowns in Europe very quickly. 5. 2-3 years later after media pantomime, sectarian politics, holier than though preaching from everyone, the WHO declared the "emergency" over.
Some countries achieved 80%+ vaccination rates, didn't see 20% die. Some only achieved 50% and didn't see 50% death rates.
We now have a serious economic tab to be paid because of the BS pushed by developed countries in a panic that might have been less dramatic had there been information available from day 1.
China _has_ hidden and or destroyed a lot of "evidence" making certain discussions mute. (Again they are good at this let's not pretend otherwise).
Western countries, who, _like china_, jumped on a "who can punch themselves hardest with policy?" approach to this unknown now want someone else to blame.
Aka because we can pin a small significance and serious fault on China being a bad neighbour. (Snooze to the sensible this isn't news, china is very private about internal policy and now even more so) We are choosing to blame them for everything to get motivation up to get them to pay the bill...
This unfortunately was clear winter of 2020 and is clear now, it's just taken 4-5yr for politics to go through it's "he said she said" cycle. And I'm not referring to the US or UK political cycles this is the slow bi-partizan we all need someone to blame rather than be introspective and realise __"We should have handled this better"__.
You have some interesting thoughts. But:
> 0. COVID-19 was mostly harmless. Even more so than Douglas Adam's books.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I found out that my father and his partner had COVID. He lived, at the time, about 12 hours drive from me. Where he lived, his support network was thin (to say the least) - the little family he had nearby needed to keep away because they were responsible for caring for my cousin with a severely weakened immune system. His friends, sadly, also contracted COVID around the same time.
I called him twice a day, and each call he was worse than the last. I decided to rent an AirBnB nearby. My partner and I packed up the dog and everything we needed and drove overnight to get there.
We masked up, and got supplies at Walmart. We brought them to my Dad’s house and left them on the patio - retreated a safe distance - and my Dad came to retrieve them. He was in an awful condition, and his partner was worse.
For the next week I came to their porch every few hours, and called my dad, and we spoke with what little breath he had. He dictated his last will and testament to me. I delivered pedialyte, meal replacement shakes, pulse oximeters, anything to help them make it through. I forced them to get up and move around a little from time to time, and took notes on their condition. They wouldn’t let me in the house.
One day, before I arrived with supplies, my Dad told me they had called an ambulance for his partner. They took his partner to the local hospital… and the hospital turned him away because they had no beds. They essentially sent my Dad’s partner home to die.
By some miraculous turn of events, they survived. They have issues walking and breathing to this day, but they survived.
It’s one of the more agonizing, awful things I’ve ever had to watch. COVID-19 wasn’t harmless; it killed millions. I saw it up close. Especially early on, it was virulent and deadly, and very nearly took my parents from me. It did end up taking a lot of people in my extended social network. They died agonizing deaths.
How dare you paint it as “mostly harmless.”
> How dare you paint it as “mostly harmless.”
Yes I am sorry for your loss. Now let's get to the point.
Because I understand statistics and am making sweeping statements I can and will make them from an objective viewpoint. Please do NOT sensor proven facts. I don't care for bible thumping tora humping nonsense that does not match reality. I'll take 2k years of religion and raise you 50 years of tech, oled TVs and microprocessors.
I know someone who ended up hospitalised and several years later does from complications due to a winter flu, doesn't mean we shut down society _every year_.
CV19 was a novel virus introduced into an existing population without any pre-existing immunity. This meant we will see complications, deaths at every age group and people's lives ruined by something that most 4yo, 25yo and 68yo will simply shake off.
Again the statement of millions dead _DOES NOT_ match the real world where several developed nations with populations sub 1B did not have dead numbers into the 10M+ of healthy individuals.
People died yes. This is expected. It is an illness. People die of staph infections. Life is unfair.
That _DOES NOT_ mean that this is equivalent to small pox. It's not a bioweapon it just meant the subpopulations who we identified really early (2020) should have isolated or accepted their risk.
The rest of society should not bend for the risk (again high survivability even in at risk groups). If it did we wouldn't sell guns, scissors or cross the road.
Ah the “COVID wasn’t that bad” denial psychosis. Haven’t seen it in a while.
Given the original reason for lockdown in the UK was 20% all cause mortality.
100% expected fatalities above about 70 and hospitals struggling for oxygen supplies. Yes it was not that bad.
No that’s not an exaggeration, that’s why lockdown 1 happened.
After that is just memeing from both sides about microchips and death walkers without masks on.
The it wasn’t that bad is honestly true. Again it was a novel virus introduced into a population with no immunity, but frankly keeping the economy going would have been better than paying people to stay at home and worry.
The cost is starting to come home to roost if we’re not careful and the socioeconomic results of a global depression could genuinely kill more, displace more and lead to political turmoil and violence.
That is not worth just telling gran I’m sorry, the rest of us can go outside but we recommend you don’t.
Again practicing lecturer in applied stats talking so I understand the gritty details of the models and projections.
> Yes I am sorry for your loss. Now let's get to the point
I hope that people do not treat you with the callousness with which you treat others.
> Because I understand statistics and am making sweeping statements I can and will make them from an objective viewpoint. Please do NOT sensor proven facts. I don't care for bible thumping tora humping nonsense that does not match reality. I'll take 2k years of religion and raise you 50 years of tech, oled TVs and microprocessors.
My friend, you are speaking gibberish. I literally have no idea what you are trying to say. Maybe check your house for a gas leak, or something. I don’t mean it in a dismissive way - I quite literally cannot make heads or tails of what you’re saying here.
> Again the statement of millions dead _DOES NOT_ match the real world
The dead are dead whether you like it or not. Sounds like the pandemic didn’t affect you personally. Be grateful for that, and be kinder to others.
> be kinder to others.
You effectively told me to shut up because of the way you feel when talking about facts. This is the ultimate in anti-intellectual, dishonest and selfish statements.
Check yourself before engaging in conversations about FACTS.
> You effectively told me to shut up because of the way you feel when talking about facts.
You waltzed into a thread about the CIA suddenly changing their tune about where COVID came from; and started making assertions that it wasn’t that bad.
I shared a deeply personal story about exactly how bad it was, from my vantage point. I expressed outrage at your dismissal of the suffering and many deaths that occurred. “How dare you” isn’t the same as “shut up.” But it is a strong suggestion that you’re being uncharitable.
> Check yourself before engaging in conversations about FACTS.
I scrolled through your comment history and based on some recent arguments with the mods, it sounds like you’ve have a bone to pick with people on this site.
Log off and touch grass, man.
Touching grass is honestly not a problem for me. But I like that you think I'm trapped behind a keyboard. Must have hit a nerve if we're getting close to name calling. Please refrain from this.
I'm telling you facts because for 4+ years nobody listens.
I've been correct in calling every detail about CV19 because I was involved and shut out of the early criticisms of the modelling based on the data. I'm correct and I'm just shouting into the void so that I can go away and rest easy that "I told you so", I tried ignoring it but frankly shouting until blue in the face helps my conscience easier.
You didn't just share a story you took offence to my position and tried to shut it down. Again, not approaching discourse honestly and openly. Please learn to be wrong. I know I can be. But again not when I'm stating hammer and nail facts. The earth is round, sky blue and water wet. Not the Orwellian everyone has a story type "facts". Words have meanings, please don't let that get lost for the sake of future generations.
Again mostly harmless is met with, the worst story I personally have is discomfort and complications. This unfortunately is not deaths by the millions of healthy people. But it is obviously real, it's just a different thing.
My friend, this is not productive or rational discourse. It’s certainly not empathetic. There is no place for it on this site. Perhaps you would feel more comfortable in a different community, one more amenable to listening to the “facts” that you’ve shared.
I think it is as your engaging which means you'll be more likely to listen to statistics next time they're presented to you with a "non immediately obvious" outcome.
If it were fruitless you wouldn't have engaged from an aggressive stance and I wouldn't be telling you why your wrong. Cognitive dissodence does hurt when it breaks but it's all for the better :)
You haven’t made any compelling case about anything, changed my mind, or altered my behavior. But if it helps you sleep at night to believe that, then go ahead.
For what it’s worth: I continued to engage because I used to be like you - argumentative, hyper assured of my own intelligence, and certain I was correct about everything. I wish someone had pointed out earlier that I was being a massive asshole.
Hence, trying to politely engage with you a bit. I feel like it’s the kind thing to do.
You are choosing to engage which either causes you to double down or reject change.
I'm going to engage in good faith still again and see if we can get past the point of it being uncomfortable for you.
I made a statement aligned with the indisputable reality that COVID did not lead to huge amounts of deaths among the healthy working age population.
Ironically the USA gives us a very good example of this. Their jab rates are close to 50% across multiple age brackets. If COVID was really really bad we would expect to see many more Americans dead than say in the UK where the jab rate hit >80% in most age groups.
This is not a statement about treatment efficacy or safety. This is a statement that we should be expecting to see many more dead without treatment if the treatment were essential comparing 2 relatively comparable subs populations.
This result given the population sizes can also be deemed to be ignorant of the health care model adopted.
This is also not a statement that COVID didn't kill. This is also not a statement that COVID didn't mame. This isn't a statement that water isn't wet or that the vaccine caused autism.
You told me about the worst experience of your relative. It's is unfortunate for them. I did not wish them ill. I did not deny that this happened. You demanded that I change my statement because of their and your experience.
I'm sorry that they may have suffered in the real world not being fair. But let's be clear NO, I will not change a statement of fact.
Again, I'm not wishing them ill, but there is a world of difference between suffering and an uncomfortable hospital visit and death. This fact does not mean I am wishing ill will upon anyone.
I'm not being argumentative, I'm being corrective. Yes I was insulted by being shut down for feelings, but that is a philosophical line I will never cross based on the last 4 years. Feelings too are important, I'm not saying they're not, but they don't solely define reality.
I think we've been able to reach this point without name calling again so in good faith I'll wish you a good day, week, year and life and too to those you love and care for.
>> 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 damage the things that have escaped its borders have caused, such as greenhouse gases.
Yes, I know that China currently is emitting more greenhouse gases than the US, but since CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for several hundred or even thousands of years the US is responsible for more of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere than China is.
It's 26% US, 16% China, 7% Russia, 6% Germany, 5% UK, 4% Japan, 4% India, 2% France, 2% Canada, 2% Ukraine, 2% Poland, rounded to the nearest 1%. All the rest of the countries round to 1% or 0%.
That's a can of worms I don't think the US wants to open.
2. China could say they they'll consider paying, but only up to the amount of damages that would have been reasonably incurred if the US had handled COVID competently.
There were several distinct patterns in COVID deaths in the US. First, there were states like Washington that had a fairly linear growth in the cumulative number of deaths per capita from the start through April 2022, and then after that continued with a linear growth but not as steep.
Then there were states like New York, which got hit very hard in the first two months, because of a combination of nobody really knowing yet how to treat it and dense populations of especially vulnerable people. New York reached in two months a deaths per capita number that Washington took 22 months to reach.
But after those first two months, New York's deaths grew at about the same rate as Washington's, except during the Delta surge and to a lesser extent the Omicron surge. Washington's rate picked up during those surges, but not very much.
There were states like Florida. Its curve was like Washington's first 3 months, the switched to growing about twice as fast. By the end of 2021 it had almost caught up to New York. From then it and New York both continued at about the same rate was Washington, with Florida slightly higher so it passed New York in August 2022.
Other states tended to be a mix of those three patterns. California was close to Washington up until Delta, which brought it to near Florida, but then after Delta was was similar to Washington. A little better actually. Right after Delta it had about 70 more deaths per 100k than Washington, but by March 2023 was down to 56 more deaths per 100k.
Texas was like Florida until Omicron, which it handled better, and after that it was similar to Washington, or even a little better. It had 140 more deaths per 100k than Washington right after Omicron, but only 115 more by March 2023.
By March 2023, which is when the data I'm using ends, Washington stood at 206 deaths per 100k population, California at 256, Texas at 322, New York at 396, and Florida at 404.
Tom Cotton's state, Arkansas, was basically the same pattern as Florida, except with a higher rate. It ended up at 431 deaths per 100k by March 2023.
A good case can probably be made that somewhere from 25% to 50% of the Florida deaths were due to Florida's lax handling of the pandemic.
That too is probably a can of worms many politicians would not want to open, especially if their state is one of the ones that China would be arguing should get greatly reduced damages.
> 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 because they kept borders open.
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.
Whatever the reason (many reasonable at the time), this was after PRC did a full lock down, with outbound flights limited to repatriation, i.e. they weren't trying to spread the disease, other countries wanted their citizens back while PRC did one of the harshest locked downs in modern history. Can't blame others for thinking CCP was over reacting, but ultimately, PRC locked down during period where covid spread in PRC was minimal and signifant first incidents in many countries were from western travellers, who thought things were going to be fine.
> Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world
Does COVID being a “plague” jibe with the talking point that COVID is “no worse than a cold”
Placing rhetoric in context like you did has a way of cutting through the bs and really getting to the core of what current politicians want covid to be. A minor cold when it was running rampant, and now suddenly a plague. Why could that be? Could it be because during the pandemic it was in their best interest to downplay it while hundreds of thousands died, and now that we've passed it and the USA is facing the rise of a successful nation with a different political system, we need to paint them as the enemy? For what it's worth, the current administration is showing signs of cozying up to nations with weak or non-existent democracies. Just look at the proposed tariffs - they are NOT targeting China but rather Mexico and Canada. Why could that be?
Ultimately the question should be, how can we improve our systems to better respond to future pandemics. Does it matter if it was a lab leak? What will that do for those who died? Will revenge prevent a future pandemic from happening? Viruses and bacteria do not care about their nation of origin, once its out its out.
> I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.
That's fine. The really problem is all debate on such matters was shut down during pandemic. To the benefit of no one (except for maybe Biden trying to cajole to Chinese into something, or other. Or to protect USG's role in this affair by financing Chinese gain of function research).
The real problem is, trying to cover that, they said masks were useless and other elucubrations for which they didn’t have proof, like “Stay inside”. “But they didn’t know it was false” Well, if so, don’t speak.
This is a strange take to me. Of course the search for truth is to some degree a search for accountability. It's not a gotcha to say "They just want to hold China accountable". Of course they do if it seems likely it came from poor procedure, it makes it their responsibility.
> It's not a gotcha to say "They just want to hold China accountable".
Sure, it’s not a gotcha if we divorce such a statement from all of its surrounding context.
But context in communication is incredibly important, and it’s unwise to analyze these kinds of statements in a context-free manner. I find it occurs on this site fairly often; it seems endemic to engineers. I try hard to avoid it myself, but frequently fail.
The relevant context here, of course, is the rabid anti-China sentiment expressed by folks like Sen. Cotton for years, dating back to well before the COVID pandemic. I take no position on whether or not his views are accurate or fair - but a context-informed analysis of the situation suggests that Sen. Cotton (and others) are not simply seeking truth and accountability: rather, they seek pretext to justify their views.
Just more reasons for a trade war that is not good for anyone
Getting to the truth is a valid motivator for a bit over half of the country.
> I do believe that's all one really needs to know about this shift in their thinking. In other words: it's really far from certain.
There's never going to be any conclusive evidence of the source of covid, and anyone claiming they have certainty (who wasn't a witness to a lab leak) is simply lying to you. What they're doing is going along with everyone else worth listening to, who find the coincidence that we were funding banned research on coronaviruses in a lab a few feet away from the origin of the outbreak unlikely. They also find tales of non-lab origin both speculative and vague, while stories of lab origin are only speculative.
It's so strange to demand so much more proof of lab origin than one does of non-lab origin. The obvious reasons for that demand are that millions died, and that everybody involved with that lab can easily be named. Also weird that this observation is covid-skeptic coded, when in reality the worse you think covid is, the greater the crime that a lab leak entails.
I assumed it was a non-lab origin at first because that's how all previous pandemics have started as far as I am aware. A lab origin (and what precisely that means has never been particularly clear to me), but I have to say that I'd say your last observation cuts both ways - if one thinks this is such a great crime, then perhaps one would have encouraged masking, shutdowns/distancing, and vaccines, but those seem anti-correlated. Perhaps we'll do better next time around?
> Perhaps we'll do better next time around?
We won’t, because the judgment of many of our cognitive elites has been impaired.
This is a bit of a digression, but I’m reading a tweet thread by a $2,300/hour attorney who is an MSNBC contributor that is making just basic logical errors in discussing the birthright citizenship EO. Not even on the merits, literally in just summarizing the implications of the argument being made on a page of a filing he screenshotted in his tweet. I’m persuaded that if you had these folks take the LSAT with questions that had a political coding, they’d score a 160.
We need to get back to prioritizing the institutional and values of the different professions above all else. The public should view our scientific and professional organizations as neutral actors staffed by people who put the institutions above their personal beliefs. They shouldn’t be wondering whether medical organizations would be saying the same things about the “Lab Leak” theory if it had involved Russia instead of China.
> a tweet thread by […] an MSNBC contributor that is making just basic logical errors in discussing the birthright citizenship EO
No surprise there. Some people are not, contrary to your apparent assumption, actually trying to analyze something logically and arrive at some form of truth. I very much doubt that this has anything at all to do with COVID.
Not that it was the start of a pandemic, but the original SARS leaked from labs in China twice.[1]
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7096887/
As an example of a lab escape of a novel virus (fortunately not leading to a pandemic) see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Marburg_virus_disease_out...
African green monkeys later found to be carrying the virus were shipped to several labs in Germany and Yugoslavia; the virus hopped from the monkeys to lab workers and then from the lab workers to a small number of others.
If we are looking what we could do better next time, then we should look to the studies that showed what worked and what was most effective. The most effective initial method against the virus was neither masking, shutdowns/distancing (vaccines are not applicable since they didn't exist initially). It was to close down mass transportation. Shared recycled air is a highly suitable transportation mechanism for this kind of virus, with airplanes, trains and busses being mobile centers for outbreaks. We should try to look towards this kind of research next time something like this hit and be more focused on what actually work, rather than what either the governing party or opposing party want to promote. Airborne diseases travel by air and if you want to prevent that you need to make sure that people who are non-infected do not share the same air as people who are. If that is impossible, shutdowns/distancing helps to reduce the risks until a vaccine is developed.
> It's so strange to demand so much more proof of lab origin than one does of non-lab origin.
It's not, zoonotic transmission has happened many times, lab leak is the extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence
The 1977 flu is uncontroversially accepted to have arisen from a research accident, probably either an inadequately attenuated vaccine or a challenge trial in human subjects. The death toll is typically reported as 700,000, though I don't think that's a very good number and I can't find the methodology. Many fewer people died in the 1977-78 season; but the virus has continued to spread, so the cumulative toll is much higher (and continues to increase).
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/936217
So how many people have to die before this is no longer an extraordinary claim? Bhopal managed to change chemical manufacturing standards with "only" thousands or tens of thousands of deaths; but the 1977 flu is somehow completely forgotten.
Perhaps the death toll is so high that people simply can't believe it? YouTube's fact-checkers recently removed an unambiguously factual description of the 1977 pandemic, ignoring appeals well-referenced into the peer-reviewed literature with no stated justification.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-i-fell-foul-of-youtu...
The argument is not "research accidents categorically do not happen" it was "are they the more common event and therefore the more probable explanation, absent anything else"
Depending how we count, there have been a dozen or so pandemics comparably novel or deadly to the 1977 flu in the last fifty years. Of those, at least one was research-origin.
So are you really saying p ~ 1/12 is an "extraordinary claim"? Is a 6'1" American man "extraordinarily tall"? There's unfortunately no standard map between English phrases and numerical probabilities, but I think most people would understand a much lower probability. If you really want to define it that way, then "extraordinary evidence" is likewise diluted to the point that the circumstantial case (emergence in Wuhan, DEFUSE) brings research origin easily into contention.
> Depending how we count, there have been a dozen or so pandemics comparably novel or deadly to the 1977 flu in the last fifty years. Of those, at least one was research-origin. So are you really saying p ~ 1/12 is an "extraordinary claim"?
Yes, I think it is extraordinary to extrapolate one event in 1977 to a "once every fifty years" rate
Can you quantify what you believe is a correct prior then, and explain how you got that number?
I hope you're not going to count every natural spillover since prehistory in the denominator. The technology to culture and freeze an influenza virus didn't exist before ~1930, and the technology to genetically enhance a sarbecovirus didn't exist before ~2010. The absence of pandemics with such origin before that means nothing. No one had ever suffered a cancer induced by an X-ray tube before 1904; but that doesn't mean the risk wasn't there, and Edison's assistant still died horribly.
Apply the same reasoning with the start cutoff at 2010 then
I said fifty years because that roughly covers the period during which an accident similar to the 1977 flu was possible. Perhaps I should have said longer, since influenza was first cultured in 1931; but we also need some time in the freezer for the circulating virus to diverge. I don't think much changes if we say a hundred years instead.
Can you explain why 2010 would be a reasonable start cutoff? That doesn't make any sense to me, since it excludes most of the time that a research-origin flu pandemic was possible. We obviously haven't had a research-origin novel sarbecovirus pandemic before maybe SARS-CoV-2; but when new technological developments occur, the most similar old technologies are our best model. Nobody had ever died in a plane crash before the Wright brothers, but anyone familiar with unpowered gliders could predict the risk.
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.
Okay, but your objection was requiring more evidence for the less likely assertion constituted an "arbitrary bar", you cannot argue that and quote _an arbitrary estimate by another commenter_
And there's been mutations in the virus since the initial exposure. How could that happen? How can a virus change its genetic code without a lab to do it?!?!!/s
Regardless of the source, it was dangerous but could have been better mitigated if it was taken seriously as a threat (not just a "common cold").
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 are much more concerned about finding someone to blame for the last pandemic than about preparing for or preventing the next pandemic.
Agree, that's the only sane way to approach things. I worry that it's already relatively rare for people to realize that problems in general can be multi-causal, let alone that we can approach problems as probabilistically multi-causal. Placing blame, on the other hand, is something everyone understands.
The blame game is kind of like a variation of a bikeshed discussion, except it might lead to war.
War happens to be my least favourite colour for a bikeshed...
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.
I think the parent is arguing that lab leak is plausible, even if it wasn’t certainly the cause. GoF is foolish if you think the lab leak was remotely plausible.
Most folks had no idea about the sort of GoF being done, and the attitude of many researchers (highly dismissive of risks) should worry us a lot.
We should also be more worried about zoonotic transmission too, and press harder to ban wet markets.
I don't think these conclusions compete, that’s the point; the actual fact of the matter regarding origins doesn’t much affect the weight of the damning evidence.
> GoF is foolish if you think the lab leak was remotely plausible.
Even if you don’t think the lab leak was the source of COVID-19 virus, we know for a fact that lab leaks occur even at the highest level security facilities.
I’m not sure about gain of function research one way or the other, I’m just commenting that leaks will happen.
There's a couple of probability distributions we don't know. And whether this leaked in Wuhan or not doesn't affect them.
1. What's the probability distribution and damage distribution of GoF research lab leaks? It's not zero-- it likely has enormous long tail risk. But:
2. What's the probability distribution and damage distribution of not knowing as much about how gain of function happens in the wild? Because nature is doing some of these GOF experiments on its own, without much effort at containment.
Nobody in this thread seems to know what gain of function means. It's a very broad term covering a large percentage of all virology research. If you ban it, you might as well say that we don't want to do any research into understanding viruses from now on.
When you compare the massive risks of spillover from animal populations, which have millions of interactions with humans every minute of every day, with the risks from a small number of highly contained biology labs, the ratio between the two risks is so enormous that this entire discussion is absurd.
You're right that we should still do the research. But we should be doing it on an island, or a ship at sea, with supplies delivered by drone, and as little population exchange as possible.
That depends on whether the research increases the risk of a pandemic by any appreciable amount, compared to all the other things humans do.
It's kind of absurd that he have hundreds of millions of farmers and hunters interacting with infected animals every day, and nobody cares, but then we have a few researchers interacting with the same viruses under highly controlled conditions, and that's what we're worried about.
The reason is that people have watched too many sci-fi horror movies and listened to too many xenophobic / fear-mongering politicians who want to find scapegoats.
The problem with imposing even tighter conditions on research is that you end up making the research much more difficult, expensive, unattractive to actual scientists who have to live their lives. And all that for security theater, just to pander to ignorant politicians who won't actually be satisfied.
I don't know how you can read about the half dozen or more documented cases of lab leaks in this thread - regardless of what you believe about covid - and call heightened restrictions for experimental work with human-infectious viruses security theatre. It's not sci-fi horror movies folks are worried about, it's people making mistakes the way all people do. The way you seem to be doing.
We take the effort to air gap infected or security critical IT systems, but can't be bothered to air gap humanity from existential threats. If protecting all of humanity from the next pandemic is too much work for virologists, maybe it's best that they consider another career?
The examples of "lab leaks" being given in this thread are things like a large-scale human vaccine trial not using a properly inactivated virus. This is not a "lab leak" in anything like the sense of that is being alleged here.
> We take the effort to air gap infected or security critical IT systems, but can't be bothered to air gap humanity from existential threats.
My whole point is that we're not air-gapped in the first place. Millions of humans are interacting with infected animals every day, under conditions that are much less safe and controlled.
Imagine if all of your data had been leaked to the public internet, was mirrored across a dozen websites, and was being downloaded 1000 times a day, but then one security researcher had your data on an encrypted drive, and only read it on an air-gapped computer. Would you be more worried about the one security researcher, or the dozens of publicly accessible websites?
> If protecting all of humanity from the next pandemic is too much work for virologists, maybe it's best that they consider another career?
They are protecting you, and the thanks they get is that you scapegoat them, hound them online, and cheer when they get fired. You should be grateful that people like Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology worked so hard on understanding coronaviruses for decades, and warned about the risks of a pandemic. Instead, without any knowledge of the subject, you're participating in a witch hunt against her and her colleagues.
> My whole point is that we're not air-gapped in the first place. Millions of humans are interacting with infected animals every day, under conditions that are much less safe and controlled.
Factory farming is indeed a dangerous breeding ground for infectious disease which needs to be addressed. Farmers, however, are not performing gain of function research on the diseases in their herd. The largest danger of factory farms seems to be the widespread application of front line antibiotics, which is another issue entirely. Attempts to conflate the two are disingenuous at best. Unscientific whataboutism at worst.
> people like Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology worked so hard on understanding coronaviruses for decades, and warned about the risks of a pandemic. Instead, without any knowledge of the subject, you're participating in a witch hunt against her and her colleagues.
I've worked in science for more than a decade. I have lab experience. I have never named or witch hunted anyone as you seem to have. I have advocated for the most basic level of isolation of potentially dangerous experiments, and this is your response.
Thank you for demonstrating the arrogance which underlies the problem.
> Farmers, however, are not performing gain of function research on the diseases in their herd.
The phrase "gain of function" has become a general-purpose bogeyman, but 99% of the people using it have no idea what it means.
Farmers are interacting with viruses that are far more dangerous than the gain-of-function viruses. Gain-of-function experiments are generally just characterizing properties of viruses that already exist out in the wild. An effective way of doing that is to insert a component of the wild virus into a virus you can already grow and have characterized in the lab. The lab virus gains a function, but that function already exists in the wild.
> I have advocated for the most basic level of isolation of potentially dangerous experiments
Shi Zhengli and her colleagues are taking far more than the "most basic level" of precaution. Yet you're participating in the witch hunt against her and the virology community.
The actual future risks don’t change based on which specific origin happened.
The correct response is likely to spend significantly more on doing actual research and a great deal on making sure everyone is well contained. It’s likely a good idea to locate such labs outside of highly populated areas as part of a defense in depth strategy.
> The correct response is likely to spend significantly more on doing actual research and a great deal on making sure everyone is well contained.
Strongly, strongly disagree. When even a teeny risk of escape means that millions of people could die, I think a much better argument is to simply make certain types of research completely off limits.
I'm certainly not the only person who thinks this. Zeynep Tufekci, who in my opinion had the most rational commentary during the pandemic, argued that much virus research just doesn't work from a cost/benefit analysis. For example, even if the root cause of COVID wasn't a lab leak, it's probably not a great idea having researchers milling around bat caves collecting sick bats and what not - it's very possible a zoonotic virus made the jump not necessarily in the lab but from researchers specifically looking for zoonotic viruses.
Looking at risks alone always biases you to avoid doing anything.
The benefits of research here are also human lives. So doing nothing has a real cost and the benefits extend indefinitely into the future.
Suppose you’re deciding between a 1% chance of a lab leak costing 10 million lives and a 20% chance you save 50 million lives over the next 100 years. That’s heavily weighted towards doing something, while still carrying significant risk. Some people would still say the risks aren’t worth it, but it’s not an obvious decision.
I think you need to discount possible farther future benefits, because so much change can intervene and make the analysis invalid.
That is, when people want to do something-- risks tend to be understated and possible future benefits tend to be overstated.
I don't back the precautionary principle, but I do think risk in cost-benefit analysis has to be viewed from a pretty cautious place, in general (not just science).
Ultimately, we don’t know the actual benefits and I just picked numbers from thin air to illiterate a point. But yea linear extrapolation of such estimates hundreds of years into the future is nonsense.
What is there to research with GoF that could be worth the massive risk? We had a vaccine for COVID in a weekend. Approval and manufacturing where the bottlenecks.
There’s a lot of GoF research on a lot of different diseases with a wide range of goals.
One goal for disease likely to cause pandemics is ultimately to create better treatments for those already infected. There’s a long lag between a vaccine being designed and scaling production and distribution to actually protect people. That means there’s going to be a lot of people infected in an outbreak, including many vaccinated people.
Are there any examples of medication that was developed for a disease that came out of GoF where the medication was approved and preventive mass production took place?
My understanding is success have come more from protocols more than medication.
Take antimicrobial resistance, you need to understand how microbes gain resistance by actually creating resistant bacteria/fungi etc before you can develop efficient countermeasures.
With COVID there was a lot of confusion around using masks and disinfecting public spaces in the early days. A better model of the disease could have been really useful both in the early days and how people responded to mixed messages.
The risks don't change. Our risk assessment accuracy changes.
I’ve seen no compelling evidence gain of function has benefited us in any pandemic — or even a theoretical justification.
How, precisely, do you believe that gain of function will benefit us the next pandemic?
Edit:
Swap “aid” to “benefit us” for hopefully better clarity.
I haven't been following it closely but I am guessing the documents from the Select Committee were the closest thing to "compelling evidence"
The Intercept wrote an article about it: https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-house-re...
It begins as:
House Republicans on the subcommittee probing the origin of the Covid-19 virus appear to have inadvertently released a trove of new documents related to their investigation that shed light on deliberations among the scientists who drafted a key paper in February and March of 2020. The paper, published in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020, was titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” and played a leading role in creating a public impression of a scientific consensus that the virus had emerged naturally in a Chinese “wet market.” The paper was the subject of a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, which coincided with the release of a report by the subcommittee devoted to the “Proximal Origin” paper. It contains limited screenshots of emails and Slack messages among the authors, laying out its case that the scientists believed one thing in private — that lab escape was likely — while working to produce a paper saying the opposite in public.
The newly exposed documents include full emails and pages of Slack chats that were cropped for the report, exposing the “Proximal Origin” authors’ real-time thinking. According to the metadata in the PDF of the report, it was created using “Acrobat PDFMaker 23 for Word,” indicating that the report was originally drafted as a Word document. Word, however, retains the original image when an image is cropped, as do many other apps. Microsoft’s documentation cautions that “Cropped parts of the picture are not removed from the file, and can potentially be seen by others,” going on to note: “If there is sensitive information in the area you’re cropping out make sure you delete the cropped areas.”
When this Word document was converted to a PDF, the original, uncropped images were likewise carried over. The Intercept was able to extract the original, complete images from the PDF using freely available tools, following the work of a Twitter sleuth.
I phrased that poorly:
I understand how WIV could have caused a pandemic, but I don’t understand the other direction — how WIV doing gain-of-function would help the situation in which there was a zoonotic origin, eg at the wet market.
The person I was replying to said that our opinion on gain-of-function should depend on the origin — but I don’t understand how gain-of-function would have helped at all. Only how it poses a risk, whether or not this particular virus was such an example.
The theory is quite clear, if you know which strains could hop to humans then you can prioritize monitoring them, just like we monitor influenza types in animal populations now.
The problem is just that P(avert catastrophe) is fairly low, and P(create catastrophe) is substantially higher.
Oh, now I see what you mean.
I am not in the sector but AFAIK there has been no direct benefit from GoF. There is huge potential which some experts believe outweigh the risks, which is why it is controversial, and that is why it has been politicized.
Protecting the funding and ability to continue the research would explain why scientists have a preference for spillover as opposed to leak. Then there are the politicians...
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.
At the very least, we hopefully learned not to subsidize and encourage gain of function research at labs that were already known pre-Covid to have poor hygiene and containment practices.
The question of whether we should do gain-of-function research is a fairly complex cost/benefit analysis. The precise cause of the 2019 pandemic is only a very minor variable in that analysis, because that specific outcome doesn't change the underlying probability of a lab leak. More to the point, do we realistically believe that everyone will stop doing it, even if there's a credible international moratorium? If not, then we need to plan accordingly.
> The question of whether we should do gain-of-function research is a fairly complex cost/benefit analysis.
Has there ever been benefit to such research? People fall back on wishy-washy "we could learn ___" when trying to defend it, but with how long it's been going on have we ever actually had a solid benefit from it?
Isn't the above-the-board justification for gain-of-function the promise of built-for-purpose microbes? The dream of "we spilled a million litres of toxic soup, here's a jar full of bacteria that eat that stuff and poop out useful compounds" or "let's make a virus that selectively over-infects tumours to weaken them?"
We might have the usual problem with every high-powered technology, from the fission reaction to the silicon fab: the underlying science is viewpoint-neutral, but people will be overwhelmed by doom scenarios associated with it.
Gain-of-function in the virology context doesn’t mean creating helpful microbes/viruses. It means purposely engineering pandemic-caliber viruses so that (the theory goes) we find them before evolution produces them naturally and so have time to study them and create vaccines before they are widespread.
This seems to be one of the most dangerous propositions that I have ever heard of. Given human history, human psychology, human error, politics etc.
What am I missing here? That biolabs are the only human made thing that can be made absolutely 100% secure?
As far as I know you're not missing anything and this is why gain-of-function research was banned in the US for a while. EcoHealth Alliance outsourced it to China in the mid-2010s because of the ban, so technically none of it was happening in the US.
> It means purposely engineering pandemic-caliber viruses
This is not true.
GoF includes any research that amplifies specific characteristics. Transmissibility or severity of infection are just two of those possible dimensions.
For example, the research that enables us to produce insulin (and tons of other biologic medicines) with E. coli is GoF.
I lean on the side of banning GoF that's designed to increase transmissibility of a contagion, but that is indeed just a subset of GoF generally.
Fair enough that it has that meaning more generally in biology. My point is 100% of the policy discussions about it are referring to that particular subset—no one means producing insulin when they talk about the risks of GoF.
Yes but this is what causes confusion when scientists push back against proposed bans which seems like a legitimately insane and evil position to take.
We can sharpen the language and say "ban GoF research that increases transmissibility of infectious disease", for example.
I think the best term of art is ePPP (enhanced potential pandemic pathogens), which clearly limits that scope. Academics use that reasonably often, though politicians and the general public unfortunately don't yet.
There's also GOFROC (gain of function research of concern). That's better than just GOF, but rather vague.
This is useful! Thank you for chiming in :)
GoF pro: might help in some case, to the best of our knowledge never did. (Some scientists like their deadly toys!)
GoF contra: might cause a pandemic, kill millions, probably did.
So, yeah, I don't know, tough decision.
All sorts of medicines are manufactured using GoF'd E. coli. We need a tighter definition of "bad" GoF.
I guess research along the lines of "What if this microorganism was more dangerous (infectious, resistant, damaging) - well, let's try that!"
If this wasn't a political problem, but me and my teammates dealing with the aftermath of an incident that cost the company serious money, that's how we'd approach it. But we are technicians trying to prevent a problem, with incentives very well aligned with the company.
Government committees just don't have anywhere near this level of goal alignment, and it's not as if there is a lot of media whose best interests aligns with prevention either. You aren't getting a lot of information in the future out of a group of people you badmouthed a year ago.
> It seems fairly clear to me that a lot of people are much more concerned about finding someone to blame for the last pandemic than about preparing for or preventing the next pandemic.
That's why avian flu was allowed ro spread to cows in 16 states.
Well, assuming you’re part of the “we” that resides in the US, I think we’ve made it pretty clear we’re aren’t taking any of it seriously. Pulling out of the WHO is akin to burying our heads in the sand.
Sure, technically it “isn’t our problem” when some new disease breaks out in another country. But when (not if) it is eventually our problem, it’ll be a very big problem.
Things that are true:
"Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time."
The Department of Energy concluded with low confidence that it was a lab leak.
The FBI concluded with moderate confidence that it was a lab leak.
The CIA's new report also concludes that they have low confidence that it was a lab leak.
It's important to note that low confidence is a positive number, not a negative number.
The wet market theory loses some credibility given some data points, but the lab leak theory remains plausible.
China has had lab leak origins in the past, so this would not have been unprecedented.
China obstructed and delayed the investigation.
Whether it leaked from a lab or not, China covered it up. China covering it up is not necessarily evidence that it was a lab leak. If there was any truth to it (which they may not even know), they probably wouldn't want it reflecting poorly on the state. China is big on "social harmony", so you don't have the right to know.
Whatever happened wasn't necessarily intentional. China made some deeply embarrassing and shameful decisions around this time and they won't want to promote them, but they were also not alone in making mistakes.
If China concluded it was a lab leak internally and shared that, there wouldn't have been as much need for the world to speculate, analyze and investigate so much which only hurt China's reputation more.
Coincidences occur, serendipity occurs. Most people have experienced one. As a result, proximity to the lab is not solid proof, but it is not the only datapoint either.
If China was more transparent and cooperative, there could have been more information to make higher confidence conclusions with.
Things that are true:
The first large cluster of infections was associated with the Huanan Seafood Market, and retrospective analyses of influenza-like-illness patients and blood donations in Wuhan found no evidence of earlier circulation.
Sampling of many individuals prior to December 2019 showed no positives for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, suggesting that the virus did not spread widely before the market outbreak.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not known to have possessed a sufficiently close backbone strain to engineer SARS-CoV-2, and there is no public data indicating they had undisclosed viruses that match it.
Specific genomic features, like the furin cleavage site, appear suboptimal for an engineered virus (e.g. the PRRAR sequence and an out-of-frame insertion), which fits with a virus evolving naturally rather than through targeted gain-of-function work.
Several closely related bat coronaviruses have partial insertions near the S1/S2 region, suggesting that such changes can occur naturally over time and need not be artificially inserted.
A negative binomial pattern of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, with many zero-spreader events and a small number of superspreader events, is consistent with a spillover followed by rapid amplification in a crowded market setting.
Evidence of multiple potential intermediate animal hosts (e.g. wildlife farmed animals) further increases the probability that a bat coronavirus evolved into SARS-CoV-2 through natural spillover events rather than intentional engineering.
Early cases identified at the market and lack of widespread pre-epidemic infection clusters elsewhere in Wuhan align with the idea of a swift zoonotic jump to humans in late 2019.
The closest natural relative origin of SARS-CoV-2 was in Yunnan ~700 miles away from the market.
The Wuhan lab collected samples from that area and the lab is only ~10 miles away from the market.
Those wet markets are huge vectors for a viral spread, so a virus being spread there doesn't necessarily mean it started there.
Why that market in Hubei and not first at a market closer to Yunnan? It might be more profitable to transport and sell them there, but it's still a long way to travel and avoid spreading during that time just to end up at a market so close to that lab.
A lot of reasoning around whether a lab leak is more likely doesn't require it to be engineered or modified in any way.
> The closest
The closest _known_. The second closest was found in Laos, also 700 miles from Wuhan (BANAL-52). Except it's in the other direction.
So we know that close cousins of CoV-2 are pretty wide-spread.
> Those wet markets are huge vectors for a viral spread, so a virus being spread there doesn't necessarily mean it started there
The thing is, does it really matter? We can say with a high degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was _not_ engineered. So even if the very first jump was in the lab, it was likely a result of insufficient biosecurity measures. But the virus (and its close cousins) are still out there in nature, and it's a matter of time until a new spillover happens.
>We can say with a high degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was _not_ engineered.
The lab leak hypothesis doesn't depend on GoF research. CoV-2 could have a natural origin, been collected by the WIV, and leaked into the city. This has happened before.
That said, there's no way to evaluate if it was engineered. Some methods of engineering are indistinguishable from natural selection, and fingerprints from detectable methods have a very short half-life in a fast mutating virus.
>So even if the very first jump was in the lab, it was likely a result of insufficient biosecurity measures.
Virtually no one is claiming otherwise. This is a weakman argument.
>and it's a matter of time until a new spillover happens.
At the start of CoV-2, everyone told me that it takes years to develop vaccines. I told them it takes days to develop and weeks to test. Turns out that I was right. If the mortality rate of CoV-2 had been 3%, like early reports suggested, then the mRNA vaccines would have been in production by March.
> We can say with a high degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 was _not_ engineered.
Do you have any links, articles, or further reading you could share to help me understand where the high degree of confidence comes from?
This guy seems to be convinced of the exact opposite conclusion that is is indeed engineered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-eqdRSx7Y
Laos is not in the "other direction" to Yunnan; Laos borders Yunnan.
Yup. This was like finding an alligator virus in Boston and arguing about whether it's nearest relative was in Alabama or Mississippi... they would be in basically the same direction from Boston.
> Except it's in the other direction.
What? You're aware that Yunnan literally shares a border with Laos?
I was curious so I did a quick research on the previous SARS-CoV-1, the one that caused an outbreak back in 2003. Looks like they weren't able to find the natural reservoir for that one either. We did know it came directly from masked palm civets sold at local markets, but we don't know how those civets were infected. They were raised in farms, and no virus was found in those farms.
And the closest natural match? WIV16 at 96.0%, again found on bats in Yunnan, again very far from Guangdong - where that outbreak started.
So I think it must be because Yunnan has a lot of bats? that's why all the closest matches are found there?
Forgive the silly question, but does the lab leak theory entail the virus being engineered in the lab, or simply sampled from nature by researchers then not adequately contained?
I’m not clear on what exactly is being alleged by these agencies?
One of the key parts of the lab leak hypothesis is that, depending on who is advancing it, it ranges from "poor biocontainment of a natural virus" to "engineered and released" with everything in between.
What does the biocontainment angle entail? They keep the bodies of animals (or live ones) or samples?
Biocontainment just means that the virus stays in the lab and doesn't move outside it - be that the disposal of lab materials, accidental infections, etc.
Those are both examples of a hypothetical lab leak. The WIV had the largest collection of related viruses in the world sampled from nature. The WIV performed GoF research on some of those viruses. They're both plausible events. I'm not sure how you could ever distinguish between them at this point.
How many times do we need to repeat "lab leak != intentionally lab engineered"? Your most relevant parts are all about the latter. You know this, yet muddy the waters.
You are conflating two things - a lab leak and a virus being engineered. These are two separate things.
Likely, the virus was not engineered but was stored in the laboratory.
Very good summary, but the problem is, like most things, it is impossible to 100% rule out the lab theory. It is always possible to look at one of these evidences and say "yeah, but ...". And given how politicized this question is, people are just going to believe what they want to believe. I am quite pessimistic about this, that people will remain rational.
There have been cases of irresponsible employees of other labs in China making a quick buck by selling "used" lab animals to wet markets.
> "Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss, and that the new assessment had been in the works for some time."
Officials are saying that, true.
I have "low confidence" it actually is true. Everyone since the election has been scrambling to kowtow to the new boss to avoid his wrath.
> Officials are saying that, true.
I have no idea if the report's conclusions are correct, but I doubt a report like that was created in three or four days. Tasking expert analysts, reassigning the manpower necessary and going through legal and secrecy review in 96 hours would be extraordinary for a large bureaucratic agency. Sure, it could happen but that kind of all-hands, crisis urgency is hard to keep quiet. It's something we'd hear about from insider leaks.
I think it's more plausible that the report existed (because we know the CIA did look into it multiple times already) and the previous director had decided not to release it. And now the new director decided differently. Both of those decisions (not release vs release) were probably politically motivated to some extent but we don't have to jump to assuming an entire new report was fabricated with different conclusions practically overnight. After all, most government agencies that looked into it already concluded with low or medium confidence that it was a lab leak. It's not like the CIA report conclusion is an outlier here.
They've had two months to prep for the new felon.
Two months, exactly. And like as not built on internal reports started long ago.
But they also say that there's no new evidence of any kind.
They are just choosing to believe the lab leak hypothesis now, because they spent more time thinking about the conditions of the labs before Covid started.
...
And it's still low confidence... Since there's no evidence.
Sad stuff, really. Any self respecting person would just not express their opinion in such a situation.
Just about the only value of this new report is that it tells Trump what he wants to hear.
> 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 would please the boss.)
> That's too marginal to motivate an adverse conclusion at the CIA.
The decision to not release by the previous director and the decision to release by the new director probably were political to some extent. But I agree with you that the report's impact is too marginal to assume its creation or conclusion was politically motivated. But I think that for a different reason: I doubt adding yet another "low confidence" agency report onto the pile of existing ones changes much - either in geo-political super power negotiations or in the mind of the American public.
The issue has been played out and it's not top of mind or relevant anymore. The majority of people have already made up their minds one way or the other - or decided it doesn't matter anymore and they don't care. Pretty much everyone already acknowledges we'll never know for sure.
> ... 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):
https://www.politico.eu/article/fear-and-loathing-in-davos-e...
"There’s another scenario that has the Europeans worried: After getting a reluctant EU onside with his anti-Beijing agenda, the famously fickle Trump could U-turn and end up ganging up on the bloc with his “very, very good friend” Xi Jinping, China’s president."
"There’s precedent for that: In 2020, after years of escalating hostility during Trump’s first term in office, Washington and Beijing struck a mini trade deal aiming to increase U.S. exports to China and to ease their trade war."
"Now, Trump has billionaire China dove Elon Musk in his ear — and he needs Washington to retain good ties with Beijing to keep his electric vehicle company Tesla afloat."
My point is nobody at the CIA is winning a promotion for helping on a trade negotiation like this. It's unlikely this was politically motivated in substance. (Timing may be.)
I'm not sure what they would be doing with their time if they didn't have the substance and multiple reports of various quality for such a hypothesis.
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.
>China covering it up is not necessarily evidence that it was a lab leak.
Yes it is, but the evidence is non-specific. China will attempt to cover up 100% of lab leaks. China may attempt to cover up zoonosis. The cover up is consistent with either theory, but it is the only reaction consistent with a lab leak.
Cover-ups are a cultural thing in East Asia because reputation is paramount. They'll attempt to cover up anything that makes them look bad as means to protect their reputation. So the second part of your statement is not necessarily true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea...
China attempted information control on SARS-1, but rolled most of it back by April. They still haven't done this for SARS-2. That's not proof, but is a difference. Enough small differences can add up to a large difference.
That was during Hu's tenure which was quite different than what it is today. Still, their natural impulse is to cover up facts.
"China will attempt to cover up 100% of lab leaks. China may attempt to cover up zoonosis."
this is a blind assumption. they may just be covering up 100% of all things, especially when the international community (i.e. Trump) is trying to push/blame them.
> China obstructed and delayed the investigation.
You can only assume from this that whatever was going to be found would have been unfavorable to them. Although that would be the case with both the market theory and the lab leak theory.
You can, in fact, imagine other things.
For example, maybe the people shutting down the investigation had no idea what it would find and just didn't want to take the chance.
Or you understand that there is going to be a viral outbreak and you can choose: save the rest of the world from the pandemic or limit information and allow people to spread the virus globally to ensure that your nation doesn’t suffer disproportionately.
I'm not sure what the Department of Energy's qualifications are (I know they're in charges of nukes so maybe also bioweapons?) but I don't see what relevance the FBI's opinion has.
DOE has its own massive farm of experts: https://www.energy.gov/intelligence/office-intelligence-and-...
There’s 17 intelligence agencies that all staff knowledgeable experts on all sorts of topics. Our government is Leviathan.
The National Labs, where a tremendous amount of infectious disease work is done for national-scale questions. I've worked with them in the past, and considered taking a job with them - of the various agencies, they're the ones who have weighed in with probably the most expertise.
>If China concluded it was a lab leak internally and shared that,
This insinuates the only reasonable conclusion is PRC lab leak. The only fact is we don't know where covid originated, only PRC was the first to detect and acknowledge it, and for doing so, US under PRC hawk admin tried to weaponize for propaganda war. PRC can still say covid come out of Fort Detrick, and until US opens up soveriegn US soil to WHO investigation (good luck now), then this is all a US coverup and it would be perfecty cromulant position and as "true" as anything CIA claims.
>If China was more transparent and cooperative
If US under Trump and Pompeo wasn't utterly antagonistic to PRC during time frame, there might have been more cooperation. This new CIA spin is continuation of the same geopolitical games.
There are a few things to consider that I’ll add, which further bolster the idea that China has systematically covered up up a lab leak that caused the COVID-19 pandemic:
1. Coronaviruses are hard to contain, even if you have good practices. For example, the earlier SARS outbreak (from the early 2000s) had several documented lab leaks, including multiple within China (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7096887/).
2. The US state department was aware that China was conducting dangerous research on coronaviruses on poorly managed labs a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin...).
3. The WHO got completely manipulated by China, either willingly or just due to their incompetence. For example, it is well documented now that the WHO publicly praised the Chinese government but privately was concerned and frustrated by the lack of transparency and sharing of vital information, including blocking visits to Wuhan (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/how-china-blocked...).
4. The NIAID (Fauci’s agency, under NIH) conducted gain of function research through a third party, EcoHealth Alliance. The grants are all public and document gain of function research, which was illegal since President Obama had banned it through an executive order. There was evidence that the NIH helped EcoHealth craft their grant language in a way to avoid oversight processes that would have blocked the grant (https://theintercept.com/2021/11/03/coronavirus-research-eco...). Note that the president of EcoHealth, Peter Daszak, is a listed author on gain of function publications from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. After years of trying to bury this, the Biden administration finally blocked funding to EcoHealth in 2024 (https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/health/us-government-suspends...).
5. China only allowed a WHO visit over a year after they knew of the COVID-19 outbreak, in early 2021. They only allowed specific people to participate in the investigation, and the only person allowed from the US, was the same Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance who participated in the research at Wuhan Institute of Virology (https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/03/asia/wuhan-coronavirus-who-ba...).
> President Obama had banned it through an executive order.
Can you provide a link to the executive order? It sounds seriously strange.
I can’t find the actual order but a search turns up many articles about it. Here’s one:
https://www.nature.com/articles/514411a
Reconsideration was started under Obama, too: https://www.science.org/content/article/after-criticism-fede... (published 17 Jan 2017)
> The US government surprised many researchers on 17 October when it announced that it will temporarily stop funding new research that makes certain viruses more deadly or transmissible.
So it's not clear what the actual order entails and how temporary it was. And the whole advisory language ("asked scientists") seems to be kinda distinct from "banned".
> The grants are all public and document gain of function research, which was illegal since President Obama had banned it through an executive order.
In general, these kinds of conspiracy theories just collapse when you start pulling the threads.
>In general, these kinds of conspiracy theories just collapse when you start pulling the threads.
You think it's a conspiracy theory that Obama banned GoF research? OK, it was through an OSTP directive working with the NIH rather than an EO, but that's splitting hairs. It also wasn't banned, but only subject to a higher degree of scrutiny.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/17/doing-d...
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.g. gain-of-function research).
Note that in the first theory, the virus has a natural origin, but the pandemic originates in the lab leak.
These two theories get mixed up constantly, either by accident or on purpose, who knows. For example look at this CNN story:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/25/politics/covid-19-lab-lea...
First paragraph: “The CIA now assesses the virus that causes Covid-19 more likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China, rather than occurring naturally”
Deeper in the story: “Every US intelligence agency still unanimously maintains that Covid-19 was not developed as a biological weapon” and “almost all American intelligence agencies also assess that the virus itself was not genetically engineered.”
So it didn’t occur “naturally” but also wasn’t developed or engineered. Makes no sense.
> 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: you can't use animal-origins evidence as evidence against a lab leak, only evidence against an engineered virus.
Intentionally seeking out potentially harmful natural pathogens from remote locations and placing them in close proximity to people isn't relevant to lab leaks? Then why are they studied under high levels of security in the first place?
GoF research is so obviously a bad idea. The risks are enormous and the rewards are minuscule. But lab leaks of natural viruses are indicative of problems too.
One way to look at the difference is that a "natural Ebola" almost certainly would have spread at some point anyways, and so it wouldn't affect the total number of world deaths in the end, just make them happen some number of years sooner.
Whereas an "artificial Ebola" would never have existed without it being intentionally created, so all the deaths aren't just time-shifted, they wouldn't have happened otherwise. They're new.
> a "natural Ebola" almost certainly would have spread at some point anyways
Plenty of plagues have evolved in the last thousand years. That doesn’t mean they, or their deaths, were inevitable.
I think the natural-virus-leaked-by-lab theory hinges on the argument that, (assuming it was true, then) had the lab leak not have happened, SARS-CoV-2 wouldn't have made to jump to human by itself. And this is where the Ebola analogy breaks down. Because SARS-CoV-2 has a higher basic reproduction number than Ebola, meaning it's more transmissible. And it's also much less deadly than Ebola, meaning it has much more opportunities to spread.
Remember, it is a virus that caused a global pandemic, despite all the efforts made to stop it. Based on that, I think it is highly likely that whether the lab leaked it or not, it would have made its way to humans by itself. In other words, there would effectively be no way to tell one scenario from the other.
It guides policy. If it was engineered, it means this is research we really shouldn't be doing. If it was a wild virus being researched, it means we need to take the threat of spillover more seriously.
the "practical difference" is that zoonotic spillover and lab leak may not be mutually exclusive theories.
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.
The best theory I’ve ever read, wrote about miners working in caves with bat who came down with serious pneumonia, or something like that, in the area that the lab sampled viruses from.
The viruses could evolve quite a lot in an immunocompromised individual.
The virus was then probably leaked as part of the work to sequence its genome. So they wouldn’t have published anything on it yet.
I don’t think they did any GoF research or engineered the virus in any way.
I’m fairly certain China knows a lot more about what actually happened though.
>These two theories get mixed up constantly, either by accident or on purpose, who knows.
You literally just reduced 3 theories to 2: lab leak natural virus, lab leak medical GoF, and lab leak bioweapon. These theories get collapsed because there's no practical way to distinguish between them. A 4th theory, intentional release, is often used as a weakman for all lab leak theories, but isn't actually a leak at all.
>So it didn’t occur “naturally” but also wasn’t developed or engineered. Makes no sense.
Yeah, someone wants to split hairs, but it's impossible without knowing the specific definitions they want.
Lets play cluedo. How about a cremation janitor without any formal education trying to sell exotic meat as a side hustle ?
You've made great points throughout this entire post. This is yet another that I've just upvoted (from having been downvoted). But in each you've been needlessly aggressive and hostile. Everyone here knows how frustrating COVID-19 can be to discuss—as is the case with most topics worth discussing. But it's less frustrating when we all implicitly agree to stick to our thoughtful great points.
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
> There have been a number of studies that point in that direction; e.g. recent genetic analysis that suggests the Wuhan wet market was the origin.
Those are not mutually exclusive theories.
It could have been a lab leak that was then superspread by the visit of an affected lab worker (or someone they came into contact with) at the wet market.
A hypothetical lab worker which only spread it to the market and nowhere else seems implausible.
I suppose that could happen if what they were carrying wasn't capable of human transmission yet, but was capable of infecting some species of the live animals at the market, but that's a big if.
There's till the problem of the second lineage which would indicate multiple zoonotic crossover events.
> I suppose that could happen if what they were carrying wasn't capable of human transmission yet, but was capable of infecting some species of the live animals at the market
Or if infected carrions from the labs were sold at the market – I suppose it only takes a low-ranking employee wanting to make a few bucks.
You are 100% right. Not sure why you are being downvoted.
All of the evidence people argue over can fit together.
Original virus was brought from the south of china, was studied in the lab. Unclear if it was engineered. Somehow in the lab an animal was exposed. Either purposefully for study or accidentally. Animal dies or will die soon so a rouge employee takes it to the market to sell the meat for some pocket money. First cases show up in lab employees they are smart enough to quarantine. Full outbreak starts at market from animal source.
That is possible, but the evidence doesn't suggest that. E.g. if I am reading the paper correctly, they say that there is evidence of two distinct spillover lineages, which wouldn't be consistent with a simple visit from a lab worker.
Or the selling of "used" animals by some irresponsible night-shift employee at the lab in charge of said animals.
They really are mutually exclusive theories.
The current evidence points to at least two different spillover events (of slightly different variants) at the market, followed by spread of the virus in the communities surrounding the market, eventually radiating out to the rest of Wuhan. There is solid evidence now for each of those statements.
If you try to reconcile that with the lab leak theory, you end up with an ever more implausible theory: two different scientists got infected in the lab with different variants (of a virus we have good evidence never existed at the lab in the first place), then both of them went to the market (where the same types of wild animals that caused the original SARS outbreak in 2002 just happened to be sold) and infected people, but somehow they didn't infect anyone else at the lab. It's just one implausibility stacked on top of the next, all with the goal of avoiding what the data is obviously saying: the outbreak began at the market.
Carful when assuming how a lab leak must have unfolded, there’s many possibilities.
A single worker gets infected/accidentally releases multiple variants, sloppy worker messing up twice doesn’t seem that crazy. A lab leak is also consistent with an infection person visiting a location that experienced a separate variant.
And that’s just a few options there’s also things like an intentional leak followed by another intentional leak etc.
I’ve read that the lab was intentionally set near that wet market, so there being overlap like this doesn’t seem extraordinary.
> I’ve read that the lab was intentionally set near that wet market...
That seems unlikely, given that - per Wikipedia - the WIV opened in 1956 and the wet market opened in 2002.
I doubt they are actually related but it’s something I read presumably because:
“Wuhan Branch of the CAS.[4] Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it was founded in 1956 and opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory[5] in 2018.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology
There was also a separate BSL-2 facility that moved right before the outbreak which also got news coverage due to the timing. But I think that was more confusion as they shouldn’t be working on coronaviruses in a BSL-2 facility.
They in fact were working on coronaviruses in a BSL-2 facility, which is another thing that helps make the lab leak hypothesis more plausible. E.g. from Vanity Fair:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/ralph-baric-wuhan-lab-...
Baric testified that he had specifically warned Shi Zhengli that the WIV’s critical coronavirus research was being conducted in labs with insufficient biosafety protections. When he urged her to move the work to a more secure biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab, he testified that she did not heed his recommendation. Because the WIV continued to perform coronavirus research at what he considers an inappropriately low biosafety level, Baric said of a laboratory accident, “You can’t rule that out…. You just can’t.”
Similarly:
In 2004, nine people were infected with Sars and one person died after two researchers were separately exposed to the virus while working at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing. In November 2019, just a month before the first confirmed case of Covid-19, more than 6,000 people in north-west China were infected with brucellosis, a bacterial disease with flu-like symptoms, after a leak at a vaccine plant. [1]
The Chinese facility hosts one of no more than six BSL-4 labs in the world that had been conducting contentious “gain of function” research on bat-related pathogens before the pandemic, according to Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University [1]
Just given the above, the statistical likelihood of coincidence is so absurdly low it alone means there needs to be overwhelming evidence to the opposite to overcome it. At no point has this been the case.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/a0badd5d-4d88-4a3b-b019-61c6d8275...
This is how conspiracy theories become unfalsifiable.
You're now positing that a lab worker got infected with multiple variants (which wouldn't exist in the lab, by the way, since they would work with cloned virus), then traveled across town and spread the virus at the market.
The evidence all points towards a spillover (two, actually) at the market, but you can always make the lab leak theory ever more convoluted to keep it alive.
Why do you believe that lab workers only work with cloned viruses? Do you know the exact nature of the research that was going on there?
Two spillovers at a lab that has one spillover does not seem that unlikely. There's a good chance that the lack of safety was in the culture and not just one careless person. In November and December, several Wuhan Institute personnel were reporting unknown illnesses and took standard precautions (weeks of isolation) over it. It sounds like they weren't equipped to deal with a class of pathogens that they were working with.
> Do you know the exact nature of the research that was going on there?
We actually have a very good idea of what research was going on there. The groups in question publish their research, give talks at international conferences, upload the viruses they discover to US databases, talk with colleagues abroad, etc. We have a very good picture of what they were working on, and every indication is that they didn't have any virus closely related to SARS-CoV-2.
> Two spillovers at a lab that has one spillover does not seem that unlikely.
If that were the case, you'd see the outbreak centered on the lab. It wasn't. It was centered on the market, on the other side of town. So you have to start making implausible - and obviously motivated - assertions that two different lab workers went and infected people at the market, without infecting any of their colleagues or anyone else along the way.
> If that were the case, you'd see the outbreak centered on the lab. It wasn't. It was centered on the market, on the other side of town. So you have to start making implausible - and obviously motivated - assertions that two different lab workers went and infected people at the market, without infecting any of their colleagues or anyone else along the way.
There literally was an outbreak among lab workers in November to December of 2019. Many of them got sick with something that looks vaguely like COVID and quarantined over it - this is a standard precaution when you work around weird pathogens. Social media from these workers was suppressed when they talked about getting sick. Chinese whistleblowers discussed this at the time.
I'm frankly surprised you haven't seen any of this evidence given your interest in the subject.
And we only know about the research they published, not what goes unpublished. That includes various kinds of failed research, research that someone did for fun and wouldn't make it past ethics boards (a not-infrequent problem for this type of virus research), and research that was done under the table to nefarious ends.
> There literally was an outbreak among lab workers in November to December of 2019.
No, there wasn't.
The 1st Trump administration leaked a rumor to the press that three workers got a respiratory virus sometime in the winter in 2019. Even if true, that's completely uninteresting. A large percentage of Earth's population gets any number of respiratory viruses every winter.
I have no idea where you're getting the rest of the details that you're claiming ("looks vaguely like COVID," "quarantined over it," etc.). They're not even in the Trump administration's leaks, and I suspect you're getting them from the online rumor mill.
> And we only know about the research they published, not what goes unpublished.
We actually know much more than what gets published. Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology regularly go and give talks at international conferences. There are visiting scientists at the WIV from other countries, including the United States. WIV scientists upload RNA sequences that they gather in the field to US-based gene-sequence databases. This wasn't secret research. It was out in the open. They would have had no reason at all to conceal the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 if they had had it. Yet there's no indication whatsoever that they had it. Everything we know indicates that they were just as clueless about the virus when the outbreak began as everyone else.
These labs were putting coronavirus samples into a forcing environment that drove evolutionary development towards the goal they wanted to study. Creating new lineages of the virus that differed from the original was the entire point!
Given that, it’s plausible that sloppy lab handling procedures led to someone being infected with multiple different viruses that were present in the same part of the lab.
None of this proves the lab leak hypothesis of course, but a lab worker being infected with multiple variants simultaneously (or separately) is a perfectly plausible outcome.
Doesn't have to be the same person either. A sloppy work safety culture is contagious.
TBF, the idea of two zoonosis event, at the same, and virtually at the same time, do not rank very higher in the probability scale either.
Multiple zoonosis events is actually exactly what you expect from natural spillover.
If the virus is spreading in farmed animals, it will have many chances to spill over into humans. In fact, this is exactly what happened with the original SARS in 2002.
It's striking how similar the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak is to the original SARS outbreak. Almost every detail of the spillover is identical: unknown coronavirus emerges at market in major Chinese city selling wild animals.
But SARS outbreak was from a single strain, wasn't it? It's not the “two zoonosis” that I find to be low-probability, it's the “two zoonosis of two different strains at the same place & time”.
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.
> You would expect, as was the case with SARS, that we would then find the population of infected animals.
In the case of SARS, the animals were not culled for months. The entire SARS response was slow - the virus kept spreading in farmed animal populations and kept spilling over into humans.
With SARS-CoV-2, the Chinese government immediately ordered all the suspect animals to be culled. No test results for those animals have ever been released, if they were ever even conducted.
> the closest virus in a wild population was a bat coronavirus located 1000 miles away.
Guangzhou, where the original SARS emerged, is just as far away from the bat populations and Wuhan is.
And relatedly - several of the animals sold in Wuhan with proper paperwork were from farms far closer to the closest Covid ancestors including many in the same province - not to mention wherever else the off-the-books animals were being brought in from.
> In the case of SARS, the animals were not culled for months. The entire SARS response was slow - the virus kept spreading in farmed animal populations and kept spilling over into humans.
It's been 4 years. When are we culling the COVID animals? The answer is that there's no culling because there's no animal population with a virus that is close enough that it could have been the basis for COVID.
The closest known wild-type virus - the one in those bats from over 1000 miles away - is still missing several key features (eg furin cleavage sites) that would be exceedingly unlikely to have all evolved multiple times in the few animals that made it to the wet market.
Almost every animal population that has resulted in a pandemic in the past has been pinned down in a matter of months and "dealt with." Obvious examples are SARS, MERS, and the recent influenza pandemics. That hasn't even gotten close to happening with COVID. This is a core competency of public health agencies, much more so than you might have realized.
In 2020, the lab leak sounded like a conspiracy theory to me and I thought it was a matter of time until the animals were found. Now, with it clear that there is no population of animal hosts with a similar virus in a similar area (given huge databases of bat coronaviruses that were developed post-SARS), it's looking increasingly like a virus that has been through a lab IMO.
> It's been 4 years. When are we culling the COVID animals? The answer is that there's no culling because there's no animal population with a virus that is close enough that it could have been the basis for COVID.
The animals were culled right at the beginning of the pandemic. The Chinese government immediately ordered all of the farms that raise the types of animals that caused the original SARS to cull their stock. We have never seen a sequence from any of those culled animals, either because no sequences were taken, or because the government doesn't want them to be published. In any case, culling the potential host population would have been a very effective measure for preventing the virus from spilling over again.
> The closest known wild-type virus - the one in those bats from over 1000 miles away - is still missing several key features (eg furin cleavage sites) that would be exceedingly unlikely to have all evolved multiple times in the few animals that made it to the wet market.
First off, the fact that the closest known virus is in bats 1000 miles away is not at all surprising. With the original SARS virus, the closest known virus in bats was also from a site about 1000 miles away from where the human outbreak started. Second, other coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites, so this is something that has evolved multiple times. Third, we're not just talking about a few infected animals. We're talking about a population of infected animals, maybe on different farms. The few that were brought to the Huanan market in Wuhan seeded the outbreak in humans, but they were part of a larger infected population.
> Almost every animal population that has resulted in a pandemic in the past has been pinned down in a matter of months and "dealt with."
This is not true. It took literally decades to locate the origins of AIDS. We still don't know the origins of Ebola (not a pandemic, but it has caused a series of large regional outbreaks and is the subject of intense study). There is a vast diversity of coronaviruses in bats, and the more scientists look, the more they find.
> it's looking increasingly like a virus that has been through a lab IMO.
Literally every piece of evidence has pointed towards the market, from epidemiology (which has firmly established that the outbreak radiated outwards from the market) to genetic evidence (multiple lineages of SARS-CoV-2 present in the very stalls where wild animals were being sold at the market).
Just wanted to say I appreciate that a few people here have actually been paying attention to the evidence re: lab leak and are willing to bash their head against the wall 'educating' the rest of the community. It's a repetitive, thankless task but I'm heartened that the comments aren't all just the same low-brow "is anyone surprised, it was obviously a lab leak from day-1" nonsense that shows up in almost every discussion of this.
The SARS outbreak was from many zoonosis events of slightly different strains, over the course of months.
The standard zoonosis theory here predicts that multiple spillover events are likely, because there's a population of infected animals that is in close contact with humans.
Multiple zoonosis events from close strains over a couple months from a local animal population strikes high on the probability scale.
Virtually simultaneous, in time and space, zoonosis events from different strains at the same place is still possible, but reaches much lower on the scale.
If both variants are spreading in the farmed animal population, it's not unlikely at all. It's what you'd expect.
If it were coming from a farm population, I would have expected the said farm to have been found pretty easily by the Chinese investigation – and they would have had no incentive to hide it, as it would have pinned covid on basically a bad luck case once and for all.
They identified the at-risk farms right away and ordered them to immediately cull their stocks.
The Chinese government has been very sensitive about the idea that the virus came from a farm.
> it would have pinned covid on basically a bad luck case once and for all.
The US would still have tried to make maximum propaganda use of that. If you recall the early "wet market" discussion, it was highly accusatory, and often blatantly racist.
> They identified the at-risk farms right away
Yes, the “at-risk”, not the “incubator”, and notice the plural form to “farms”. China has never pretended having found a farm that would have been the source of the virus.
> The US would still have tried to make maximum propaganda use of that
The US (the state & government) was very far from having tried to make maximum propaganda use of anything regarding covid.
> it was highly accusatory
Well yes, it was highly accusatory of the typically awful hygienic condition of these markets. That's not racist so, that's just a fact.
> Yes, the “at-risk”, not the “incubator”, and notice the plural form to “farms”. China has never pretended having found a farm that would have been the source of the virus.
Just days after the virus was discovered, the Chinese government would have had no idea which farm the virus came from. They ordered a broad cull. They might have destroyed our ability to trace the origins of the outbreak by doing that, though from an immediate epidemic-control perspective, it was the correct decision. Maybe they did do testing at those farms, but maybe they didn't. In the case of the market, we know that China CDC only came in and did testing after the local authorities shut down and sterilized the place. Officials were probably much more worried about the immediate spread of the virus than scientifically tracing the origins of the outbreak.
> The US (the state & government) was very far from having tried to make maximum propaganda use of anything regarding covid.
The Trump administration went to great lengths to use the pandemic for propaganda purposes. At first, Trump was "nice" to the Chinese and even praised their response. However, after the virus took off in the US and it became clear that the Trump administration had completely mismanaged it, Trump pivoted to yelling, "China! China! China!"
> Well yes, it was highly accusatory of the typically awful hygienic condition of these markets. That's not racist so, that's just a fact.
There was a huge amount of racist "bat soup" discussion in the United States early on in the pandemic, followed soon by racist phrases like "Kung flu." I remember a viral post that showed a random Asian person eating a bat (it turned out the photo wasn't even from China). That's what the atmosphere was like.
This wasn't an informed discussion about the viral spillover dangers of wet markets (which are ubiquitous in much of Asia, not just China, and are often the primary way people buy groceries). It was mostly people who have no idea what they're talking about (and who have never visited a wet market) talking about dirty foreigners.
Read the paper. It claims that this is consistent with 2 spillover events, but it's also consistent with 1 spillover and an early mutation. The mutation between the 2 lineages could happen on either side of the spillover.
But a 2 spillover event suggests there was a pool of infected animals with multiple lineages that were all already capable of zoonosis. So why only a single secondary event? This suggests the pool was small, contact was limited, and that the pool wasn't sustained for long. OK, then it's comparably likely that a mutation would happen on either side of the spillover.
We don't know how many spillover events there were. Just just know that it's at least two. Most spillover events probably do not lead to a sustained outbreak.
The problem with positing that the mutations happened after spillover is that the timeline is way too short. Multiple variants were present at the market just weeks after the initial human cases. That points to differentiation before spillover, probably on the farms where the animals were being kept.
US intelligence likely has more evidence than they will publicly discuss. It is a matter of public record that parts of US intelligence (not CIA) had been tracking COVID in China since at least November of 2019. That they coincidentally happened to be johnny-on-the-spot when the initial infection(s) happened, long before anyone was paying attention or trying to create a narrative, suggests that they probably have more context around the conditions of the initial infections than they will ever disclose. How they managed to be "right place, right time" to observe the initial stages raises all kinds of interesting questions that aren't going to be answered.
However, what the (classified) evidence indicates is somewhat separate from whatever public posture the CIA finds useful to take.
> It is a matter of public record that parts of US intelligence (not CIA) had been tracking COVID in China since at least November of 2019.
What's public record is that ABC News reported[1] that two anonymous officials claimed there was an internal intelligence report in late November discussing an outbreak in China, and that it was briefed up the chain. All other news outlets then picked it up, with attribution (ABC News says someone else says...) buried deep in the text per usual. The report was immediately denied publicly by various officials and in over 4 years has never been corroborated, not even with other anonymous sources.
Plus, even if it were true, what's the relevance? It originally made headlines because it implied the Trump administration was slow to react; in particular, that they possibly had as many as 4 additional weeks in which to begin preparations. But it doesn't speak to origin. Most advocates for both the natural and lab-leak arguments all agree that the COVID-19 outbreak began sometime in Fall 2019. It's not a point of contention except possibly when comparing one overspecified theory against another overspecified, straw man theory. There are so many degrees of freedom to either theory (or rather, group of theories) that an early or late start doesn't significantly weigh in favor of one or the other.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-warned-c...
They could as well say "We aren't sharing our real sources, but we have high confidence."
But they are saying that they have low confidence, and that there is no new evidence that changes anything.
They're just changing the way they're biased, because they think that the lab's conditions weren't particularly safe.
But then, we might as well expect that dozens of dangerous viruses should've gotten out.
Topic aside, it is often strategically useful in these types of contexts to convey lower confidence than you actually have. Saying you have high confidence without the ability to provide the reason encourages other parties to wonder whence that confidence comes, which may induce them to search for an answer you don’t want them to search for. There are many audiences for these public statements and you have to thread the needle of desired effect without unintended side-effect. Ambiguity is an advantage.
There are also many cases where adversaries both know the true story, and know the other knows the true story, but neither side finds it in their strategic interest to publish the truth e.g. the optics are terrible for both for different reasons.
That said, this particular case of the CIA publishing a report seems performative for domestic politics rather than strategic, which also happens all the time. There was nothing new or novel. The internal view of the intelligence community has been pretty consistent for years.
There are documented cases of coronavirus leaks from labs in China, but not dozens. Then again, there aren't dozens of SARS either.
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.
There will be no major discrediting of China since the bat coronavirus research at Wuhan labs was funded by the National Institute of Health. This was firmly and unequivocally established by the hearing held by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Refer to “Overseeing the Overseers: A Hearing with NIH Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak”.
Dr. Tabak testified in this hearing that the NIH was funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China through a grant to EcoHealth.
Of-course this was in "direct contradiction" of the earlier testimony given by Dr Fauci under sworn oath. But hey - he has already been pardoned for it.
The only thing that can be laid at China's feet is ignorance of what was going on in their labs and the useless attempt at media suppression once the virus got out. However, anyone who has studied the facts in detail would easily form the judgement that a subsection of the U.S. government had the majority share of culpability.
The NIH partially funded GoF research in contravention of policy. The funding for the worst of the GoF proposals was denied, but there is evidence that the WIV performed the research anyway.
Yeah, the NIH isn't blameless if the lab leak hypothesis is true.
> 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.
IIRC the US had given something like $250K to the organization that was funding the research at the lab.
$250k is nothing for something this size.
This specific grant given to EcoHealth Alliance by NIH was $3.7 million. There were also other grants of $7 million later.
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.
Just like the “Spanish Flu” didn’t originate in Spain. And information about it was suppressed in the US.
> US will keep discrediting China as long as there is no conclusive evidence of what exactly happened.
Right, but in 2020 and 2021, the US was doing everything it could to discredit those who were trying to possibly discredit China. And the WHO was doing whatever China wanted. No scrutiny was to be tolerated. That in and of itself is very fishy.
The US funded the Wuhan lab through the EcoHealth Alliance, which was used as a vehicle to steer US government funding into areas of research that Obama had banned the US government from funding.
The idea that this assessment needs a goal is strange, because it is the most reasonable assessment, but the idea that it discredits China more than it discredits the US is bizarre. Maybe it does for the Chinese people, who can see that their government is willing to put Chinese people in danger in partnership with a US that was nominally refusing to put American people in danger. Turns out viruses don't need visas so it didn't matter, but maybe it's the thought that counts.
Eh, sure, the CIA isn't behind honest. China isn't being honest. There's too many parties with ulterior motives to trust anything being said. China has done a great job of looking like they're covering something up.
I read "Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley" and it convinced me the lab leak theory was at least fairly likely. The proximity of the outbreak to WIV -- which was doing gain-of-function research of bat coronaviruses -- is convincing. Occam's razor and all.
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.
overlaying an additional conspiracy theory in skepticism of the current conspiracy theory
What are you talking about? The NIH funded the research through Ecohealth alliance. It was funded from the US and created in the Wuhan lab. We've known the virus was created in a lab and not natural since early 2020.
https://peakprosperity.com/more-evidence-covid-19-may-not-be...
you're really going to make us watch a 45 minute youtube video?
Yes. He explains exactly why the virus is not natural. It was published in May 2020.
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.
Back then anyone who suggested the lab leak theory was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist by main stream media.
Yes and I’m saying that was bad.
Hopefully this helps people realize how meaningless it is to be labeled a conspiracy theorist.
I think the conspiracy theorist label is associated with common patterns (believing in a cover up in cases where there's no incentive / the cover up would be more expensive than the crime / the evidence would be impossible to cover up, etc) but in this case these patterns don't apply.
The lab leak theory was extremely plausible even assuming no secret conspiracy at all. Lab leaks do happen, that lab did do gain of function research, the State did shut down investigations, etc.
You might be surprised how many things labeled conspiracy theories have strong evidence, incentives, etc. but get scoffed at as kooky impossibilities nonetheless - like the lab leak theory.
Out how many conspiracy theories end up being right.
I think when it comes to conspiracy theories the two heuristics to use are:
1.) Do they have an incentive to conspire?
2.) Do they have the ability to conspire?
Where both are true I think conspiracies exist every where, often to such an extent it just gets labelled as corruption rather than conspiracy.
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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.
> there was a huge overlap.
There was a huge overlap because within a month it became completely taboo for anyone who cared about not being seen as an alt-right activist to say anything about it. Even freaking Jon Stewart got caught in the instant-cancellation blast [0].
A major problem with our world today is that anything that the alt right supports instantly becomes taboo for the rest of us. People are more concerned with distancing themselves from the alt right than they are with finding and supporting the truth—and that goes for just about anything, not just COVID.
[0] https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/jon-stewart-recalls-outrage-af...
Have you considered the possibility that you infer racism more often than people imply it?
Were they? Or were those who claimed it was the only possible answer, without the evidence to back that up?
That's not a good enough reason to censor.
99% of the time there isn't a good reason to censor things, that doesn't stop it from happening constantly though. Especially in China where censorship of anything with bad publicity for the country or government or people is the default stance.
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.
It was never implausible, it has always been the most likely the most straightforward theory. A lab that worked on gain of function of coronaviruses.
All other theories sound as made up bs.
Can someone help me understand why a lab leak looks worse for China than zoonotic spillover? Why would Senator Cotton need it to be a lab leak to give him more leverage?
From what I understand, one theory is that China has for decades tolerated unsanitary wet markets that allowed dangerous diseases to evolve, get stronger, and eventually transmit to human hosts. They'd been warned about this over and over again and had failed to implement the required policies, leading to a preventable pandemic.
The alternative theory has China accidentally letting a disease leak from a lab.
From my perspective, if anything the lab leak theory is the one that makes China look better: at least it emphasizes that it resulted from China's scientific pursuits and not their lack of health codes!
Why would the China hawks need a lab leak in order to China hawk?
Because a lab leak could imply that China had a direct, active role in cultivating or engineering the virus, as opposed to the “mere” disastrous negligence entailed by the wet market theory.
That this is someone's fault and they can be punished is, I think, the reason people want it to be true. Rather than the world is a terrifying place that sometimes kills millions.
Occam's razor in this situation is the people people claiming the lab leak theory is most likely are interested in the truth and feel that a lab leak is the most probable cause. It never made sense either way to see how the virus came into existence to be a political question.
Whether or not someone gets punished is largely irrelevant. It isn't like 1 billion people in China would have sat down and decided to violate lab safety protocols; there'd be some supervisor somewhere who made mistakes. What happens to such a hypothetical person is irrelevant in the scheme of the damage the virus caused.
It sure seemed like a lot of people wanted the other theory to be true also though didn't it? I think the biggest driver for the lab leak arguments is backlash.
Both theories would presumably have people that are culpable due to violating safety rules designed to prevent exactly what happened. But I suppose a lab screwing up is more embarrassing to China than a hick selling wild animals or whatever illegally.
Theoretically, a lab leak should be considered less embarrassing than a hick selling wild animals perfectly legally - wet markets that sell even wild animal meat are legal in China (and other places in the world) in spite of the known dangers of this practice. And people making a mistake while intentionally working with dangerous substances/organisms is also seen as more explicitly culpable than the more distributed blame of people allowing a known dangerous traditional practice to continue, wherein the participants are not aware that they are performing dangerous experiments.
But of course, there is considerable bias to view traditional practices like wet markets more favorably than modern practices like virology labs. So, in reality, the virus leaking from a virology lab would be found far more condemnable than the virus being contracted randomly at a wet market.
The zoonotic theory has no evidence to support it whatsoever. It's the viral equivalent of the 'Magic Bullet.'
- No samples were ever found, nor were any sick animals, in the market where it supposedly started. Period. Nothing.
- No evidence of genetic mutations and variants leading up to crossover, no intermediary host ever found.
- It just happened to start infecting people in the city of a lab which had been doing extremely similar experiments AND had issues with releases before.
- WHO rushed the investigation, involved Chinese scientists in the investigation, and the Chinese government did not cooperate in any way, shape, or form - no samples, no lab data, nothing. It was just "trust us." And everyone dusted off their hands and said "well, no evidence. Done then!"
The world's governments pushed the "zoological crossover" theory because the only alternative would be...what? Accusing the world's largest source of manufactured goods of killing 8 million people? And what would we do, exactly?
Level economic sanctions against a country producing most of the world's stuff? That is by and large quite self sufficient, far more so than most nations?
The initial outbreak cases were clustered around the wet market, not around WIV, and the cases weren't linked to WIV. There was a documented lab leak with SARS-CoV-1 and it killed the affected researcher's mother. That'd the kind of thing you expect to see in a lab leak. Instead you see a cluster of cases that look exactly like it spilled over from the wet market.
And there's zero evidence to support the lab leak. All the research they were doing on live virus was based on SARS-CoV-1. You can't get SARS-CoV-2 out of that. And while they sequenced RaTG-13, there is no evidence they ever had live virus, and RaTG-13 is still around a thousand mutations and a few decades of evolution away from SARS-CoV-2.
The article I read indicated a number of researchers did become ill and die in the right timeframe, with the wet market they routinely visited following that.
The article that was written in the NYT by the same author that wrote the "yellow cake uranium in Niger" article that was the basis for the Iraq War.
I don't give that a lot of credit.
Pretty sure I read it on Vox, but it might have been a republishing of the same AP or Reuters source. It was a kind of retrospective of how problematic it is when someone so wrong about so many things is right about something.
> There was a documented lab leak with SARS-CoV-1 and it killed the affected researcher's mother. That'd the kind of thing you expect to see in a lab leak.
SARS-1 had a CFR of 11% over all ages, 55% for >65. That's about 10x as deadly as SARS-CoV-2. The situations are thus not comparable--with SARS-CoV-2, we'd expect much more cryptic spread before someone gets sick enough to seek medical attention, and illness much more easily misdiagnosed as flu.
There's also zero question that the WIV had unpublished viruses during the pandemic, since they just published 56 new sequences collected "between 2004 and 2021". So do you really think it's impossible that they actually had 57?
Sequences aren't live virus and don't require live virus.
You might want to check out the rootclaim debates or the preprint by Cilibrasi and Vitányi (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.216242v1....) with code - https://github.com/rudi-cilibrasi/ncd-covid
Failing to enforce basic health codes is not a random act of God, it's a failure to perform the minimum functions of a state. It's not a single individual's fault, true, but these wet markets are not some obscure corner shop that managed to dodge regulation, their existence would not be tolerated in any developed country.
No it wouldn't imply that at all. The same animals ending up in wet markets could have ended up in labs. Nothing to imply it was engineered, which is a whole other level of culpability. Sucks that so many people are itching to make this leap.
Right. It fits well with the Anglosphere’s concept of compensible negligence.
China had a duty to run the lab safely, it breached that duty, and so China is responsible for the harms and losses caused by its negligence.
Missouri actually filed suit against China, and it is set to go to trial next week. It will be interesting to watch. If Missouri were to get a judgement for all the costs created by the virus, it could theoretically collect Chinese-owned assets in the US.
And, the news has been full of stories about one particular Chinese asset the US would like to have held in the US: TikTok.
What I don't really get is why that concept doesn't apply to both the wet market and the lab leak scenarios.
Most people grasp the reasonableness standard for running a disease lab: you were negligent if the diseases break containment, because lab standards should be in place to prevent that obvious risk.
Under the wet market scenario, it's not instinctively clear to me what was unreasonable about the practices of the vendors at the market. Does selling bats more likely than not result in spreading disease? Or selling bats in proximity to pangolins? It seems like the vendors were doing the same thing vendors have done for millennia, not doing something unusually or obviously substandard.
Think about it this way: if a French tourist gets a severe toxinfection while eating in a seedy restaurant in some corner of the USA, would the French state, or even the family of the person, sue the US government for failing to enforce health codes / not having good enough health codes? Would you seriously imagine that trial happening and being successful?
Conversely, say the same person got equally badly sick while visiting a friend who works in a US government lab that researches and deals with live viruses. Wouldn't you feel the US government has a higher chance of losing a suit on this?
Except for the part they left out which is that the lab was being funded by the US government and its GoF research directed by a US nonprofit entity with strong ties to the NIH.
If it could be blamed on "China", it could as well be blamed on "the US" for having also funded that lab, and likely having been responsible for what security measures it would have.
And more realistically, if it was a lab leak, it was likely some lab technician being careless, or some thing breaking and whoever was responsible, not fixing it quickly enough.
> lab leak could imply that China had a direct, active role in cultivating or engineering the virus, as opposed to the “mere” disastrous negligence entailed by the wet market theory
This was literally outsourced US DoD research...
Or less nefarious: that they mishandled an extracted virus /someone got bitten by a bat in the lab and was allowed to leave without quarantine.
Same reason Senators claimed American blood was spilled on American soil in ~1835 in the Mexican state of Tejas, which we now call Texas. Notably, Abraham Lincoln demanded proof, but the senate was too happy to see manifest destiny come about even on lies. Fast forward ~200 years and you're starting to hear the same things.
The lab in question is BSL-2* while viruses like this are supposed to be researched in BSL-3*. If it was a lab leak, they were using insufficient safety protocols to keep the virus contained. It also implies they're probably still doing the same for much worse viruses.
*I think these were the levels, I'm going from memory.
There are two campuses in Wuhan. One has BSL-3 facilities, the other BSL-4. Not all work is done at the highest BSL available for cost and practicality reasons though. American rules were that research on agents in the same classification as COVID is BSL-3, but routine diagnostic work is only BSL-2. Chinese researchers classified both at BSL-2.
That's one way to look at it. Another is that a lab leak makes the government seem much more culpable, since they would presumably have more direct control over the activities of government funded scientists. In any case, I think world governments have been reluctant to endorse theories that place more blame on the Chinese government for fear of forcing them into a defensive posture and risking a larger confrontation. But there are also those who desire such a confrontation. That makes it hard to trust the motives that any given party might have for promoting one theory or another.
At the end of the day, all that any sane person should care about is preventing another similar pandemic.
It may be true that other states don't want to antagonize them, and that may also be why we don't see enough emphasis placed on how absurd it is that China has allowed these wet markets to exist so long. Imposing a basic set of health codes is a very fundamental task of any government, and their inability or unwillingness to do so does not reflect well on them.
If anything, one reason why the China hawks may prefer the lab leak theory is because it makes China look more threatening than the alternative: the we-couldn't-enforce-basic-health-codes version of the story doesn't mesh well with the image we have in the West of the CCP as an all-powerful Big Brother that has complete control over every aspect of their citizens' lives. It instead projects a CCP that can barely perform the minimum functions of a state, which is harder to be afraid of.
It's the difference between burning down the house because you were playing with fire indoors vs burning down the house because some cheaply bought electric appliance malfunctioned.
Lax health codes mean the virus came about through sheer (bad) luck, by a bunch of "dumb hicks". The US doesn't have to do anything to compete with a bunch of yokels with bad hygiene. We have those in the US too. But if it came from a lab, using advanced technology that the west doesn't have, China goes from being more than where shitty knockoffs come from, to a much scarier boogieman that requires us to give more money to the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, I think this hits closer to home: the zoonotic origins story makes the Chinese government look incompetent. They actually are much less competent than Western popular culture likes to paint them, but emphasizing that doesn't provide a very effective external threat to rally the masses against.
A lab leak plays into the stereotypical German or Russian mad scientist trope of the 20th century: the incredibly powerful supervillain who in their hubris (nearly) destroys the world.
I wrote this awhile ago on a previous thread about this:
To my mind, there are a few reasons why people are so fixated on the lab leak thing
1) It makes the pandemic deterministic (bad lab security means an outbreak) instead of stochastic (wildlife spillover). That is, to be frank, even as an epidemiologist who is very skeptical of the lab leak hypothesis, a comforting thought.
2) It's a popular topic in the Substack/Medium set, because it moves the pandemic back into their wheelhouse of expertise, international relations, policy, etc. It becomes a human problem with human solutions.
3) It appeals to the contrarian mindset.
4) All of the lab leak papers at least attempt to show definitive proof. In contrast, actually finding the source of spillover events is the work of decades (and isn't always or even often successful). "Science is slow and uncertain" is a less compelling narrative.
Even in the wildlife spillover case don't you still blame it on people doing business with bat carcasses or was there some kind of obviously fine as an animal product intermediary between the bats and the people?
There's a greater burden of proof for spillover when there just happens to be a lab doing virus research near the epicenter of the outbreak.
There have been two other spillover events from coronaviruses in the last 30 years. One of those (SARS) was from Chinese wet markets.
Wuhan has a population of 13 million. It would be surprising if the city didn't have a lab doing virus research.
The WIV had the single largest collection of novel sarbecoviruses in the world. There's zero question that the UNC and WIV wished to engineer those sarbecoviruses to produce an enhanced virus broadly similar to SARS-CoV-2, in their unfunded DEFUSE proposal. An unconfirmed intelligence leak further claims that work was actually performed, at the WIV only.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/inside-wuhan-lab-covid-p...
Lots of cities have "a lab doing virus research". There's no reason to shift to that broader category except willful obfuscation, though.
As to prior spillovers, proximal hosts have been identified for those other two coronaviruses (SARS-1 and MERS), for both within a ~year of emergence. For SARS-CoV-2, we're still waiting.
There are 42 BSL-4 facilities in the world. I'm too lazy to do the math, but I'm curious what percent of the world's population is near one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#List_of_BSL-4_...
If the work on coronaviruses that WIV was doing was at BSL-4, I'd be more skeptical of a lab leak origin. It was being done at BSL-2; see Ralph Baric's testimony covered in this Vanity Fair article:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/ralph-baric-wuhan-lab-...
One of these BSL4 had major incident on Sep 16 2019, just before start of epidemic.
Edit: name checks out.
>It makes the pandemic deterministic
I don't understand why determinism comforts you, but you do you. Unfortunately, a lab leak is totally stochastic, and I hope this revelation doesn't keep you up at night.
>It's a popular topic ... because it moves the pandemic back into ... policy, etc. It becomes a human problem with human solutions.
Zoonosis is a wet market hypothesis, not a random encounter. China failed, and continues to fail, to ban or regulate the wet markets to solve the problem. Zoonosis is clearly policy and human problem.
>It appeals to the contrarian mindset.
The lab leak appeals to anyone who groks statistics. Wet market zoonosis could happen at any one of 40,000 Chinese wet markets. But a lab leak could only happen at one of ~2 Chinese laboratories. Zoonosis happens more overall, but lab leaks are more probable in the direct vicinity of the lab specializing in collecting and studying samples of this exact family of viruses.
>finding the source of spillover events is the work of decades
The reservoirs for both SARS and MERS were found quickly with much less interest. The probability of the lab leak increases every day that we don't the reservoir. Worse, at this point even finding a reservoir isn't definitive, because we would need to establish that the reservoir predates the pandemic, and that it didn't spillover into the animal population from humans.
Given all publicly available information, the lab leak is far more likely. The uncertainty is very high, because China destroyed or concealed the data. Unless someone's memoirs leak it in 50 years, it's unlikely that we'll ever know.
Lab leaks admit the possibility that China was developing a bioweapon. If you're a Chinahawk, this is something you'd be concerned about.
I don't think it's an attack on China. It's a political attack on Fauci, who became public enemy #1 for conservatives early in the pandemic. They've been looking for reasons to blame him (oh, who just incidentally helped protect those dirty gay people during the AIDS crisis), and now our President has stripped him of security detail and announced he wouldn't feel responsible if something bad happened to him.
I had a pretty long post about this here before, due to the politicization of the issue it is highly unlikely any of us will ever know “the truth” without a surprise smoking gun. There are good reasons to believe the natural or the lab leak hypotheses.
I think you have to accept it is now unlikely we normies will ever know the truth.
The post, and its comments, are worth reading still IMO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26750452#26751943
> unlikely we normies will ever know the truth
Thanks for the dose of epistemic humility. I'm willing to go one step further: It's plausible that no one knows the truth. Keeping secrets is hard. If someone knew they might've died in the early stages of the outbreak.
There’s an asymmetry of potential evidence for each of the theories as well.
• If it was a lab leak, then even if the people responsible are dead, there was likely data that could trace it back. It is unlikely that data still exists or is findable, for obvious reasons.
• If it was not a lab leak, it may be impossible to find evidence to prove that is the case.
People always talk about early covid like it was some hyper-lethal virus. Remember, if you were a mostly healthy, non-elderly adult the death rate was like 1 in a thousand. I've read a few of people's amateur investigations about the early days of the virus and there are many cases where people point to potential witnesses whose testimony and evidence is lost because they apparently died from the virus. Did the virus greatly moderate in it's lethality in the first weeks? Was the Chinese government initially freaking out and euthanizing the infected?
My hypothesis is that it did not become less deadly, it is that a combo of demographics and response (both positive and negative) played more of a role than we are ready to admit, mostly because we still seem to feel like everyone did a bad job when the response was probably closer to “fine.”
The response in China, once things got out of control, included locking sick people in their homes. This form of quarantine is probably good to reduce spread, but it is also probably bad for the health of the patient. If there are multiple people in the home, it is probably worse for all of them. China also has a lot of multigenerational households (grandparents, adults, children) which means the vulnerable are together with people who are lower mortality risk, but higher risk for traveling and getting infected. I don’t know what percent of households in Wuhan were like this, but it probably played some sort of role.
We also forget that it wasn’t only China that got wrecked - Italy also had substantial challenges.
On the other hand, if your healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed, people are wearing masks so initial exposure is low, and you are caring for/separating the sick from the healthy, the outcomes are probably exponentially better.
It certainly seems that later strains were less dangerous though.
It would be trivial for the Chinese to determine if covid 19 matches with what they were investigating in the lab, and if the people in the lab were among the first infected.
I don't think it's so simple.
* A worker could've been infected while hunting for viruses in a cave.
* Someone could've been infected prior to the sample being ascenioned.
But it is non-trivial to impossible for them to prove it wasn’t. Which is perfect for political tools and wedges.
Ok. But I'm saying it's almost impossible that no one knows, as the parent comment suggests.
Edit: my original comment was not intended to be a reply to you, but to the parent.
Ah, fair. If it was a lab leak, it is likely someone, or many people, know. I doubt any of them have any incentives to share that information.
The lab leak is more likely than zoonosis. Uncertainty still dominates.
The take away is not that we'll never know. The take away is that governments conspired to obscure the truth, control public opinion, and censor dissent.
> There are good reasons to believe the natural or the lab leak hypotheses.
Given the ridiculous response from everyone involved, I'm just going to assume it was an accidental biosecurity breach of a natural specimen. It happens frequently enough and enough puzzle pieces seem to fit. Not that I care or think anything should come of it, other than hopefully learning better biosecurity procedures.
> I'm just going to assume it was an accidental biosecurity breach of a natural specimen.
Why bother assuming? Why isn’t “I don’t know” good enough?
Sorry, it was a given. We don't know. I don't know. I do enjoy postulating for this particular incident, though.
> Sorry, it was a given.
No sorry necessary. I just think it is interesting how hard it is to not have an opinion about something beyond "I don't know." We all seem to feel more comfortable making an assumption and picking an answer, even when it won't change our behavior and not picking has no cost.
> I just think it is interesting how hard it is to not have an opinion about something beyond "I don't know."
I hadn't thought of this before. I wonder if we naturally formulate an opinion or hypothesis when we're curious about something. Which I did again just now.. huh.
I feel this is a great summary, and really calls out the issues that we are certain of — namely the politicization and the resulting uncertainty. IMO, everything else is difficult to know with high confidence, because of those two issues.
So there’s a new president and the main intelligence agency changes its position radically in alignment with the new government. Why should we be confident in any other claim they made in the past?
Changes its position radically? The FBI came out saying it had moderate confidence in the lab leak theory in 2023, right in the middle of the Biden administration [0]. The DOE came out with their own assessment a few days earlier [1]. The CIA's position was hiterto "we're not yet sure", and now it's "we still aren't sure but we're leaning towards lab leak". That's not a radical shift, it's a very slight shift in the direction that other three-letter agencies have been leaning for years.
There were almost certainly some politics involved in the decision to release the report now, but it's not like the CIA were staunch advocates for zoonotic origins up until now, and again: Biden's FBI and DOE were already leaning this way!
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/politics/wray-fbi-covid-origi...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/26/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan...
So what you're saying is that we shouldn't put our trust into people who pride themselves on being master manipulators and deceivers?
The head of a underpants subscription telemarketing firm is probably trusting his underlings more than the head of the CIA.
Magical Mormon underpants?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_garment
Or, in a parallel universe, there's an old president who preemptively pardoned the person who might have been involved in GOF research leading to a lab leak.
It is an interesting angle, because now he could potentially be subpoenaed by Congress or anyone else, and it seems unlikely that he would perjure himself over anything after 2014.
All he needs to do is commit a federal crime right away.
That pardon means that person is available for subpoena and cannot decline to answer any question.
Unless there's another crime outside the scope of the pardon. For example, crimes within the statute of limitations prior to the pardon, new crimes after the pardon, or state level crimes during the period of the pardon.
We shouldn’t be confident in this specific assessment because the agency making it isn’t either:
> The agency made its new assessment with “low confidence,” which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
Considering what is known about that agency's activities under Reagan, I think everyone lost confidence about any claims they made before I was even born.
Essentially goes back to the start, bunch of rich nepo kids playing spy. See Sidney Gottlieb for a fun story.
That's just it. It was a very long time ago. Not many CIA employees are still there.
That's not reason to trust it. But "a bad thing happened in the 80s and that's all I need to know" isn't a compelling argument either.
I'm missing the part where there has been institutional reform since then. Otherwise, the mandate and policies that fostered those affairs are still in place, no?
The agency has been through several reforms since then, most notably the complete reorg after 9/11.
Like I said, that's not the same as knowing that they're following the rules now. But it isn't the same organization by any stretch.
In fact the government has been quietly acknowledging that the lab leak has merit for about two years now.
Doesn't feel like a radical change in position to me. They said they weren't sure either way previously. In this statement they're explicitly calling it "low-confidence."
The FBI & Energy Department have both said that they think it's a lab leak.
> the main intelligence agency changes its position radically
When did the CIA come out against lab leak? Everyone's been spitballing low- and moderate-confidence guesses.
I would like to jump on the band wagon and point out that this is an absolutely minuscule shift in position.
> The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.
From "we don't know if it was a lab leak or spread from the market" to "we think it maybe is". Sure, they started this investigation with Biden, but just released it a couple of days ago AND they have even low confidence on it. So, why release it if the confidence is low? Why now? The answer is: new government, new conclusions.
They went from uncertain to low certainty. It's hard to imagine a smaller shift in position than that, and thus the dog-pile. You're trying to drag me into some other debate entirely.
And, an equally interesting question: why should we be confident in any claim they are making now?
Normally I would disregard their findings. However, the FBI, former head of the CDC, and Congressional panel all came to the same conclusion: Covid was made in a lab.
Even if the lab leak theory is true, why Trump was so confident about it? Does he have sources that CIA does not? I would be so confident in it only in the case if I myself caused that virus leak...
Only one lab in the world doing GoF experiments on this specific furin cleavage site AND a random natural mutation happens within a few KM of this lab on this specific furin cleavage site. What are the odds of this happening? Very close to zero.
Trump wasn't confident in the theory. He is not confident in anything. He does not care about the truth or falsity of anything he says. He only cares about it serving his interests.
Don’t you people tire of this? Do you really not realize why he just won every contest we have?
He was the president at the time - yes - he had better info than you. The people saying it wasn’t a lab leak had motivation to do so - and the head of that group just took a president pardon for their efforts.
A narcissist like Trump doesn't have better information than I do.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
“I have better information than the president of the United States… HE is a narcissist”
Yep. Just checking to make sure I’m following along correctly.
The president has access to information that I do not. It's wasted on him. You know this as well as I.
Well, if there is one thing about Trump that everyone would agree on, it is that he is very self confident in everything he says.
He has the voices in his head.
Yes that's what I thought but it does say it was an analysis project started by Biden. The timing is suspicious, true.
But yeah this topic is extremely politicised (not just by the US mind you, but also by China). So it's hard to say what's the truth. I doubt we'll ever find it.
The lab leak theory does make sense though IMO. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true. But yeah, I take this at face value. And to be honest I'm just really happy that this is all behind us.
Americans had a role to play here as well:
In 2014, Obama administration halted the so called "gain of function" research because of laboratory accidents.
In 2017, Trump administration restarted the research. See links below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/white-house-to-cut-fun...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih...
The U.S. government, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provided funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, an American non-profit organization focused on studying emerging diseases. The EcoHealth Alliance, in turn, provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for researching bat coronaviruses.
This was published 17 Jan 2017 - https://www.science.org/content/article/after-criticism-fede... - before Trump's inauguration. The process to reconsider the ban started under Obama.
Date on the article you linked is 24 Jan 2020.
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 got to brainwash their population into that for a few years and then they find any convoluted reason to get in while pretending they're merely defending them or others.
China did not allow any outsiders to check the lab which means they knew it was a lab leak. China has no credibility here.
>US did not allow any outsiders to check out Fort Detrick which means they knew it was a US engineered bioweapon. US has no credibility here.
PRC maintains covid came from outside of PRC, they have no reason to let their labs be scrutinized by outside actors just because Mike Pompeo / CIA made up antiPRC propaganda. That's want weak idiots do. Reality is PRC already waste effort entertaining WHO, until US reciprocates by openning up US biolabs for international access to entertain PRC propaganda, they nor their narrative or people that endorse them have credibility either.
Has there been any global virus outbreak from Fort Detrick or the US?
US govt funded some research in the lab which leaked the virus in Wuhan, is Chinese govt funding Fort Detrick?
Likely Spanish Flu. People thought H1N1 started in US because US reported it first. Later it was thought to have originated from Mexico. PRC propaganda notes strange pneumonia with covid like symptoms in Fort Detrick area prior to covid going global. Is that enough propaganda for US to open up their sovereign soil for international investigation? The point is CIA claims has just as little credibility as PRC claims, except US has done even less to dispel PRC propaganda than vice versa and historically just because a country was first to identify and warn of a disease, doesn't mean they originated it. Some patient zero / traveller / trader from Laos where the bats are from goes to Wuhan, one of the largest transit nodes in PRC and the virus cultivates is just as plausible. Or a CIA released bioweapon from Wuhan w military games months prior if one eats extra dose of CCP propaganda. But then reminder Pompeo was head of state at the time and he'd go full retard on PRC.
Why didn't China not allow WHO to inspect the origin of the virus?
Because it validates US propaganda that virus originated in PRC, instead of PRC position that they were merely first to detect and warn. There is no reason to give WHO unfettered access based on US/western propaganda - that's stupid amount of soverign leverage to cede because Trump/Pompeo wants to pressure PRC via WHO. PRC has also asked WHO to investigate Fort Detrick, until US reciprocates, which they haven't? Does US have something to hide? Why are they trying to deflect? See how easy it question motives / intentions / credibility based on inaction. Ulimately no one has to believe the CCP propaganda, but in this scenario the alternative is literally from "we lied, we cheated, we stole" Pompeo, uttered when he was director of CIA no less. Hence CIA pointing fingers mean nothing on PRC credibility, if anything it reinforces it.
Can you post some videos from people who posted on social media reporting that people are dying in the US before Chinese people did it?
The narrative is Fort Detrick was temperorily shutdown in 2019, later determined via congressional testimony because they were "cutting corners". At around the same time, from april 2019, series unusual respiratory illnesses similar to convid, later categorized as related to vaping related killed ~50, infected a few 1000s across 30+ states. PRC asserts this was origin of covid or something, and coverup by US gov (CDC/FDA linking to vapes) and thus US should open up sovereign oil for WHO investigation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAiWSk8bYg4`
Check the date of that video, if you are trying to spread propaganda at least do it right.
The video is September 2019. Before December 2019. Hence PRC narrative that there were signs of covid like infections in US before PRC. I'm clarifying the propaganda. You can look up EVALI to see full timeline, which starts early 2019, in line with PRC narrative.
Watch that video again, it's very interesting that all those people who got sick had vaping in common and none of their doctors fell sick while when the virus leaked from the lab and infected people those people infected doctors in Wuhan as well.
As as I said when you are trying to spread propaganda, at least do it right.
In PRC's accusation, the vape is a cover up for what was leaked that eventually developed into dangerous strains of covid. Hence origin starts in US, hence US should open up biolabs to WHO investigation. Me linking AJ video merely shows it's consistent with PRC propaganda timeline. If you're trying to interpret propaganda, at least do it right. Regardless, this is not a discussion interrogating the validity of the propaganda - because it doesn't matter, it's about geopolitics. There's no reason for PRC to entertain US propaganda any further if US doesn't entertain PRCs. If you're trying to follow a discussion, at least do it right.
Why didn't Saddam Hussein allow the American to inspect it's weapon of mass destruction facilities ?
I hope you're too young to have lived through that 2001 era propaganda because it was the exact same narrative. Put the burden of proof on your opponent with demands that you know can't be accepted.
If you're not too young then you failed twice at the very same propaganda technic. Congrats.
If you were old enough to have lived through that propoganda then you would have realised that other countries did not share the same opinion as the US.
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.
I found this recent interview with Christian Drosten [1] very interesting, he explains very good scientifically why it is much more probable that the origin is not from a laboratory.
A quick summary of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av2Hax3Bg1U
(1) The area where the Nyctereutes spec. (german: Marderhund, I have no idea how it is called in english) where kept, there where a lot of DNA of Nyctereutes and a lot of nucleinacid of SARS II.
(2) From the beginning there a two lines of the corona viruses laboratory-confirmed. From the evolutionary speed of virus mutation it is nearly certain that the separation had to be taken place months before. About 8 times a corona-variation had been aquired by man. From this infection chains 2 virus-types had survived to be confirmed in Wuhan. A person who works in the laboratory would have been working with a clonal virus that is not mutated in that way.
(3) The market is the center of all infections even if you take out everybody that is known to be at the market, not the laboratory.
(4) For the animals at the market a analysis showed that they had been ill/infected (not specifically corona)
These are all separate published aspects that points to the same thing.
The part starts at 2 hours 23 minutes 30 seconds - you have to use auto-translated subtitles which are unfortunately not very good (german language)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Drosten
edit: grammar
there's a 23? bp sequence that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent (which preceded covid-19 by a decade).
now an exact match of that length isn't impossible, but which is more likely? that this managed to be exactly correct on accident? or some grad student was told to just copypasta every furin cleavage site in the database into a GOF library and surprise surprise the most virulent form that became a pandemic came from the sequence that is engineered to be efficient.
any scientist that has any molecular biology wet experience will tell you this is exactly what they would have done (though us researchers would probably not have pulled from the patented BLAST sequences, since that selector is turned off by default by the NCBI)
I wanted to learn more about where this claim comes from and found this article [0].
The linked commentary [1] raises several interesting points.
"Unfortunately, the authors did not provide details of their BLAST research. The patent database that they used contained 24,712 sequences. Yet, by querying BLAST, we obtained a database of 46,121,617 patent sequences with an average length of 560 nucleotides. The authors should give more details and justification for their query, especially if they queried the full database but a posteriori restricted their computation. Of note, with such a large database, and despite the fact that the average sequence length decreased, the probability of finding at least one sequence containing one of the 16 patterns previously mentioned may rise to 68% under assumption 2."
0: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/virology/articles/10.33...
1: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/virology/articles/10.33...
FTA:
The absence of CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG from any mammalian or viral genome in the BLAST database makes recombination in an intermediate host an unlikely explanation for its presence in SARS-CoV-2. You can verify for yourself that there are no other sequences with an exact match.
The subsequent comment about statistics of blast searching is irrelevant.
So the conclusion of the comment-article cited in the parent of your comment is false?
"According to the current phylogeny, FCS appeared independently six times in the Betacoronavirus lineages, demonstrating that FCS insertion is compatible with natural evolution (2, 7, 8). [...] 7. Wu Y, Zhao S. Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses. Stem Cell Res (2021) 50:102115. doi: 10.1016/j.scr.2020.102115"
it's incompatible. Why is there COVID speculation in Stem Cell Res?
"Unfortunately, the authors did not provide details of their BLAST research. The patent database that they used contained 24,712 sequences. Yet, by querying BLAST, we obtained a database of 46,121,617 patent sequences with an average length of 560 nucleotides."
is that not relevant?
just do the BLAST yourself and see. it's a publically available database. you will find zero other exact matches. note that today in 2025 there are a shit tonne of sequences that are resequencing of covid variants so you'll have to filter those out
https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi
Given we are on HN, it seems more likely that the claim originated on substack. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29938732 this may be one of the progenitor threads.
Can you estimate the entropy of the sequence? Maybe by walking to it from other known sequences?
rough estimate worse than 1 in 3^7 (based on # of wobble codons) but its even lower likelihood if you also allow AA variation in the universe of all furin cleavage sites
> there's a 23? bp sequence that is directly lifted from the moderna hiv vaccine patent (which preceded covid-19 by a decade).
could you cite this? not because i'm questioning the statement's credibility, but because i'm curious (and you could save me a lot of time from even knowing where to begin to look for credible information for myself—full disclosure, lol).
sorry. it was 19bp
Here. you can do it yourself. databases are public.
CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG
oh, i counted your earlier post lol. thanks for posting all the above.
Apart from directing anger for political reasons, I don't see the big importance.
It's like wondering why a single building caught fire, when the shocking thing was that the whole world caught fire. Surely the lessons to learn are with 'how to deal with a spreading fire', and not with 'how to prevent a fire'.
The biggest irony in this is that apparently the lesson the current US government learned was "let's cancel all the fire stations and fire all the fire fighters!"
The NIH under Fauci may have been funding gain of function research in China in violation of an Executive Order (EO), and this research may have caused the pandemic.
If so, I think it's pretty important to investigate, how the NIH could violate the EO without appropriate oversight, and to hold those who made those decisions to account.
From: https://unherd.com/2025/01/the-criminal-pardoning-of-anthony...
"Fauci claims — in a curious echo of Trump — that he is the victim of partisan threats of investigation and prosecution. “Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he said in response to Monday’s news. Yet it was noticeable that the pardon is backdated to 2014. This is, coincidentally, the same year that the US three-year ban on gain-of-function research took effect and also the start date for an NIH grant to Wuhan that biosafety experts such as Richard Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, believe is linked to the “reckless” research that sparked global pandemic. “The pardon is a travesty,” he told me.
The evidence has shown clear efforts to avoid such scrutiny. One memo disclosed that “Tony” had told David Morens, a senior adviser to Fauci, how to avoid requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), suggesting that he stop using government-issued phones for his gmail accounts. A leaked email indicated that Morens was coached on evasion of FOIs by Margaret Moore, Fauci’s long-serving assistant — who pleaded the fifth when asked to testify. “I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” he wrote. Another senior aide to Fauci misspelled key conspirators, presumably to avoid searches intended to fulfil FOIA requests."
Sorry, I don't care about Fauci. From my perspective he stood up agaist trump, the all sorts of attacks appeared. They're always contradictive. He and his people don't care about consistency, because his followers only focus on what resonates with their fears and anger. They'll take that storyline and will find things to make that story work. For example on Biden in Gaza, he was both too pro Israel, and too pro Muslim, depending on the audience.
If you have lots of data, you can find all sorts of patterns. Now your looking at misspellings and inferring things from it..
More importantly, I don't care about 'getting justice' on an indvidual. I want lessons learned on how to deal with a new pandamic.
I'm not an American, I don't give a shit about Fauci. I do give a shit about institutions that violate the law performing dangerous experiments that pose extreme risk to mankind. Oh, and those same experiments may have caused the pandemic. This is why its important to get to the truth on this.
The fact that you Americans are playing politics with this, is the most shameful fact of the whole thing.
Both, come on
No. It doesn't matter, because just like with fire, with new virusses it is well known that these will happen regardless of people having bad intent.
You can't prevent someone with mental problems setting a tree on fire to smoke out the deamons in their head. It's a huge distraction and waste of energy that could be spent on the things I wrote about earlier.
We will probably never know what happened unless the CCP collapses and all the documents leak out.
China had a bit of a freak out when the pandemic first started and pretty much silenced everyone close to the lab and kept everyone else out. It was until months/years later that China started allowing chosen data out, and who knows the truthfulness of it.
Authoritarian regimes, especially China, are the furthest thing from transparent.
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 spun as more "racist" than the wet lab one.
Accusations of racism were always a lie used simply to silence those who said it was a lab leak. Our governments failed us, lied to us, censured us, and demonized those who didn't bend the knee.
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.
I understand why China would spin it.
I understand why the NIH (who appears to have funded this) would want to spin this.
What was in it for CNN and MSNBC to spin this as racist when, IMHO, blaming COVID19 on culinary habits is far more racist? What was in it for Rachel Maddow to lecture America about the lab leak when she could have more effectively lectured us about financing the whole thing?
I'm not American but there seemed to be some strange Republican vs Democrat thing going on where the Repubs said lab and Dems said natural. Why so I'm kind of puzzled myself. In England where I live covid questions were not especially partisan.
The partisan thing was so weird. Im right wing adjacent, and I remember that early on in the pandemic being concerned about COVID19 was a right wing thing.
It was all so stupid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHealth_Alliance#Project_DEF...
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/11014...
Was thinking this would be due to the inauguration or decree spree, however the analysis was started under the biden administration
Yes, but we can assume - Trump and his people have openly communicated, planned, and followed through on it - that the actions of executive branch agencies are politicized.
Here we are told that the "C.I.A.’s new director, John Ratcliffe, ... wants the agency to get “off the sidelines” in the debate."; that he's long favored the lab-leak theory (which is a politicized issue); and of all the things a brand new new CIA director must do, we see that this was Ratcliffe's first priority. We know that the CIA did not choose to release the report before the Trump administration.
I think the overwhelming evidence is that it's a politicized action. Would Trump or his team lie or mislead? Of course. We can't give them the benefit of the trust until proven false; they have embraced deceit.
Unfortunately, even though they weren't always credible before, I think that means that these things are now meaningless, other than as clues to Trump's and others' intents: Why prioritize this messaging? Whose idea was it? And always, cui bono - who benefits?
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the following statement about the CIA’s findings on the origins of the Coronavirus:
“I’ve said from the beginning that Covid likely originated in the Wuhan labs. Communist China covered it up and the liberal media covered for them. I’m pleased the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab-leak theory is the most plausible explanation of Covid’s origins and I commend Director Ratcliffe for fulfilling his promise to release this conclusion. Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.”
Having no other information, the fact he went out of his way to associate it with Biden makes it seem actually politically driven by Trump/Republicans.
He wants to give it a "it's a bipartisan conclusion, so it's sane!".
Considering it's "with low confidence", someone else could've published the findings focusing on the low confidence rather than the fact that their needle is pointing more towards "lab leak".
"Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.”
Is that really true? Even supposing it was a leak from a lab, is punishing China really our top priority? What does it accomplish? What does it look like?
That sounds like the goal isn't to find the actual cause, but to seek excuses to justify whatever it is he wishes to inflict on China.
What do you think of Cotton's statement (that is, why in particular are you posting it)?
Maybe because your first sentence above mentioned politicizing. (?)
Tom Cotton is one the lowest integrity people I washington. Watch him in Cspan sometime. Just a buffoon.
The Times also includes this unusual sentence. "There is no new intelligence behind the agency’s shift, officials said."
And right below the headline on the Wall Street Journal they even stressed that the CIA says it had 'low confidence' in its finding...
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/cia-now-favor...
Actually under the original Trump administration.
The intel community never dismissed the lab leak theory. The discrediting of it was 100% a psyop
Specifically, we now have internal emails dating to 2020 from the CDC (NIH? Who remembers, it's been literally two years since this came out) about how it was probably a lab leak and then about the importance to bury the lab leak theory.
It was started under Biden, but the decision to publicize it is the new director's decision.
Worth noting is that this is a low-confidence report. I'm not accusing the director of divulging a low-confidence report under the belief that the public will accept it as categorically true because they have no sense of how CIA confidence levels work, but they're willing to believe the director wouldn't publicize it if it wasn't true.
... you should have low confidence in the truth of my last statement.
It's wild to me that everyone is calling lab leak a politicized theory.
I suppose flat earthers make heliocentrism and the laws of physics politicized theories too, then.
All theories regarding COVID-19 origin are politicized simply because the question itself became a prominent political matter.
+1, the question of origin in general is politicized. I don’t think individual theories are taboo, it’s just very difficult to truly evaluate the evidence at this point, unless perhaps you are an expert and can do all the fact checking yourself.
Heliocentrism was politicized. The Galileo affair had a lot more to do with Church authority during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation than about cosmology. Galileo went out of his way to antagonize certain key players, and his punishment was primarily a political matter, not a scientific or even theological one.
The thing is that unlike political science, virology is an actual science. Scientists have found little evidence of coronavirus at the labs and there is record of them failing even to culture the virus which would be required for any research including gain of function research. In dramatic contrast samples from the wet market were easily cultured into multiple related strains which strongly points to the wet market as the source.
That said, "lab leak" still doesn't mean "virus built or engineered by humans for nefarious reasons."
I think the conversation about this has been repeatedly horrendous because it seems like people don't really understand that there are lots of degrees between "virus in research lab" and "genetically engineered bio-weapon." Though obviously there's more embarrassment and culpability on China's side (by most standards) with a poorly controlled lab situation than some rando, basically serf by implication, selling bush meat at a bazaar.
It’s not just the CIA
https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec...
The house oversight committee investigated for 2 years and came to this conclusion. The CIA is falling in line with the rest of the government.
>The single most thorough review of the pandemic conducted to date
>The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab leak” theory include:
>The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.
>Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.
>Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels.
>Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.
>By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.
Side note: The CIA can publish this, but the CDC can't put out the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Because that's where we are.
One thing I've always wondered is: how many labs are there in the world doing gain-of-function research on coronavirus, as the Wuhan Instutute of Virology was?
Intuitively, it seems to me like there aren't that many, so it's a pretty interesting coincidence that the virus started right next to such a lab.
However, if coronavirus labs are common, then it's not an coincidence. Can anyone point to research that answers this question?
From a political and public safety standpoint, I think the US government and WHO probably felt they had a moral obligation not to point the finger at China during the height of the pandemic. And now we have the opposite -- a cult of hate has taken over the US government, and they have much to gain by preaching hate against China (Trump was in power in 2019, but he only had presidential powers. Now he has absolute power.). So, in either case, it's quite hard to get undistorted information.
I'm not aware of teams other than Dr. Baric's at UNC and Dr. Shi's at the WIV proposing to enhance sarbecoviruses by genetic engineering. If anyone knows of more, then I'd appreciate a link.
SARS-CoV-2 might also be a naturally-evolved virus collected and accidentally released by researchers. The field for that is a little wider. I believe the WIV had the world's biggest collection, and the closest relative published before the beginning of the pandemic; but the BANAL viruses collected by the Institut Pasteur du Laos are now closer. I think there's a few more teams, though with smaller volumes of work.
Naively, I'd think "an American-funded lab in China with American collaborators had an accident" blames China less than "Chinese wildlife traffickers supplying Chinese tastes for exotic wildlife had an accident". The political perception is generally not too tethered to reality, though.
When you say it that way it was an incredible coincidence
My present take: As an infectious disease epidemiologist whose expertise lies in the dynamics of infections a week or so after an initial spillover event, I am much more cautious with my opinions on the lab leak hypothesis than a lot of people who took a single biology class as a distribution requirement in undergrad.
Are you equally cautious with your opinions on zoonosis?
The problem is that huge swathes of the medical community politicized the pandemic for a specific political purpose, especially in the USA. For example, the Moderna vaccine trials were delayed 2 weeks to change the protocol to appease a political activist in the medical community accusing Trump of trying to ram an unsafe vaccine through. Naturally the trial results were available immediately after the election.
I have a question for you: do you trust the provenance, integrity, and completeness of data from the earlier stages of the outbreak in Wuhan?
"I have a question for you: do you trust the provenance, integrity, and completeness of data from the earlier stages of the outbreak in Wuhan?"
Nope.
And yes, I am equally cautious with my opinions about it being a zoonotic spillover event. I consider it the more likely of the two explanations, but far from definitive.
Given that epidemiology features no biology whatsoever, being these days purely a matter of playing with statistics, why would you feel qualified to discuss anything related to labs, leaks, or GoF research?
Both because I hold a microbiology degree as well, and also because that's not actually how epidemiology works either.
I read dozens of epidemiological papers during COVID - the ones controlling policy - and didn't see microbiology feature in any of them. They were all just various forms of curve fitting. Where are these epidemiology papers that are built on a firm foundation of microbiology?
Obviously I don't know either way. But remember when saying "lab leak" god you banned from social media?
I don't think anybody ever explained why exactly it was "racist" to think that labs can leak in China just like has happened many times all around the world, but wet market theory and the dangers of the Chinese food customs is "not racist".
Does anybody know? There were many people online who more than went along with this. Why was it not the other way around?
Organisations I understand, they have whatever hidden motives. But normal people in the "lab leak theory is racist" mob, they never explained why it wasn't "wet market theory is racist" instead.
Perhaps reparations by China could be modeled after the reparations by the US, for the devastating 1918 Kansas/USA flu.
Noting that the above statement honors the notion that flu ought to be named after the country of origin.
https://the-eye.eu/public/Random/wuhan%20coronavirus/
Just for the people who have forgotten what actually happened.
The Wuhan incident was very well documented, it's just that nobody besides the eye kept a record of it and blindly trusted someone else to do it.
Take a look at the reports for yourself, don't trust political bias.
Curious if this lends credibility to the Indian research that was dismissed early 2020. The paper claimed the covid19 virus was man-made.
https://sundayguardianlive.com/news/fauci-described-indian-r...
"...Indian researchers wrote that the composition of the 'inserts' in the Covid virus was similar to one found in HIV-1."
No. The paper by Pradhan et al. was withdrawn and its methodology refuted in https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00129. Spike protein sequences in SARS-CoV-2 don't have any unique similarities to HIV-1.
> Putting these together, we believe that there is a close evolutionary relation between 2019-nCoV and bat coronavirus RaTG13. The four insertions highlighted by Pradhan et al. in the spike protein are not unique to 2019-nCoV and HIV-1. In fact, the similarities in the sequence-based alignments built on these very short fragments are statistically insignificant, as assessed by the BLAST E values, and such similarities are shared in many other viruses, including the bat coronavirus. Structurally, these “insertions” are far away from the binding interface of the spike protein with the ACE2 receptor, as shown in Figure 2, which is also contradictory to the conclusion made by Pradhan et al.
I simply cannot use this as signal to update my priors on the theory given how politically charged this issue is and the new administration.
We cannot ignore the timing or the fact that the release appears to be the direct consequence of the previous director not believing the information he had passed the evidential bar and the new directory believing it does.
It's new signal on the question, which is always nice-to-have, but I'll be digesting it with a huge grain of salt given its pedigree.
I don't think anyone is updating their priors. It's just a loud restatement of existing priors.
Society is like a meta-brain. One neuron may believe something to a different degree than the others - i.e. different priora. Highly-reported channels like this are the society brain updating its priors at large.
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.
A lab leaking wouldn’t do any harm to the CCP. The harm they caused themselves was a mixture of lying and trying to cover up the whole thing. Downplaying it. Etc. The WHO says any unknown phenomena must be treated as airborn until proven otherwise. But they followed the CCP in telling us it was fine, it wasn’t transmissible.
I thought that was baseless speculation and the lab leak more likely explained it because it was in close proximity to the market.
That's still highly contentious, hence the "low confidence" the CIA assigned to their conclusion. There's apparently a lot of evidence for the zoonotic original, though I personally don't understand said evidence.
It has, since day one. The fact that the WIH was one of only 6 institutions in the world that had been conducting GoF research on bat-related pathogens before the pandemic gives such strong statistical evidence towards it that any theory holding the WIH is unrelated, would require very strong evidence. At no point has there been such strong evidence.
I don’t know why it isn’t obvious to everyone how this happened. The lab leak theory is true the outbreak started in force in the market where lab employees sold animals used for testing. They probably didn’t know the animals were infected. Earliest cases were among lab employees. Likely the ones who handled and sold these animals.
I understand that this is based on an evaluation that started when Biden was president. But, given the timing and the weak confidence level, what's the likelihood that this being made public is just the CIA signalling their alignment with the Trump administration?
rootclaim gave the lab leak theory an 87% probability using Bayesian analysis back in 2020: https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...
Which means what?
"Rootclaim" then bet $100,000 on being able to back that claim in a independant structured 18 hour long debate of their own devising .. and lost the $100,000.
The Rootclaim assessment was worthless.
See: https://protagonist-science.medium.com/lableak-truther-loses...
Or watch the entire 18 hour debate in which that claim was shredded.
Given your user profile about: it's easy to see why you might give weight to Saar Wilf's Rootclaim project .. championing this particular result while ignoring its full history seems professionally questionable.
Which means this; it gives further weight to the lab leak theory, and shows the reasoning behind it.
I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate or read all of that article (which makes some misrepresentative statements, and like your response, is rather venomous in tone), but here is the response from rootclaim about the debate outcome: https://blog.rootclaim.com/covid-origins-debate-response-to-...
I also know from experience that scientists, and people in general, are often not well trained in the kind of probabilistic reasoning that is required for combining and weighing up multiple sources of evidence.
> I don't have time to watch the 3hr debate
It was 18 hours.
Three blocks of six hours.
Plus preparation time by both parties and the multiple judges who were chosen to have the kind of expertise to weigh up arguments.
Both parties were invested in making a case, and each put up $100,000 in escrow to add weight to the debate.
The case that you put forward lost.
It was debated by the person that put it forward.
He lost.
I had a look at Eric Stansifer's write-up of his decision, but I didn't read all of it (83 pages!). He does seem to have a good understanding of Bayesian decision making and hypothesis testing.
What confuses me however, is his dismissal of two pieces of evidence in table 2 which he says should be ignored "following the presumption that HSM is the first SSE", and yet earlier, in footnote 24, he states "We are very specifically NOT conditioning on that place being HSM" (talking about the first SSE location). Can anyone enlighten me about this seeming contradiction?
Another point: while both judges are qualified scientists, their expertise is in microbiology/virology not epidemiology, but it is the epidemiological aspect of the situation that is the most contentious part of the analysis, and AFAIK the part that swung the decision in favour of zoonotic origins for both judges. Without prior assumptions they both agree that the DNA evidence favours the lab leak theory.
Has anybody listened to this podcast episode? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-eqdRSx7Y&t=1s
Curious to have a discussion on this with anybody knowledgeable on the topic.
There are animal markets all over China. This isn’t just any market. It’s a market that happens to be near a virology lab that studies bat coronaviruses, which had been investigated for questionable safety practices by u.s. inspectors.
Does this matter?
This is the CIA, which will make any kind of claim, true or false, if it suits their aims.
Well, it does signal their aims.
I suspect that most people are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because they've been infected by Covid, probably multiple times, and have decided to stop taking precautions. To accept that you've been infected with a bioweapon is a pretty upsetting prospect.
> I suspect that most people are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because they've been infected by Covid
Sorry, but that borders on historic revisionism. People are so against the lab manufactured hypothesis because millions of posts regarding it on social media were suppressed and blocked across Facebook, Twitter, and others; and because high-level US officials pressured scientists to claim that it was more likely natural origin than a lab leak despite their actual beliefs; and because a vast section of media and academia blithely swallowed and pushed Daszak's paper in The Lancet despite obvious flaws and massive conflicts of interest. Dissenting views and evidence were heavily suppressed, no matter how convincing or reputable.
The narrative was so forcefully shifted that any discussion of a lab leak was often met with hatred.
And all that was well before most people were infected multiple times.
Your memory is accurate. Yet elsewhere we have an infectious disease researcher claiming
> At the same time, I've come to distrust many of the voices who push the lab leak hypothesis, either because they're obviously doing so for geopolitical reasons, or because they've become addicted to being "the lone voice in the wilderness", despite it not being a risky position to take.
It's an incredible phenomenon, the collective memory blackout that seems to have taken place regarding the vibe in 2020-2021. Never before, or even after (so far), have we seen a more strictly coordinated ban on discussion of a specific topic across all major US social networks. It even reached as far as Wikipedia.
Here's what Yishan Wong (ex-Reddit) has said about it
> Example: the "lab leak" theory (a controversial theory that is now probably true; I personally believe so) was "censored" at a certain time in the history of the pandemic because the "debate" included ...massive amounts of horrible behavior, spam-level posting, and abuse that spilled over into the real world - e.g. harrassment of public officials and doctors, racially-motivated crimes, etc.
There are many problems with this reasoning, but the biggest one is that if true, it should have rightfully caused mob behaviour.
Gaza War (2023-present): <100k deaths Ukraine War: <1 million deaths Korean War: 2-3 million deaths Vietnam: 1.3-3.4 million deaths Covid: 6+ million deaths
It is close to my degree, and it was always the most likely explanation. I am not saying there was purpose, I am not saying there was gain of function, but the connection to the Wuhan lab was obvious.
Don't suspect maliciousness if something can be explained by stupidity!
This was a likely source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8490156/
There was a Chinese master thesis found on the web about this incident that was translated. I can't find any sources now anymore. Maybe it was this one: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/a-chinese-phd-...
Nope. This one: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/masters-thesis-analysis...
There is even a girl that worked in the Wuhan lab and has likely died from this Virus. https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-mail-on-sunday/20210117/2...
No natural reservoir of covid has been found. Ergo it's not natural.
I've never seen a polar bear. Ergo they don't exist.
Doubt. You appear to be Canadian, and their major zoos all have polar bears. Plus you live in Canada, where polar bears run amok. How do I know you're not looking at a polar bear right now, with their iconic black fur?
Announced days after new administration...what a coincidence!
CIA favours lab leak theory after a new head is picked. A person that has always been a vocal supporter of the lab leak theory.
No facts changed, just a Trump appointee starting work.
pro lab leak: 1, WIV being 10 miles from the outbreak area 2, WIV housing dozens if not hundreds of strains of coronaviruses 3, poor bio security / laboratory technique amongst WIV staff 4, previous incidents of accidental leaks in Chinese labs
does it conclusively establish that the virus leaked from WIV? no. but i’d say it at least moderately probable…
It's not like we will ever have a chance to do a useful reassessment of what happened in Wuhan when everyone involved is scared of being designated the scapegoat and executed. And I do mean executed. If the CCP feels that it's useful for the state to find someone there and give them a lethal injection, they'll do it. So it's ridiculous to expect any cooperation from anyone there.
And ultimately it doesn't matter. If a contagious virus is coming to your country, your best response is independent of its origins. And if your response was a complete shitshow, finding a scapegoat in Wuhan won't make your response any less of a shitshow.
The US's response to covid under Trump was a ridiculous shitshow. Nothing more to it.
Is it realistic to expect that the people who have surveillance across the whole planet don't know the origins?
Mankind for some reason is blind. Doing CTRL F for the magic word in this Hacker News thread yields no results. There was a political conflict amongst Chinese people which had it's peak at the moment the virus appeared. If not for the virus, that conflict would have ruined China's image for decades and centuries to come.
> There was a political conflict amongst Chinese people which had it's peak at the moment the virus appeared.
Hong Kong protests?
That's just too risky. There is likely still internal opposition to Xi and if true, this would allow for his deposition.
Congratulations US, you speedran all the way to Russia in 5 days.
My favorite conspiracy theory:
After Tiananmen, the CCP planned many contingents next time something similar happened.
Cue, the [2019 Hong Kong Democracy Protests][1]. The MSS releases Covid19 at the peak of the protests (actually they do pick Wuhan so they can use lab leak as a plausibility if needed) in Sep 2019 and later they use the lockdown laws to completely clamp down the protests.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Hong_Kong_pr...
Can't trust a word out of the New York Times.
Anything to deflect incompetent leadership, I guess
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)
- https://naacp.org/articles/spread-disinformation-and-how-we-...
It's funny how everyone's opinions have changed now Trump is in power. It just shows how much of what people say is to advance their own interests rather than to say the truth.
Personally I'd guess it was almost certainly a lab leak doing research similar proposed by Ralph Baric (the world's leading researcher on this stuff) as described in his testimony to a congressional committee. His work was proposed for US funding and didn't get it but probably the Chinese conducted much the same research themselves and the research pretty much is to make covid for research purposes. One of the viruses he mentions interest in has an insert amino acid identical to covid.
Re. what the sensible authorities at the time have to say I give you the head of the CDC at the time and the chair of the Lancet covid enquiry:
CDC Redfield: "[The US] contributed to the research that led to it and that's to say is that the US government was very involved in funding the Chinese lab that did this research..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMlhvnMpRU0&t=119s
Lancet, Sachs: "Where do you think Covid came from".. "Covid um the question is which lab and in which way. It almost surely did not come out of nature uh it almost surely came out of uh a deliberate research project ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS-3QssVPeg&t=6493s
Also amusingly on of the scientists most active in implying anyone suggesting a lab leak was a crank or conspiracy theorist at the time of the outbreak was Kristin Anderson. Later his slack chats were subpoenaed and he was saying in them “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.” He then got a $7m grant from Fauci totally unrelated to saying the research Fauci funded couldn't have been the problem.
ITT: CCP shills.
I mean which country benefited from COVID? China controlled the virus first then lost a lot from strict lockdown, western had many death cases not to mention developing countries. If some Bie Inc made COVID, I don't think they have the courage to piss all governments.
The country with the population that has the most incompatible ACE2 receptors benefitted the most.
And there's absolutely no geopolitical reason for the unassailably truthful three-letter terrorist organization to announce this whatsoever.
The virology research in Wuhan was done with US money and US experties (Ralph Baric, ...).
The US has absolutely no interest in prooving that the virus leaked from there.
It very much does. China is a political opponent, and casting blame on China allows the US more freedom to act against them.
American involvement is barely an inconvenience. For those most eager to blame it on China, it was the fault of one American. They would like to punish him, too, but he has received a preemptive pardon. (Either to avoid political persecution of an innocent man, or to cover up the dastardly deeds of their domestic political opponents; take your pick.)
Wasn't this one of those "forbidden" conspiracy theories, censored from most social media, while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/us/politics/covid-lab-lea... and https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/27/media/covid-19-origins-lab-le...
In short a few prominent people claimed it was racist to suggest that China's research or wet market contributed to the origins of COVID. They were mistaken but with the highly politicized environment, it helped distort opinions at a critical time. The claims of racism have since been demonstrated to be at least partly false (that is, there is a legitimate case to be made that China's researchers or wet market did contribute to the origin of COVID, and that China's leadership hid most of the evidence that would be used to make a case).
Conflation of very different factors. Animal origin was always going to be the most likely explanation, so wet market tracks. Lab leak after secret gain of function research is much more of a speculatory accusation than the existence of wet markets.
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.
Both happened.
People who merely "suggested" the lab could have leaked, and asked to investigate more, were being called racist.
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.
The WIV was doing research on bat coronaviruses at BSL-2, not BSL-4. See Ralph Baric's testimony covered in this Vanity Fair article:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/ralph-baric-wuhan-lab-...
Saying COVID-19 leaked from a lab with zero evidence is different than waiting for evidence and then saying it leaked from a lab.
There were very good arguments that Covid (probably) leaked from a lab as early as April 2020 at the latest (and in January if you were a virologist included in top-level NIAID emails). HN largely went along with the shunning of debate, which helped give everyone the impression there was "zero evidence" of a lab leak compared to solid evidence of zoonotic origin, which was simply never true.
https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
Censoring views that it came from a lab leak with zero evidence isn't any better. In fact I remember being lied to by major news outlets at the time saying that the evidence points to a non lab origin.
It did though. Animal origin only stopped being the most favored explanation because we haven't found the link in 5 years.
There was a nucleotide sequence in the covid strain that did not show up in any of the proposed hosts or progenitor viral sequences, which is where leaked documents showed NIH (Fauci included I believe) discussing the non-natural origin of the nucleotide sequence. It's possible to search for articles about the Fauci NIH emails, and whether they mean anything scandalous.
Here's a technical article at NIH discussing the theory of no known natural origin for a nucleotide subsequence
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8209872/
This is an open access journal by two people whose publication history you can look up if you want to draw your own conclusions. Read the disclaimer at the top of the link. Don’t bootstrap its credibility by linking it to being at NIH (which does mean something) anymore than saying something found on Google is from the company itself.
Don’t imagine any bootstrapping of credibility is stated. It’s a citation to one article of many with no assertion otherwise. That’s how science discussions work.
This is interesting, thanks for sharing.
I'm confused, do you mean the animal origin had no evidence either, but was favoured? But not having evidence for 5 years suddenly makes the other theory favoured instead?
So basically neither had real evidence, but one was favoured?
False equivalence. Zoonotic diseases have precedent (SARS, MERS) and SARS-CoV-2 most closely resembles BANAL-52, a bat Coronavirus.
Animal origin still seems more likely to me, but less than 5 years ago, since we have a missing link one would expect to see.
Animal origin does not contradict a lab leak however. Especially if you have a biolab studying coronaviruses in bats in the city identified as ground zero.
It does favor an accidental lab leak over a targeted weaponization and release, but it doesn't contradict a lab origin.
Coronavirus lab leaks in China also had precedent. What's your point?
There was no evidence for a zoonotic origin other than it was possible.
There was little evidence for a lab leak other than it was possible, but at least there was some.
That is not true at all. Some scientists at the time suspected a lab leak, talk of which was deliberately shut down.
"Dr Robert Redfield, who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Trump administration, told Vanity Fair that he received death threats from fellow scientists when he backed the Wuhan lab leak theory last spring. "I was threatened and ostracised because I proposed another hypothesis," Dr Redfield said. "I expected it from politicians. I didn't expect it from science."[1]"
The US State Department were told to not to explore claims of Gains of Function research:
"According to an investigation in Vanity Fair magazine published on Thursday, Department of State officials discussed the origins of coronavirus at a meeting on 9 December 2020. They were told not to explore claims about gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab to avoid attracting unwelcome attention to US government funding of such research, reports Vanity Fair.[2]"
We may never know the truth, but its clear that there was politics being played since the beginning of the pandemic to obscure the truth, and not just by China.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57352992
[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...
A lot of careers are tied up in research that isn't gain of function officially, but sure looks like it.
Yes, but the rush to the wet market theory was no better.
Wasn't it? Most of the earliest cases had a link to the market, many of whom were vendors including the very first known case. The early cases which had no known link lived/stayed clustered around the market. The market sold live wild animals which were known reservoirs for the previous coronavirus break (SARS).
How can following a trail possibly be no better?
There was also no evidence against it. If there is neither solid evidence for nor against something I find it perfectly reasonable to apply the balance of probabilities. At least as long as you qualify your statement with a "probably".
And with the main competing theory (covid spreading from a wet market in a city that contains a biolab) also being consistent with the hypothesis that it was an accidental lab leak, to me the balance of probabilities always seemed to favor the lab leak hypothesis.
Yet saying that Covid probably originated from a lab leak was once branded as dangerous misinformation, with seemingly no evidence to support that claim
At the time, there was essentially a 50/50 chance it was a lab leak or from a wet market. The issue with saying it was a lab leak at that time is that you are essentially gambling the US's relationship with China should it come out that it was a from a wet market. Also, a lot of the discussion regarding the lab leak theory early on seemed to me like it wouldn't be sated even if the US presented sufficient evidence that it was from a wet market.
But we can say it leaked from wet market without evidence!
The lab leak theory was started by Chinese netizens. It was mentioned on Chinese media. Hell the name Wu Flu came from Chinese media.
It wasn't forbidden, it lacked evidence, which it still does, even under this highly biased new administration.
It was forbidden since users were banned for talking about it. That is what is meant by forbidden. When an authority exercises their power over you to stop you.
For a banned topic I sure saw tons of posts and discussion about it.
> while most people (here too) cheered for "fighting misinformation" with censorship?
Exactly right. Remember any comment daring to question the authorities was shouted down to oblivion. Anyone daring to question lockdowns or other draconian measures were met with fire and brimstone. I lost a lot of respect for HN during Covid.
I feel it’s important to not forget the level of adherence to authoritarian rule that infected the population during Covid. Even places like HN were not immune. “Just following orders” was SOP even here.
It was malinformation. Whether it is misinformation or not is irrelevant.
I'm assuming this is satire?
Yes.
I think the issue falls into the problem of getting reliable information out of China.
Because of a lack of access and free speech it's hard to get verifiable evidence to it's origin being from a lab leak or a market in either direction.
Unfortunately, because of that lack of access mistrust and conspiracy theories spread like wild fires.
It's important with science to understand that there is what happened or what is observed and to separate that away from wishful thinking or feelings.
The new CIA director speaking about this sensitive subject with no less than Breitbart explains everything.
Because Trump told them to.
The furin cleavage site in the virus was synthetic. The peak prosperity guy blew the lid off of this in early 2020. I guess that was a "conspiracy theory" though?
https://peakprosperity.com/more-evidence-covid-19-may-not-be...
Find me a conspiracy theory that was found to be true AND was pushed by the left. I haven’t seen one yet.
I think this is unfortunately a vindication for the conspiracy theorists and a massive failure for all the journalists/TV show hosts of the mainstream media who openly mocked/refused to investigate this possibility back 2020.
The trust in the media was already low before this and I can't imagine that this news will make things better.
We can conclude nothing, except that humans do stupid stuff and usually conspiracy theories are incorrect. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Do we actually know if NIH was doing gain of function research (on Corona viruses) in the Wuhan lab? It sounds like another right wing conspiracy theory but if people have high quality sources for this being true I’ll happily change my mind.
They subbed it out to these guys because it was illegal to do Gain of Function research:
https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2024/06/ecohealth-alliance...
The demonization of the Ecohealth Alliance is one of the more depressing aspects of the response to the pandemic.
EHA has been warning for decades that a coronavirus pandemic is likely, and that governments should be taking steps to prepare for it and to make it less likely. Then, they're proved right, but instead of society thanking them, they're subject to a politically motivated witch hunt, with the aim of distracting from the US government's disastrous pandemic response.
Fun fact: Ecohealth terminated Daszak's job as CEO in the first week of this year
https://x.com/thackerpd/status/1880465349373751438?t=oBbkfRZ...
There's nothing fun about that. They've been pressured into taking this step.
It's begging the question to claim they were proven right. Sure, they were proven right in some respect, but if the research itself caused it (and let's be real, it did) then they were proven right in a manner that doesn't really speak well of their record. And yes, they were influential in arguing for continued grant money to study coronaviruses. They were also influential in arguing against the Obama administrations restrictions on gain of function research and seem to have sought ways around the restrictions (we know from comments on the DEFUSE paper). They didn't publicly disclose the DEFUSE paper, a whistleblower in the DoD had to leak it. It is relevant because it suggested adding a FCS to natural coronaviruses to make it more virulent to humans. It seems like as soon as a virus with FCS appeared on the scene, their first reaction should have been "oh no, did someone do that research we proposed somewhere? We have to tell someone!" -- but, alas, no. Let's keep crying that they're being demonized, though.
The research didn't cause it.
The scientific evidence that the outbreak began at the market is overwhelming at this point, and there's never been a shred of evidence for the lab leak.
If you think otherwise, then you have not been following the scientific publications on the subject for the last 5 years.
So yes, EHA has been proven right, and you're hounding the very people who dedicated themselves to warning the world about the threat of a pandemic.
This is a fascinating exhibit. To effectively summarize favorite take on Covid, “the peasants will go to their graves before they admit they were fools”.
I can’t believe how much people want to find a reason for this with great certainty. It’s impossible to prove either way…
But the fact checkers back in 2021 labeled the lab leak theory as false/misinformation. Meanwhile anyone who suggested it was labeled a conspiracy theory by the main stream media.
That's absolutely false. If people claimed that it was definitively lab leak in origin, it was (correctly) labelled as false. Can you cite me examples, with wording, of people positing it, but not claiming it outright, who were censored?
not this again
It's pretty wild to me that a good portion of commenters here seem to think that only one side can politicize Covid's origins when the cited article itself says that the conclusion predates the new administration.
The natural origin bitter-clingers are still citing papers that claim to lean towards natural origin with the thinnest possible evidence. I admit I'm not a virologist, but I am a bit skeptical that this community would be completely forthright with us.
I can't shake the feeling like there might be fire where there's smoke: the Chinese government has not provided access to the WIV's data, for instance. The Chinese government deleted the virus's genome sequence from GenBank before later releasing it publicly. The closest relative to Covid-19 in known databases is RatG13, a virus from bats that was discovered in caves thousands of miles away, a complex that the researchers at WIV had used to collect samples. Peter Dasnak of EcoHealth alliance had previously submitted a plan to the DoD to introduce furin cleavage sites to existing coronaviruses to do gain-of-function research (or some euphemism for GOF to evade restrictions), a proposal that was declined, but within which there are still comments extant where they discuss outsourcing the riskiest research to China. Peter Dasnak led the delegation from WHO to China but never publicly disclosed that he had, only several years earlier, been interested in research that would have produced a virus that very specifically resembled Covid. A small group of influential scientists and bureaucrats were discussing via email that it certainly appeared to be a lab leak to them until they met in person to speak with Dr. Fauci in February 2020, after which they abruptly stopped discussing the possibility of lab-leak and worked to submit the Proximal Origin letter to Nature that claimed a consensus among scientists that it must be natural origin -- based on the airtight logic that if a lab wanted to make a coronavirus it probably would have done it differently. Those authors did not disclose the influence of Peter Dasnak and Dr Fauci in drafting the letter. Subsequently, the US government used the existence of the letter as authoritative evidence of a natural origin in order to lean on social media companies to censor speech about the potential of a lab leak. Meanwhile, the fact remains that in order for Covid to have made a jump from an animal species, it would have to be extant in the population of an animal species -- or a variant clearly one mutation away would need to be. It's been 5 years and we haven't found an animal with Covid.
Of course we'll never get the smoking gun because the data you'd need -- the experimental data from WIV -- is likely gone forever. Why would that be? Why wouldn't a leading research center on coronavirus virology -- perhaps the foremost in the world -- hide its records when the big event that represents its entire reason for existence -- a coronovirus pandemic -- has shown up in the world, conveniently on its doorstep? Shouldn't that be their time to shine? Are you going to blame that on Trump's rhetoric? Why hasn't all of Baric's data from UNC been released to the public yet, then?
It is really pretty amazing to me that many people will likely go to their grave thinking "oh, no, no scientists released a paper that says the natural origin is still a live theory, I don't have to listen to any of this conspiracy nonsense" simply because they can't live in a world where Trump was right.
> oh, no, no scientists released a paper that says the natural origin is still a live theory
Not to mention that the main paper cited for this was written by ... Daszak, yet again. And it was endorsed by 26 other people who all had conflicts of interest, under a Lancet editor who since admitted that he knew Daszak had a massive conflict of interest, which wasn't admitted publicly for a year.
Ain't it odd that media never really ran with that story? That neither Dems or Republicans had much to say about Daszak? It didn't too viral on social media, there were never any TV interviews where they showed people reacting to being told that, no documentaries about the flaws of the Lancet paper and how it was pushed; it was never part of any drive to change policies, etc. Seemed odd to me anyway.
Out of curiosity, have you seen the debate between Peter Miller and Saar Wilf, summarized in https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/practically-a-book-review-r...?
That was a serious debate with considerable time, effort, and independant third party scrutiny.
Another good overview is at:
https://protagonist-science.medium.com/lableak-truther-loses...
For anyone who believes that the pandemic was a "natural zoonotic spillover," please read the following sections of the DEFUSE proposal, highlight copied below:
"Synthesis of Chimeric NovelSARS-CoVQS: We will commercially synthesize SARSr- Cov glycoprotein genes, designed for insertion into SHCO14 or WIV16 molecular clone backbones (88% and 97% S-protein identity to epidemic SARS-Urbani. These are BSL-3, not select agents or subject to P3CO (they use bat SARS-CoV backbones which are exempt) and are pathogenic to hACE2 transgenic mice. Different backbone strains increase recovery of viable:viruses identification of barriers for RNA recombination-mediated gene transfer between strains™. Recombinant viruses will be recovered in Vero cels, or in mouse cells over-expressing human, bat or civet ACE2 receptors to support cultivation ofviruses with a weaker RBD-human ACE2 interface. "
In vitro testing of chimeric viruses: All chimeric viruses will be sequence verified and evaluated for. i) ACE2 receptor usage across species in vitro, ii) growth in primary HAE, iii) sensitivity to broadly cross neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies that recognize unique epitopes in the RBD. Should some isolates prove highly resistant to our mAB panel we will evaluate cross neutalzation against a cited number of human SARS-CoV serum samples from the Toronto outbreak. Chimeric viruses that encode novel genes with slower potential will be used to identify SARSr-CoV strains for recovery as full genome length viable viruses.
In vivo pathogenesis: Groups of 10 animals will be infected intranasally with 1.0 x 106 PFU of each vSARSr-CoV, clinical signs (weight loss, respiratory function, mortality, et) followed for 6 days..."
S2 Proteolytic Cleavage and Glycosylation Sites: ... We will analyze all SARS-CoV S gene sequences for appropriately conserved proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for the presence of potential furin cleavage sites".... Where clear mismatches occur, WE WILL INTRODUCE APPROPRIATE HUMAN SPECIF CLEAVAGE SITES AND EVALUATE GROWTH POTENTIAL IN VERO CELL AND HAE CULTURES."
I apologize as the copy and paste from a PDF is not ideal. If anyone ever wanted a smoking gun, this is it. The WIV proposed to build SARS-COV2 in 2018/2019. The key point is that when someone proposes this type of research, they often have already done the work and the funding will be used to generate the next result needed for future funding.
Also, one item that the world conveniently forgot was that half of the specialists in this field believed passionately that the only way to prevent the next Pandemic was to create super viruses in the lab (this is in the public record). Given the extensive history of lab leaks and suspected lab leaks, this path is absolute and complete hubris and folly. The same folks who were pushing this agenda (and the DEFUSE proposal is filled with little notes as to how certain rules could be skirted) were the folks who immediately claimed that it was absolutely impossible for this to be a lab leak.
This proposal was shopped to a number of different US agencies in 2019. This means that there were likely dozens of individuals in multiple agencies who reviewed this proposal and said absolutely nothing when the pandemic broke.
There is no evidence or plausible scenario to support this, but it’s an incredibly useful story for the incoming regime to promote for the purposes of hampering consensus reality.
It also gives conspiracy theorists and low-trust communities a bone to chew on, since UFO hysterias are proving to have an increasingly short shelf life.
What do you mean by "no evidence"?
There is no evidence. Period. Just a dozen contrived situations that “might have been” being aligned for political ends.
Meanwhile in reality they’ve all but named the goddamn specific animal that brought it from the zoonotic pool and introduced it to mankind.
Handwringing about the existence of a somehow malign bio lab in a city LARGER THAN NEW YORK that has DOZENS is preposterous. There’s no evidence, no scenario, no whistleblower, no documentation, nothing. It’s a chew toy for low-information busybodies who need this to be an evil foreign plot.
And it’s boring and sad, particularly when America’s first dictator is installing a profoundly corrupt lunatic who is here to overturn germ theory.
Have some dignity.
and the people that believe it tend to be also very happy to be exposed to biological weapons running wild
From xAI: Gina Haspel (Director of the CIA) who was the, allegedly authorized bonuses for six CIA officers to change their assessment from a lab leak to a non-lab source for the origin of COVID-19.
Sources documenting this: National Review, New York Post & Daily Express US.
US government lies, and then calls "misinformation" on people who call out the truth. Now they are being held accountable to go back to the truth. Which is why the CIA is now switching 180-degrees from a Lie to the truth (non-Lab to Lab).
Does thw presodent get classifief EOs caise, thays thos
Pretty safe to say this is a politicized nothingburger:
Fauci has been preemptively pardoned for gain of function research (lying or funding), so the bureaucrats can now pander to Trump. Anyway, we have always been at war with Oceania and China is now our enemy! Next week the NYT will use the term "Wuhan Virus".
This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now? I feel like I'm watching The Godfather.
FWIW, the pardon doesn't mention gain of function research. (https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/dl). This pardon applies every bit as much to him parallel parking while attending a Chief Medical Advisor meeting as it does to gain of function research.
> This is the first US presidential change of power I'm following consciously. Have there always been such abrupt 180° turns and pledges of loyalty as now?
No; this is 100% new. This is in no way a normal Presidential transition of power.
Fauci’s pardon curiously goes back to 2014. What do you suppose he needed cover for that long before Covid?
It's crazy for a Trump loyalist to complain about "politicization" of this process when declassifying and releasing a report with no hard or new evidence is quite clearly a political decision.
The US is clearly setting up China to be the next Big Enemy, the USSR 2.0. The US establishment expects--and arguably is fomenting--economic and possibly eventual military conflict with China. The "lab leak" declassification neatly fits into that narrative.
We may never know the truth or it may take decades to find out.
There's really only two likely theories here: zoonotic origin and lab leak. There are many variants of "lab leak" but the most likely is that it was accidental. It's more fringe to claim it was intentional. This sort of thing has happened before [1].
There is circumstancial data for this like China not cooperating with a WHO investigation back in 2020 and 2021 and a Wuhan Institute of Virology virus database in SEptember 2019. To my knowledge, that has never been recovered or examinted by external parties. My theory is, like every government (including the US), China doesn't want to know the answer to this question. There's literally no upside. Would you want to be the official who oversaw a leak like this? Would you want to be in charge of the government at that time? Nobody wants that. Governments love ignorance.
The zoonotic origin is still more likely but it has the obvious problem that we haven't (yet) identified the host animal. Also, Wuhan is quite far from the bats that might be the likely source.
It might be a complicated origin, such as a person or animal being infected with multiple strains and a replication error creating the virus from multiple sources.
But the main point here is we're going to see a lot of anti-China sentiment being drummed up by the US in coming years. This is bipartisan too.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...
I have some opinion on this: despite whatever was the source, the reaction that was made by countries (i.e. complete global lockdown of population) means that they were scared as hell. And I haven't seen any govt scared so much on any flu that came out in my life, however some of them were baddest in my life (not mathematically speaking, I know that every set has a supreme element, what I mean that flu can be dangerous to people incl me, with asthma)
Based on their reaction we may know that they either knew something very bad (i.e. failed experiment) or were suspecting something so bad that could, at least in their theory, kill the population or massively decrease it.
In other words something was fishy and they overreacted.
> were suspecting something so bad that could, at least in their theory, kill the population or massively decrease it.
Yeah, a really bad virus.