Covid-19 likely emerged from laboratory leak, US energy department says:
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Updated finding a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged and comes with ‘low confidence’. The virus which drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers.
The department’s finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines. It follows an FBI finding, issued with “moderate confidence”, that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.
US officials, the Journal said, also declined to expand on new intelligence or analysis that led the energy department to change its position. They also noted that the energy department and FBI arrived at the same conclusion for different reasons.
I don't chime in on this stuff much, because you can never say the right thing, but I have to say if it's true much of us got it all wrong. The cancel culture around the pandemic was over the top against any view aside from what was generally accepted. I'd never have guessed a couple years later these would be the findings. Still curious at the evidence (if any). The whole vaccine rollout was a disaster from the beginning. More populace countries got it and the more densely populated, developing countries got little. People who didn't want to take it were vilified when regardless of them taking it, many countries still haven't been fully inoculated making getting it here a moot point. I even still feel irritation to those who didn't get vaxxed but now really believe it shouldn't have been vilified as much as it has been.
Lesson learned for everyone is to wait for more evidence before jumping the gun. Not only in covid, but in any of these movements that come out accusing anyone of anything.
I don't chime in on this stuff much, because you can never say the right thing, but I have to say if it's true much of us got it all wrong. The cancel culture around the pandemic was over the top against any view aside from what was generally accepted. I'd never have guessed a couple years later these would be the findings. Still curious at the evidence (if any). The whole vaccine rollout was a disaster from the beginning. More populace countries got it and the more densely populated, developing countries got little. People who didn't want to take it were vilified when regardless of them taking it, many countries still haven't been fully inoculated making getting it here a moot point. I even still feel irritation to those who didn't get vaxxed but now really believe it shouldn't have been vilified as much as it has been.
Lesson learned for everyone is to wait for more evidence before jumping the gun. Not only in covid, but in any of these movements that come out accusing anyone of anything.
Well said.
We need more info. But so many highly educated people in here and elsewhere dismissed it based on "science". I guess it can take a lifetime to really truly understand what science is. It's not funding or political guessing or journals.
Could this article be rubbish?
Yes.
But at the end of the day you've got a big unregulated lab making weird coronaviruses, and then we get a weird coronavirus outbreak just outside its doors.
Common sense says you don't easily dismiss that.
More to come on this I am sure. Political motivations? Always. But there's still that lab.
I don’t think people read the article. This isn’t a definitive conclusion. It’s one agency if many making commentary on the likelihood of where it started.
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The energy department’s updated findings run counter to reports by four other US intelligence agencies that concluded the epidemic started as the result of natural transmission from an infected animal. Two agencies remain undecided.
I’m not sure that this particular report changes anything at this point.
I don’t think people read the article. This isn’t a definitive conclusion. It’s one agency if many making commentary on the likelihood of where it started.
I’m not sure that this particular report changes anything at this point.
Yeah, it's a 1.5 year old report by a single agency that doesn't provide any new evidence and even they have low confidence in their conclusion.
As always, it's a plausible scenario. But at this point at least, there isn't much publicly available evidence to support it.
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I don’t think people read the article. This isn’t a definitive conclusion. It’s one agency if many making commentary on the likelihood of where it started.
I’m not sure that this particular report changes anything at this point.
It should change things for people who have already made up their minds.
But, because they'e already made up their minds, it ...probably won't lol.
Coronavirus outbreak outside of a coronavirus lab. Innocent until proven guilty but, yeesh.
Yeah, two people who have zero scientific background are really who I want to listen to on the matter.
It's also amazing how seamlessly they shift from most stories where they talk about government agencies being corrupt/incompetent/liars/etc., but when the Department of Energy has a 1.5-year old report that agrees with their position, all of the sudden it's held up some sort of gold standard and proof of anything.
You see that a lot with populist commentators on the New Left/Right. When you rely on subscribers to pay your bills, you have to give them content that makes them feel like they're smarter than everyone else. So rather than actually providing rigorous, critical insight (because that won't necessarily achieve their goal), they usually just end up descending into contrarianism. It didn't take very long into that clip to realize that they don't really know what they're talking about.
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Yeah, two people who have zero scientific background are really who I want to listen to on the matter.
It's also amazing how seamlessly they shift from most stories where they talk about government agencies being corrupt/incompetent/liars/etc., but when the Department of Energy has a 1.5-year old report that agrees with their position, all of the sudden it's held up some sort of gold standard and proof of anything.
You see that a lot with populist commentators on the New Left/Right. When you rely on subscribers to pay your bills, you have to give them content that makes them feel like they're smarter than everyone else. So rather than actually providing rigorous, critical insight (because that won't necessarily achieve their goal), they usually just end up descending into contrarianism. It didn't take very long into that clip to realize that they don't really know what they're talking about.
That video above is rubbish yes.
But just to help you understand better, the reason those two journalists don't have scientific backgrounds is because they are professional journalists.
I haven't seen anybody hold government agencies up to gold standards, it's more a debate about which one is lying the most. It sounds like your arguement is that we should hold the chinese givernment to a gold standard and ignore obvious coincidences like a coronavirus pandemic starting outside of the doors of a coronavirus lab.
So step 1 on that I guess would be blaming professional journalists for not having scientific backgrounds and then sort of vaguely dismissing the US energy department.
Criticising them, for sure. Are the facts old? It's called covid19 for a reason, but sure there's lots of ways to criticise them. Doesn't make the Chinese government the new gold standard, or the theories/excuses they put out.
But the above isn't journalism; they're not reporting on something and trying to explain it in an accurate way that people can understand. They're not even trying to be persuasive. It's just a bunch of opinion by people with a clear agenda who are misrepresenting/glossing over facts to bolster their point.
And if I'm going to listen to someone's opinion on the matter (since it still is a very open question where educated opinions are valuable), it'll be someone who actually knows what they're talking about. Not someone who says that the reason scientists generally favor the natural origin theory is because the "scientific establishment" is involved in a cover up to try protect their grant money/funding.
But the above isn't journalism; they're not reporting on something and trying to explain it in an accurate way that people can understand. They're not even trying to be persuasive. It's just a bunch of opinion by people with a clear agenda who are misrepresenting/glossing over facts to bolster their point.
And if I'm going to listen to someone's opinion on the matter (since it still is a very open question where educated opinions are valuable), it'll be someone who actually knows what they're talking about. Not someone who says that the reason scientists generally favor the natural origin theory is because the "scientific establishment" is involved in a cover up to try protect their grant money/funding.
I don't read it that way at all. They're saying there's been a classified update to a document and explaining what it means. They're also saying not definitive.
But the above isn't journalism; they're not reporting on something and trying to explain it in an accurate way that people can understand. They're not even trying to be persuasive. It's just a bunch of opinion by people with a clear agenda who are misrepresenting/glossing over facts to bolster their point.
And if I'm going to listen to someone's opinion on the matter (since it still is a very open question where educated opinions are valuable), it'll be someone who actually knows what they're talking about. Not someone who says that the reason scientists generally favor the natural origin theory is because the "scientific establishment" is involved in a cover up to try protect their grant money/funding.
Ok, I'll bite. What is the motivation of the FBI and the department of energy to conclude this is likely a lab leak with moderate and low confidence in that order? Are they also hacks trying to fan culture war flames? Please, do tell.
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Ok, I'll bite. What is the motivation of the FBI and the department of energy to conclude this is likely a lab leak with moderate and low confidence in that order? Are they also hacks trying to fan culture war flames? Please, do tell.
Lots of possibilities:
-they have some kind of convincing evidence of a lab leak that isn't publicly available.
-they're biased towards a certain conclusion because it fits their goals/narrative or those of the US government (see WMDs in Iraq)
-they're not qualified to make an accurate assessment and/or didn't consult the people who are experts in the field. That's basically what happened with the House Republicans report on the origins (along with the bias mentioned above).
-they're straight up lying. There are countless examples of intelligence agencies lying to achieve their goals.
And if you think 2 intelligence agencies concluding that a lab leak is the most likely source of SARS-CoV-2 carries a lot of weight, why don't you give significantly more weight to the fact none of the other agencies (15 of them I think?) have come to that same conclusion (so far at least)?
Feel free to fact check me but my understanding is that only four agencies believe that it is zoonotical
I'm not trying to convince you it's a lab leak. I'm trying to convince you that a lab leak is a viable, non conspiracy theory that should be discussed without all the jeering and snide comments you often find when it's brought up
Last edited by White Out 403; 02-27-2023 at 07:24 PM.
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Feel free to fact check me but my understanding is that only four agencies believe that it is zoonotical
Yes, and the others don't think they can conclude either way based on the evidence. If the lab leak theory is as much of a slam dunk as that video above would suggest (they basically say that anyone who has been paying attention would come to the conclusion that it started from a lab leak), then why haven't all the agencies come to that conclusion?
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I'm not trying to convince you it's a lab leak. I'm trying to convince you that a lab leak is a viable, non conspiracy theory that should be discussed without all the jeering and snide comments you often find when it's brought up
You don't have to convince me of that. I wrote this almost 2 years ago in this very thread:
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Originally Posted by opendoor
The lab theory is absolutely plausible and would explain some missing evidence and the lack of closer relatives of SARS-COV-2 being found in nature. But at the same time, there is absolutely no credible direct evidence behind that theory and no one has suggested that there's any clear evidence of the virus showing signs of manipulation. So what are we left with?
And that's still basically where we are. There's no evidence of manipulation and we have no evidence of a close progenitor being collected and sequenced. Nor is there a very good explanation of how a lab leak would result in two different lineages of SARS-CoV-2 ending up in the wet market (normally that would imply spread occurring among animals for a period of time to generate the mutations).
Yes, and the others don't think they can conclude either way based on the evidence. If the lab leak theory is as much of a slam dunk as that video above would suggest (they basically say that anyone who has been paying attention would come to the conclusion that it started from a lab leak), then why haven't all the agencies come to that conclusion?
You don't have to convince me of that. I wrote this almost 2 years ago in this very thread:
And that's still basically where we are. There's no evidence of manipulation and we have no evidence of a close progenitor being collected and sequenced. Nor is there a very good explanation of how a lab leak would result in two different lineages of SARS-CoV-2 ending up in the wet market (normally that would imply spread occurring among animals for a period of time to generate the mutations).
This happened in China, there is no evidence of anything bad ever happening in China. Not from witnesses who are currently alive.