This seem more like geopolitical developments, there is no other reason why it s happening NOW. Is this just to put pressure v China, or are there going to be more 'developments'?
you POV does match this possible (hypothetical) scenario:
while the US might have suspected the virus might have been developed and escaped from a chinese lab, it was considered in the US interest to suppress such an idea and focus on world cooperation in tamping down the pandemic. But now, with the pandemic seemingly over, and shifting geopolitics, it might now be considered OK to let the truth come out despite how angry it will make the chinese government.
After the balloon incident, and the US government cracking down on tiktok we now have a coordinated drop of lab leak articles in the press, with no new evidence presented at all. We know historically that the US government engages in propaganda, including the 2002 NIE that led to war with Iraq and the yellowcake/joseph wilson affair. But in real time we're always completely blind to the US government using propaganda and distorting intelligence. And I've heard "they know things we don't" used before to get people to uncritically accept falsehoods from US intelligence.
A group of internationally known virologists have a video podcast. They have nearly 1000 casts and have interviewed virologists worldwide. See
This Week in Virology (https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/)
They have said that they do not believe it would be possible, given the current state of research, to engineer Sars-Cov2
I'm more likely to take the opinion of world experts in Virology than the Director of the FBI. Your opinion may differ.
The story about how various miners working in a cave with bats in it in China got pneumonia in 2016 and that virus was worked on at WIV seems most likely.
RaTG13 is a thousand mutations and several decades of evolution away from SARS-CoV-2, you don't get from having RaTG13 in a lab to SARS-CoV-2. There's no evidence that WIV recovered whole virus of RaTG13 or cultured it. SARS-CoV-2 is not a chimera of a RaTG13 backbone and an ACE2-attaching spike, there's a lot more mutations involved. You also don't get there from serial passage experiments in a lab, you need serial passage through decades and many millions of infections in nature, we can't operate at that scale.
The intelligence community certainly knows things virologists don't, and vice versa.
Also, it does not necessarily have to be "engineered" to have been released. Both statements could be somewhat true.
Not that I buy either explanation yet. I have kind of accepted we will never definitively know COVID-19's source, and (though I understand the need to protect clandestine information) these announcements without evidence are not changing that sentiment.
Very good show, Dr. Daniel Griffin is my source for any covid information.
Yes, we don't know how to do this, nor does anyone. There's only a few hundred virologists in this tier and they all know each other and what their labs can do.
If anyone ever does claim it's man made I ask them why, if it is man made, does it have synonymous mutations?
The few times it happened (early in the pandemic), not one of them knew what a synonymous mutation was.
I don't see the FBI director mention that Sars-Cov2 was engineered anywhere. He said "probably the result of a laboratory leak".
If someone runs a lab, and they have Ebola or other virus in their fridges, and it leaks due to poor handling practice, that doesn't mean Ebola was engineered...
So it's possible to agree with both the opinions of the virologists-podcasters AND of the director of the FBI, isn't it?
Other experts in the field have mentioned that, with existing containment protocols, its extremely difficult for a pathogen to accidentally leak out.
That doesnt meant it was necessarily deliberately released. But maybe there was some extrordinary negligence involved that could make the Chinese government look bad.
There’s a video where a Wuhan Institute of Virology staff member shows off bat bite(s). I’m inclined to believe my eyes over the experts on that one. Doesn’t look like containment was always taken seriously.
let me ask you, would it be fair to say that the virologists who are most knowledgeable about engineering virii come by this knowledge by conducting such experiments themselves?
wasn't there discussion in Fauci's emails of suspicions that this virus was engineered? and discussions of the value of such gain of function research? isn't there room for disagreement among experts as to the efficacy of such experimental paths weighed against our ability to keep them safely in the lab?
do researchers often find their work and careers stymied by process of getting funding?
would funding for these avid gene splicers possibly be put in jeopardy were politicians and the public to become scared of the experiments they do? didn't the discussion in Fauci's emails reflect that the govt had restricted such experiments?
Wouldn't that give them a bias in favor of downplaying such a possibility? Would a person be wrong for suspecting a massive bias?
Laboratories study what's already available in animals...
>>> "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident,"
That's the actual quote from the FBI.
News article from 2021:
>>>FRANCE warned that the Wuhan lab linked to the Covid outbreak could be turned into a "biological arsenal" by the Chinese military four years before the pandemic, it is reported.
Well before the discovery and IDing in Wuhan this new SARS variant was detected in various other locations as early as March 2019 (Barcelona sewer sample), patient medical samples in various Italian cities in late 2019.
S1 spike segment was also found in various Boston, MA medical samples, as well as antibodies in blood samples, suggesting presence of this new SARS2 in Boston in early October 2019.
26 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 70.0 ms ] threadwhile the US might have suspected the virus might have been developed and escaped from a chinese lab, it was considered in the US interest to suppress such an idea and focus on world cooperation in tamping down the pandemic. But now, with the pandemic seemingly over, and shifting geopolitics, it might now be considered OK to let the truth come out despite how angry it will make the chinese government.
A group of internationally known virologists have a video podcast. They have nearly 1000 casts and have interviewed virologists worldwide. See This Week in Virology (https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/)
They have said that they do not believe it would be possible, given the current state of research, to engineer Sars-Cov2
I'm more likely to take the opinion of world experts in Virology than the Director of the FBI. Your opinion may differ.
Also, it does not necessarily have to be "engineered" to have been released. Both statements could be somewhat true.
Not that I buy either explanation yet. I have kind of accepted we will never definitively know COVID-19's source, and (though I understand the need to protect clandestine information) these announcements without evidence are not changing that sentiment.
about virology?
You do understand you are just making shit up?
Yes, we don't know how to do this, nor does anyone. There's only a few hundred virologists in this tier and they all know each other and what their labs can do.
If anyone ever does claim it's man made I ask them why, if it is man made, does it have synonymous mutations?
The few times it happened (early in the pandemic), not one of them knew what a synonymous mutation was.
If someone runs a lab, and they have Ebola or other virus in their fridges, and it leaks due to poor handling practice, that doesn't mean Ebola was engineered...
So it's possible to agree with both the opinions of the virologists-podcasters AND of the director of the FBI, isn't it?
That doesnt meant it was necessarily deliberately released. But maybe there was some extrordinary negligence involved that could make the Chinese government look bad.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15729081/france-warned-wuhan-l...
let me ask you, would it be fair to say that the virologists who are most knowledgeable about engineering virii come by this knowledge by conducting such experiments themselves?
wasn't there discussion in Fauci's emails of suspicions that this virus was engineered? and discussions of the value of such gain of function research? isn't there room for disagreement among experts as to the efficacy of such experimental paths weighed against our ability to keep them safely in the lab?
do researchers often find their work and careers stymied by process of getting funding?
would funding for these avid gene splicers possibly be put in jeopardy were politicians and the public to become scared of the experiments they do? didn't the discussion in Fauci's emails reflect that the govt had restricted such experiments?
Wouldn't that give them a bias in favor of downplaying such a possibility? Would a person be wrong for suspecting a massive bias?
Laboratories study what's already available in animals...
>>> "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident,"
That's the actual quote from the FBI.
News article from 2021:
>>>FRANCE warned that the Wuhan lab linked to the Covid outbreak could be turned into a "biological arsenal" by the Chinese military four years before the pandemic, it is reported.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15729081/france-warned-wuhan-l...
S1 spike segment was also found in various Boston, MA medical samples, as well as antibodies in blood samples, suggesting presence of this new SARS2 in Boston in early October 2019.
https://adeno-news.com/2022/08/07/mystery-deepens-over-early...
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-circulated-europ...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2020/06/26/the-coronav...
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220830/Italian-study-fin...
I believe Marseilles France also detected the new SARS in sewer sample in the fall or summer of 2019, though I cannot find the link.