Germany’s foreign intelligence service believed there was a 80-90% chance that coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab, German media say. Two German newspapers say they have uncovered details of an assessment carried out by spy agency BND in 2020 but never published.
The intelligence service had indications that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been carrying out experiments where viruses are modified to become more transmissible to humans for research, they say.
China repeated its denial saying the cause “should be determined by scientists” - and pointed to a World Health Organization investigation which found the lab-leak theory was “extremely unlikely”.
The lab leak hypothesis has been hotly contested by scientists, including many who say there is no definitive evidence to back it up. But the once controversial theory has been gaining ground among some intelligence agencies - and the BND is the latest to entertain the theory. In January, the US CIA said the coronavirus was “more likely” to have leaked from a lab than to have come from animals.
I really don’t think it’s that hard to believe that some postdoc in Wuhan screwed up and let it loose accidentally.
But it is even easier to believe that the CIA and their toady media are lying again
The complication is the double jump.
In the early days of COVID, there were 2 strains spreading. One of those fizzled out and disappeared after a few weeks. Genetically, they seemed to be independent jumps. A single mistake wouldn’t account for this.
It’s also worth noting that the first known infected all spent time in Wuhan wildlife market. They got fairly good tracking from mobile phones, even if the direct evidence was destroyed by the containment/cleaning effort.
Basically, the surrounding evidence doesn’t fit an accidental leak (2 jumps). It doesn’t really fit an intentional release (very geographically focused). It is consistent with it jumping from a sustained infection pool in the market. (Multiple jumps from the same small area at different times).
That seems like a reasonable challenge to the lab leak hypothesis, but I have to defer to my wife on it. She has a relevant background in microbiology, medicinal chemistry, and pharmacology and says that something about the structure of the viruses suggests convincingly that at least one of the COVID variants was of man-made origin. She’s also been working in labs for almost twenty years and has seen too many accidents and near-misses. As a lay person, that explanation makes enough sense to me to find the lab leak hypothesis plausible. Also, I’m not going to disagree with a well-published scientist who is also my wife.
Ultimately, it’s of mostly academic interest. Where do we need to tighten down on things to avoid a repeat incident. The best answer would be “Both”.
Also, do you have a link to any papers talking about the man-made origin theory? I’ve not checked in a while, but last time I looked it sent me down a lot of rabbit holes, with nothing ultimately backing it up.
Plausibility is not evidence, however. I think it’s dangerous to try to place blame on somebody for nothing more than a maybe.
At least the lab leak hypothesis isn’t as sinophobic as the “wet market” one.
I think the biggest problem in this whole debacle is the utter opaqueness offered by China when trying to get to the source. Is this China’s fault? Well hold on. While this accident may have happened in China, China’s lax attitude toward safety precautions are an open secret. It’s much like the shady labor practices in, well China for one, that we turn a blind eye to. Why?Because it’s cheaper. So partly it is the unevenly applied and audited safety standards. If people are giving China research money, then those labs should be held to an international standard.
Arguing there is no evidence is extremely disingenuous when Chinese government hid most of it. One should be careful about saying “There is no evidence.” too confidently. At a certain point it sounds like an accomplishment and not a result.
Hey so just a question, are the Chinamen shabby, rushed and incompetent, or are those dirty commies so incredibly, inconceivably competent and meticulous to instantly hide all information that would make them look bad?
Both paradoxically must be true for your sinophobic conspiracy theory to work.
The lab was in China but it the experiments were run by the US. The NIH admitted they funded illegal gain-of-function research in Wuhan. Have you considered that this was perhaps a US bioweapon “accidentally” deployed against China? The US has a history of this: it used biological weapons in Korea in the 50s and lied about it for decades.
And if that is the case (not saying it is; i’m still not 100% convinced of the lab leak theory) then it backfired spectacularly as China took the most serious measures of any country on earth to keep its people safe. No other country managed to maintain Zero Covid for as long as China did.
Over 1.2 million people died in the US. One third of their entire population was infected, potentially suffering long term health damage. In China it was just over 5,200 deaths, not even one hundredth of the US numbers with a population more than four times that of the US.
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
If that to you says “lax safety precautions” then we are not speaking the same language.
The fact that you ridicule the lack of evidence and imply that this indicates China is covering something up is telling. If there was evidence you would say they are guilty. If there is no evidence then they are also guilty. That is called an unfalsifiable orthodoxy. There is nothing that can convince you otherwise because you have already decided what you want to believe and you don’t care what the evidence or lack thereof indicates.
By that same logic i could claim that the lack of evidence just “proves” that the US are very good at covering their tracks and erasing evidence of a bioweapon attack. Do you see how that logic is bad because it can be used to justify virtually any conclusion?
Why is it always the Chinese government that supposedly hides things? How about it’s actually the US government that has been hiding the truth all along?
Be that as it may let’s put the speculation aside and stick to the facts:
The fact is that China responded to the best of their abilities to a novel and highly contagious disease, which may or may not have been released from a US funded lab. It is objectively demonstrable (the stats prove it) that China had the world’s most successful Covid response. It is not China’s fault that the rest of the world is so incompetent or indifferent to the wellbeing of their citizens.
And a history of using them against its own people, domestically, for that matter.