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CIA Bribed Its Own COVID-19 Origin Team To Reject Lab-Leak Theory, Anonymous Whistleblower Claims (science.org) 357

Posted by msmash from the major-charges dept.
An unnamed CIA whistleblower has made the dramatic allegation that half a dozen analysts there were bribed to reject the theory that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related leak of a new coronavirus, according to a press release today from the office of the Republican leading a congressional investigation into the pandemic. The allegation was strongly rejected in a CIA statement released hours later. Science.org: A majority of U.S. intelligence agencies has so far concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic mostly likely started when SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an infected animal host into people; a wildlife market in Wuhan, China, has received intense attention from researchers as the potential source. But the Department of Energy and FBI so far have favored the so-called lab-leak hypothesis, even though none of the agencies has expressed high confidence in their conclusions on COVID-19's origin. CIA, for example, had reportedly said it was "unable to determine" whether SARS-CoV-2 made a direct jump from animals to humans -- or came from a lab.

Now, Representative Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), who chairs the House of Representatives's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, says his panel and the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower "who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer." According to the press release, the whistleblower testified that only the most senior analyst of a seven-member CIA team investigating the origin of COVID-19 supported the zoonotic transmission theory. The whistleblower alleged the other six team members supporting the lab origin then received "a significant monetary incentive to change their position," wrote Wenstrup and Representative Mike Turner (R-OH), who chairs the intelligence panel.

In response to emailed questions from Science, CIA Director of Public Affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp challenged the whistleblower's account: "At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity, and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them. We will keep our Congressional oversight committees appropriately informed," she wrote in the agency's statement...

A few researchers have revealed how they cooperated with some of the intelligence agencies. Evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research and virologist Robert Garry of Tulane University, who have co-authored studies supporting the zoonotic origin and testified before Wenstrup's committee, both met with CIA agents probing the COVID-19 origin over the past few years. Andersen said that "several scientists were part of their team and they knew their stuff." He asserts that the new whistleblower allegation "obviously is bullshit."
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CIA Bribed Its Own COVID-19 Origin Team To Reject Lab-Leak Theory, Anonymous Whistleblower Claims More

CIA Bribed Its Own COVID-19 Origin Team To Reject Lab-Leak Theory, Anonymous Whistleblower Claims

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  • why? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by n3r0.m4dski11z ( 447312 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @11:39PM (#63843782) Homepage Journal

    why would they be paid off to place the blame elsewhere? The administration at the time would have loved to blame china for it.

    I haven't taken enough drugs yet to see all the connections here...

    • Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @11:52PM (#63843800)

      I was about to post this question but then i remember the angle is that US via Fauci was helping China develop the virus at the Wuhan lab so that's the underlying implication, it probably all ties back to the "gain of function research claim" because as you said, an accidental leak really doesn't help China on the world stage.

      Also the wording is weird with how this leaker " presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer." They are implying they are in fact a senior level officer but not actually saying it, I wonder if they are not allowed to say it to protect them but then why make this press release at all?

      I'm not writing this off without more information but as the saying about extraordinary claims goes...

      • Also the wording is weird with how this leaker " presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer."

        It means the leaker remained anonymous, but somehow provided evidence that he was a senior level officer. We don't know what the evidence was so we can't judge, of course.

        • Yeah I can understand that it's just weird they would reveal even that detail if they were remaining anonymous, it narrows down the selection to what, probably a few hundred people? They are requesting documents so they also could have waited for that before saying anything. It just comes off like the press release is more the story than any actual evidence.

          • They are milking the story for all its worth. It's what politicians do these days, they are showmen/women.

        • Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by SoftwareArtist ( 1472499 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @01:26PM (#63845716)

          "A highly biased person with a political agenda says an unknown person told him..."

          Yeah, I totally believe this.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

            "A highly biased person with a political agenda says an unknown person told him..."

            Yeah, I totally believe this.

            Well, it seemed to work pretty well for the Steele Dossier back in the day....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        It's a Republican congressman making the accusation reporting something he thought he heard. Kind of like a cat answering the phone and then telling you what the call was about.

        • these days, its best to ignore almost all republicans. they are not on the same planet as the rest of us.

          maybe once they shed their authoritarianism (good luck with that) they'll rejoin us on earth, but at the present time, they are the party of 'jewish space laser' belief systems.

          you cannot take anyone from the R group seriously this year, last year and likely next year. its been a while since there was an honest R (liz cheney of all things, was one exception; and I'd never have thought I'd utter such wo

          • regrettably, I disagree. Trump's power base will always and forever believe that this is just political theater trumped up by Dem's to ensure that Trump doesn't actually Make America Great Again... their prime tenant seems to be that every American who is not a Trumper hates America and wants it to fail.

            I would ask them, why they think that? I mean, I do not support Trump, but neither do I support Biden. I hope to stay middle of the road, which, these days, means there are no political hacks I can ident

    • why would they be paid off to place the blame elsewhere? The administration at the time would have loved to blame china for it.

      More interestingly, who paid them off to place the blame elsewhere? It could have been Russia, for example.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        How would Russia benefit from dismissing the lab theory?

        The only ones motivated to do it are the Chinese, and they aren't very motivated since nobody is ever going to be able to prove anything anyway.

    • Lets say it's an accidental lab leak, then the US was kneck deep in it through Fauci and Daszak. There is nothing to gain diplomatically exposing the obvious truth.

      Meanwhile the scientific consensus is made by a field which basically is gain of function, completely non objective. No scientist easily dumpsters their academic knowhow.

    • Well who said the money didn't come from China? They have a pretty good reason for having the blame to be on some more or less natural origin of the virus rather than the BSL-2 laboratory right next to where the pandemic started, studying how to make the exact kind of viruses that started the pandemic to spread more easily (the reasons for doing this were likely benign, but how the research was conducted was terrible, and the whole arm of study is dangerous). Also, a lot of similar research has been getting

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      The CIA would have reason to coverup a botched false-flag operation. What if the goal was to leak this to create another localized SARS epidemic to cripple Chinas economy? But once the genie was out of the bottle, containment became a disaster. China hid the outbreak in November allowing a global spread and by January it was too late as mysterious symtoms we now attribute to covid were surfacing in other countries. If the CIA is involved its never a simple game of checkers. Its more like a complex game of
    • If the intel agencies came out and said it was a lab leak at the height of the pandemic, what would the public reaction have been? I suspect, if this is true, they may have thought the response would be demands that could destabilize international relations, so they took it upon themselves to decide what would drive our foreign policy, instead of the People or their elected leaders. Something they have been suspected of on more than one occasion.

      Or maybe it's a misunderstanding.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      why would they be paid off to place the blame elsewhere? The administration at the time would have loved to blame china for it.

      I haven't taken enough drugs yet to see all the connections here...

      Because it didn't happen.

      Like all the other "witnesses" the GOP have bought up, when it comes time to put them on the stand they either never show up or say completely the opposite to what the GOP is trying to claim.

    • You act as if Trump actually had control of the leviathan.

  • For what reason? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rossz ( 67331 ) <[ogre] [at] [geekbiker.net]> on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @12:16AM (#63843826) Journal

    Who has a reason to cover for the lab leak? Only China since no one else has anything to gain from a coverup. For this to be possible would require that they have infiltrated our intelligence offices at the highest level, which is absurd. So either the claim is bullshit or our country is already controlled by the CCP. Which seems more likely?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 )

      Which seems more likely?

      Have you not been paying attention the past 6-8 years? The wacko wing of the GOP actually believes the Dems are running a pedophile child-slavery ring disguised as pizza parlors. They believe the California wildfires were started by a space laser controlled by the Jews. They believe the COVID-19 vaccines were implanting tracking chips into people's bloodstreams.

      You really think those sorts of nut jobs won't easily believe that China is secretly in control of the US' intelligence services?

      • They believe the California wildfires were started by a space laser controlled by the Jews.

        What?

        • In a now-deleted Facebook post, Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that laser beams from space may have started the 2018 California wildfires, and that among the entities behind this conspiracy were former California Gov. Jerry Brown, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Rothschild Inc., an investment firm frequently targeted by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.

          https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... [snopes.com]

          • LOL Snopes bending over backwards to avoid rating that true. The governor and power company worked with the Rothschilds to do it! You know, the notorious Jewish family responsible for every anti-Semitic conspiracy? It really tarnishes their credibility to rate that "mixture" because she didn't use the exact phrase "Jewish space lasers". Just "space lasers", controlled by Jewish family that secretly controls the world. Too many people just love giving conservatives so much extra leeway just because they play

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )

        They believe the California wildfires were started by a space laser controlled by the Jews.

        When clearly it was the Catholics...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by piojo ( 995934 )

        They believe the California wildfires were started by a space laser controlled by the Jews.

        What, like all of them? Or just a quorum?

    • Re:For what reason? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @02:12AM (#63843964)

      Fauci, Daszak, everyone who put them in their position and backed their funding, everyone who helped end the GoF moratorium, almost every virologist and China.

      For many of those it might not be reason enough, but they have obvious reasons.

    • Re:For what reason? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ForTheVeryLastTime ( 1777610 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @04:22AM (#63844174)

      Reading Slashdot these days is a weird and surreal experience. Are most of the users here Americans living in the U.S., and do you all get your news exclusively from U.S. mainstream media?

      I'm a foreigner living on the other side of the Atlantic, but even I know that money flowed from NIH (run by Anthony Fauci) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance (run by Peter Daszak). I've also read that Wuhan lab performed Gain of Function research, funded indirectly by the NIH, at a point when that type of research was outlawed in the U.S. Does that not give the NIH an incentive to deflect attention away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

      Have none of you read the e-mails released by a FoIA request, proving beyond any doubt that Fauci, Daszak, and others colluded to author a false "grassroot" letter for publishing in the Lancet, claiming that no reputable scientists in the field supported the lab leak origin theory? They even discussed who shouldn't sign the letter, in order to maintain the illusion of non-partisanship. Does that not at least arouse suspiscion?

      As for a possible zoonotic origin of SARS-COV-2, the facts do not support this conclusion. Not only is there the issue of the presence a highly, HIGHLY unusual furin cleavage site in the virus, never before seen in the wild (and chemically unlikely to ever occur naturally due to charge repulsion), there's also the fact that the closest site where you find a potential bat species is a thousand miles away from the wetmarket.

      You'd expect to find multiple infections along the path, or at the very least an infected animal somewhere, but neither has been found despite extensive search efforts. Does this not make a zoonotic origin highly unlikely?

      All the facts above can be easily verified by anyone with access to Google, so I'll be very suspicious of anyone replying with "what's your sources." These issues have been openly discussed in U.S. Senate hearings, recordings of which are available from multiple sources on YouTube.

      So to get back to my point: Why this weird insistence here on Slashdot that the lab leak theory is somehow a "conspiracy theory" or a "right-wing talking point?"

      • I think we're past 'conspiracy theory', but the propagandists are clinging to 'right wing talking point' because various cultural divides have been cultivated for years (for interesting and depressing reasons) and are bearing fruit here as a distraction from the truth, which I believe you nailed.

      • Re:For what reason? (Score:5, Informative)

        by students ( 763488 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @07:24AM (#63844470) Journal

        Why this weird insistence here on Slashdot that the lab leak theory is somehow a "conspiracy theory" or a "right-wing talking point?"

        Because we are skeptics and it is a conspiracy theory.

        Does that not give the NIH an incentive to deflect attention away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

        Well, maybe it gives them a very weak incentive. NIH is in no way responsible for how people in China might have used their money.

        Also, this ridiculously tenuous link does not motivate the CIA to lie.

        a false "grassroot" letter

        The popularity of a theory or astroturfing about it has nothing to do with with its truthfulness.

        HIGHLY unusual furin cleavage site in the virus

        Unusual mutations happen all the time. That's how evolution has always worked.

        the closest site where you find a potential bat species is a thousand miles away from the wetmarket.

        Bats can fly. Also, nobody checked all the bats in Wuhan, including the dead and rotten ones.

        You'd expect to find multiple infections along the path, or at the very least an infected animal somewhere,

        You would not expect to "find" infections "along the path." First, nobody is systematically checking animals for viruses on the scale needed to find a "path." Second, the evidence biodegraded months before the investigations began. Third, experience shows that if you find a "link" along the path, conspiracy theorists will simply say that there are now two paths where nothing has been found; one before the link and one after. Fourth, transmission between animals has been extensively proven. [osu.edu]

        As a conclusion: Zoonotic infections are normal and have occurred frequently for a long time. Zoonotic infection is a simple theory. Simple theories that have been correct in the past are usually correct again.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          There's significant evidence that by the time COVID19 was noticed, it had adapted rather well to living in people.
          OTOH, I really doubt that the peasants in rural China have high quality medical care, so that's where I think it did the adaptation. There's significant evidence that a version of COVID was circulating MONTHS before it was officially noticed. It was detected (later) from samples stored in Italy. But I don't think it was the same linage that was later so successful. Remember in the early day

      • Heated arguments leading to an unwillingness to revise one's position in light of new information? With at least some degree of "Trump said so, so it must be stupid and wrong."

        I could never help but notice that the bulk of those insisting it could not have been a lab leak had a vested interest in it not being a leak. Like the people funding the research, the people performing it, the people who helped build the lab and design the safety protocols (even though they weren't in a position to know if said p

      • Re:For what reason? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @07:45AM (#63844508) Homepage Journal

        All the facts above can be easily verified by anyone with access to Google, so I'll be very suspicious of anyone replying with "what's your sources."

        All of the claims above can be easily supported by watching some whackadoodle's videos on Youtube, but when it comes to trying to find actual evidence (which I have tried to do) you just trip over a bunch of unfounded nonsensical conspiracy not-even-a-theory-just-imagined cockery.

        If it was soooooo easy to find good citations for these things then they would be everywhere, everybody would be posting them, nobody would have to rely on brother's landlord's doctor's best friend's mother's plumber's nephew's accounts.

      • There is fierce astroturfing across the Internet to make opposing positions appear absurd, mostly right wing ones (and I suppose left wing ones, but in general the right wing are comparatively clumsy at weaponizing media). This is a psyop to prevent moderate or on-the-fence people from adopting any "right" viewpoints, which is much more likely if the right wing appear reasonable. For example, during the peak of vaccine controversy, you practically couldn't find any of the reasonable anti-vaccine viewpoints.

      • Re:For what reason? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @08:42AM (#63844686)

        Reading Slashdot these days is a weird and surreal experience. Are most of the users here Americans living in the U.S., and do you all get your news exclusively from U.S. mainstream media?

        I'm a foreigner living on the other side of the Atlantic, but even I know that money flowed from NIH (run by Anthony Fauci) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance (run by Peter Daszak). I've also read that Wuhan lab performed Gain of Function research, funded indirectly by the NIH, at a point when that type of research was outlawed in the U.S. Does that not give the NIH an incentive to deflect attention away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

        I'm puzzled that you are puzzled because yes, most Slashdot users are and always have been Americans living in the USA, and yes, most Americans (which would include Slashdotters) get their news exclusively from US mainstream media.

        Honestly, some of what you posted as "facts" is kind of whacko in my opinion and probably not correct. I find it interesting that you don't list your source of information but instead tell people to Google it. Lots of people do dumb Google searches and just get back information that confirms their pre-existing biases. I'm a career IT guy and one of my IT friends is the worst guy I've ever seen at doing Google or similar searches and all I can tell you is that you'd be best off to not believe anything he finds as a "fact". He believes in all kinds of kooky "health" things he found via Google searches that most people would never believe in. And I want to point out to you that if you are using something like The Telegraph as your source of truth and facts that you should be aware that they are all over the map on everything and are both for and against everything at the same time.

    • Re:For what reason? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thejam ( 655457 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @06:04AM (#63844328)

      The US had research collaborations with that Wuhan lab, so if COVID-19 can be linked to that lab, it threatens reputations, funding, and positions of anyone, including US researchers & politicians even tangentially involved.

    • Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted gain-of-function research, was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      If the CIA has assets in that lab you can bet your ass they would cover it up to keep an asset in play.

    • Re:For what reason? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @07:42AM (#63844506) Homepage Journal

      Only China since no one else has anything to gain from a coverup.

      Alleged coverup. There's no evidence yet that there actually was a coverup, just a supposed whistleblower. Who has something to gain from making people believe that there was a coverup?

      • Are you actually a moron? China has literally denied any access to the WIV other than a chaperoned 2 hour visit by the WHO long after the virus had leaked. They deny access to any of the researchers. They deleted the WIV viral database just prior to the pandemic.
  • No one with any experience trusts the CIA anyway, they are a bunch of liars, and fuckups when they don't lie. From the article:

    The U.S. intelligence community has been reluctant to detail how its agencies have come to their tentative and conflicting conclusions about the origin of COVID-19, recently releasing only minimal information on their analyses in response to a law demanding the declassification of all relevant material.

    Their evidence and reasoning is definitely worth looking at, but their conclusion by itself is as meaningful as a blown-up embassy in Belgrade because they used the wrong map.

    • Remember when the CIA cooked up WMDs for a previous GOP adiministration? It's not really CIA's fault, they're more scared of GOP loons than they are of losing their credibility.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        The CIA didn't cook up anything. They reported to Bush Administration what they saw, which was basically nothing. The Bush Administration decided they could embroider whatever the CIA told them into "evidence".

    • The fact that different agencies are coming up with conflicting theories means that no one is really sure.

  • I know where this belongs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @12:46AM (#63843858)

    I'd put this whistle blower right up there next to the whistle blower insisting the US has alien technology recovered from a wrecked UFO.

  • For the last time it wasn't a lab leak (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @12:48AM (#63843862)
    Everything about the DNA sequencing points to it being a naturally occurring virus. This is because with our current level of technology when we create or modify viruses it leaves behind markers and furthermore will change as we make don't last. If somebody actually had the technology in China to do what the lab Leak people are suggesting they wouldn't be keeping its secret because it would be a massive scientific breakthrough or billions and billions of dollars.

    It is in fact much much more obviously likely that the virus originated out of one of two places, either the wet markets or from the surrounding deforested areas where human beings have been interacting with wild animals they don't normally interact with.

    The lab League conspiracy theory is pushed by two groups in America. The first is the right wing who were in charge of the country during the pandemic and did an absolutely terrible job of handling the crisis. They're desperate to shift blame for their failures and by calling it a lab leak it creates an easy to understand and digest narrative that shifts the blame to a simple group of people rather than the more complex systems in China that created the wet markets and the deforestation policies.

    As for the second group that would be China themselves. China would really like you to believe that it was a lab leak even if you think it was a bio weapon that would be preferable. the reason being is that China needs those white markets and that deforestation in order to keep their rural economies going but both of those policies are decidedly unsafe and we've been born by epidemiologists for decades now that China needs to stop them or that we were going to get a massive pandemic.

    There are other good reasons why this is obviously not a lab leak. For one thing, the virus doesn't spread well by touch so that even the worst run lab wouldn't likely leak it out because you can literally just wash your hands and avoid it when you're handling it in laboratory conditions.

    But at the end of the day what's more likely, there's a massive conspiracy involving hundreds or thousands of people to hide the fact that it was leaked from a lab out of China or the thing that epidemiologists have been warning us was going to happen for 20 years finally happened?

    I get the conspiracy theories are fun but please just listen to scientists for a change. Because if we go on playing around with these fun conspiracy theories instead of demanding that China clean up its wet markets and stop the dangerous deforestation policies that are putting human beings in contact with animals that they shouldn't be on a scale that is not safe, we're just going to have another massive pandemic sometime in the next five, 10 or for really lucky another 20 years. And most of us feeding this are going to live to see that

    • Re:For the last time it wasn't a lab leak (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @02:11AM (#63843960)

      There will never be "for the last time" when it comes to a conspiracy theory.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 )

      Merely lacking indication of DNA engineering means nothing, because simple mutation and culture/animal experiments can be used to make it more virulent. Faster than natural, but indistuingashable. Also absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

      Remains the extremely dodgy stretch of trying to trace mutation from a literal handful of samples conveniently discovered last year. The strength of that evidence is a judgement call, a judgement call made by people who'se entire academic career and personal iden

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by TheSlashdotHunter ( 10317841 )
      I'm not right wing, I believe it was manmade. Everything in your post is garbage. Science doesn't have left/right politics, it has facts.

      Nothing you stated is based on any facts, just left wing dribble about right wing dribble. There are very valid and rationale points that can conclude it was a lab leak, without being political at all. Digging in your heels, saying any talk about lab leak is righty-gone-bad, just sets you up to failure. Keep an open mind, don't let politics decide facts, and look at the

    • Re:For the last time it wasn't a lab leak (Score:4, Insightful)

      by blahabl ( 7651114 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @02:28AM (#63843990)

      Everything about the DNA sequencing points to it being a naturally occurring virus. This is because with our current level of technology when we create or modify viruses it leaves behind markers and furthermore will change as we make don't last. If somebody actually had the technology in China to do what the lab Leak people are suggesting they wouldn't be keeping its secret because it would be a massive scientific breakthrough or billions and billions of dollars.

      Yeah, nice strawman you torched there. Oh wait, noone is claiming Chinese engineered a de-novo virus, or even did any CRISPR or anything to it, what people are saying is that they were studying natural coronavirus, possibly passaging it in human cell cultures allowing it to naturally adapt to a new host species, and then that got out into the wild.

      But you knew that.

      [skipping stupid ad personam shit, not even gonna dignify that with a response]

      There are other good reasons why this is obviously not a lab leak. For one thing, the virus doesn't spread well by touch so that even the worst run lab wouldn't likely leak it out because you can literally just wash your hands and avoid it when you're handling it in laboratory conditions.

      Yes, things like that can't possibly ever happen, no sir! Oh wait, they actually do, and here's an article from fucking 2004 describing an actual instance of that impossible thing actually happening, with SARS v.1 which back then was thankfully contained to only few people [science.org]

      Oh yes I know, Science is a wacko conspiracy theory rag (when it says things inconvenient for the leftists that is).

    • Re:For the last time it wasn't a lab leak (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @04:01AM (#63844134)
      How is anyone supposed to take you seriously when right off the bat you attempt to mislead? You're pulling the same sleight of hand as so many others, and that's part of why even serious people have doubts now. There's different methods for gain of function research. Yes, you're right that certain methods unavoidably leave traces we could detect. You're wrong to treat that as dispositive because other methods, such as serial passage, do not. Further, that technique is not so technologically sophisticated it's out of China's reach. In fact the lab doesn't even deny it did 'gain of function in everything but name' research... they had grants and papers on it.
      So even if it's not a lab leak, you're completely full of shit and discrediting the natural origin position. Finally, you're incorrect that there are not, especially now, credible scientists who say we can't make a firm conclusion. Why should anyone take the ones who claim they're 100% seriously when almost all of them are pulling the same dishonest bullshit you are? It's clear there is no solid proof either way.

      • Gain of function wasn't even in the common lexicon until Fox picked a villain (Fauci). Now people throw the term around having no idea of its definition like some kind of gotcha!

    • No, that is not China's incentive nor something they give a damn about. They could not care less about what anyone in the world thinks about their markets or forestry policy. Hell, their people like those markets. What China can't have people thinking is that it is at fault for a deadly global pandemic. They especially can't have their own people thinking that the CCP is responsible for it. They know that Chernobyl was a major factor in the collapse of the USSR, and this is much, much worse.

      As for t

  • Could we *please* dispense ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @02:37AM (#63844002)

    ... with this silly "lab grown SARS2" theory already! The genome of the Virus is sequenced, the types of original hosts are precisely determined and scientists can just about pinpoint the exact location on the (massive) Wuhan wetmarket where the Virus originated and jumped from animal to human!

    And it happened in precisely the way that scientists have predicted and warned of for decades!

    It's even on record that scientists warn of precisely these types of asian/ Chinese wetmarkets as breeding-grounds for new dangerous zoonosis type viruses! ...
    I thought this was news for nerds and not some ordinary 9gag thread or subreddit occupied by regular type A uneducated dimwitts. Guys, we are better than this.

    • Why use logic and science for the betterment of all mankind when you can spread conspiracy theories for vague political aims with only tens of millions dead as a minor side effect?

      A third of the population is dangerously stupid, and there's always a percentage amoral enough to try and manipulate them in dangerous ways.

    • So, it's just coincidence that it was a market in the same city as a lab performing gain of function research on novel coronaviruses and that the first people to get it worked at that same lab?

  • Discrediting science, well done CIA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vbdasc ( 146051 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @03:15AM (#63844074)

    I remember having a conversation on Reddit a couple years ago, about the origin of Covid-19. In the discussion, I dared to say that in my humble opinion, the virus could be accidentally released by some lab (military or not). My opponent literally destroyed me, citing peer-reviewed articles and whatnot, according to which the virus appeared spontaneously, probably being latent in some animal population for years, and absolutely accidentally hopped to humans. And yes, it absolutely could NOT be made in a laboratory, according to a bunch of knowledgeable experts, having rock-solid proof, due reasons the majority of which I couldn't hope to understand, so I didn't even try to. Also, I was called a bunch of names like a conspiracy theory-peddler, an obscurantist, an anti-scientific person, a Trump voter, and (gasp) a Karen. I was shamed and ridiculed by other users.

    Needless to say, I'm not an anti-scientific person. I actually have some scientific background, in a STEM discipline. However, it's quite regrettable that you can (apparently) bribe science. It ruins the credibility of science. I have argued with religious people who believed that what's written in the Bible, Quran, etc. is the absolute truth, and have showed them how science gave much more robust, believable, logical, and ultimately, more true picture of the Universe than their holy book. Now I can't see how I could continue doing that. How will I respond to the next bible-thumper who tells me that the bible can't be bribed, unlike science?

    • it's quite regrettable that you can (apparently) bribe science. It ruins the credibility of science.

      What was bribed was "The House of Representatives's Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic", which is a "a seven-member CIA team". The headline says CIA bribed "its own team". This specific occurrence does not say anything about bribing science.

    • My opponent literally destroyed me

      You do a lot of typing for someone who had an end put to their existence. The real news here is that dead people can post to Slashdot from BEYOND THE GRAVE.

      Please learn what the words "literally" and "destroyed" mean, kthxbye

  • Lab Leak means it's a human problem we can fight, we can blame ... and people can easily predict the next one and stop it ...

    Expected natural virus means we have little control, it's hard to predict, but it will happen again

    This is exactly why it's a conspiracy theory - some people prefer a simple human cause that someone can control, to it's just nature being nature

  • As the orange goon from New York has repeatedly said [cnn.com], people should "only accept information" that "has an actual living name on it,"

    This "anonymous" source is like the missing "witness" James Comer suddenly couldn't find [newsweek.com] when it came time to have a hearing.

    The unfortunate part is there are tons of stupidly ignorant people in this country who will believe this bullshit.

  • heard testimony from a whistleblower "who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer."

    And Morgan Freeman occasionally presents as God. What a very strange phrasing. Is there no way for a House committee chair to confirm whether someone genuinely works at the CIA or not?

    • heard testimony from a whistleblower "who presents as a highly credible senior-level CIA officer."

      And Morgan Freeman occasionally presents as God. What a very strange phrasing.

      What specifically makes it strange is that "presents as" is the language used to denote someone whose gender differs from their sex. Republicans say that someone who "presents as" female when they are biologically male is a man, right? But here they are saying that someone who "presents as" working for the CIA definitely works for the CIA. It's like one of those posts where one of 'em says you can't use the pronoun "they" to describe people of indeterminate gender, and literally puts the word "they" or "the

  • On the one hand, this simply sounds like an outright conspiracy theory.

    On the other hand, this sounds like things we have documented evidence of the CIA doing in the past.

    My money's still on natural occurrence. Simply because it happens so often but we just don't hear about it because the infection fizzles out before becoming a pandemic.

  • Anybody can claim anything. Without supporting objective evidence, claims are as good as useless.

  • Yeah.... STRONG rejection. (Score:3)

    by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @09:36AM (#63844850)

    "We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them."

    We don't do that! Unless we did... we are checking to see if we did.

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