Opinion CIA Now Believes Covid-19 Came From Lab Leak

[Lord_Impaler]

Virus's can't walk that far. 100 yards for a virus is like 1000 miles for you and me. You know how tiny a virus is?

That’s exactly what I was thinking.

 

[west42]

White supremacists

Nazi oligarchs

 

[HereticBD]

I can finally eat bat soup again!

 

[KnightTemplar]

CIA shifts assessment on Covid origins, saying lab leak likely caused outbreak

The agency said it has “low confidence” in its judgment and that it would continue evaluating new intelligence reporting.

www.nbcnews.com

The Central Intelligence Agency on Saturday said it has shifted its previous assessments and has concluded that it’s likely the Covid-19 virus was leaked from a Chinese lab before it became a global pandemic but added that the agency had “low confidence” in its judgment.

Was there ever any real doubt about this?

 

[BFoe]

Why even release that now though?

I don’t know tbh. What’s the value of a report with very low confidence? It just stokes more conspiracies and problems. I hope we eventually get some solid evidence as to COVID’s origin.

Well no fucking shit... the odds that a once in a century pandemic happened to originate, just down the road from a class IV bio lab, that just happened to not only be studying, but also performing gain of function research on the exact type of virus that caused the pandemic... and a lab that had a history of previous lab leaks, seems to be a little unlikely are they not?

If anyone actually believes that it suddenly appeared somewhere other than that lab... I have a bridge to sell you.

Pics of bridge?

 

[gatchaman]

I barely knew what Covid-19 was before the first thread about the Furin Cleavage Site got deleted from sherdog. DOGE should replace the CIA with sherdog posters.

 

[Flower2dPeople]

Time to reopen those camps full of focus and concentration.

 

[Contempt]

I don’t know tbh. What’s the value of a report with very low confidence? It just stokes more conspiracies and problems. I hope we eventually get some solid evidence as to COVID’s origin.


Pics of bridge?

This one... a little known bridge over a harbor:

I can do you a really good deal...

 

[jeremyemilio]

It means they have low confidence that it actually did come from a lab. We’ve had reports like these before, stated with low confidence. Hard to put much value on it.

I honestly don't understand what people don't understand about the "low confidence" caveat. It just means that of the two prevailing theories, they aren't by any means certain but believe the lab leak theory to be the most likely. On the one hand, they wouldn't bet the house on it, but on the other hand, if they were forced to bet, that's the bet they'd make.

No one has high confidence in the origins of Covid. That's not what the outrage is about, and pointing that out isn't a good rebuttal to the outrage. The outrage is about the wet market origin people posturing like they had high confidence in their theory, when they clearly did not, as a justification for taking draconian measures to shut down discussion and stomp out the at least equally likely (more likely, according to the FBI and CIA) lab leak theory.

It's about the authoritarian posturing of it all. And it's both enlightening and disheartening to see people who characterize themselves as principled anti-authoritarians flipping so easily to authoritarian apologetics just because, in a particular moment, it suits their political agendas and leanings.

 

[heloder]

Virus's can't walk that far. 100 yards for a virus is like 1000 miles for you and me. You know how tiny a virus is?

It would actually be almost a million miles. That's how small a virus is.

 

[Greco_Wiz]

The published literature overwhelmingly supports a natural origin. There is simply no debate regarding the science. Federal agencies base their assessments not on scientific evidence, but on speculation, perceived motives, and flimsy circumstantial evidence. That’s is why there’s no consensus among them and why none have confidence in their conclusion.

To correct the OP:
The CIA under Riatcliffe states a lab origin is more likely. The same J Ratcliffe who has been working with the Heritage Foundation & project 2025 to spread COVID misinformation.

 

[Rhood]

Well.............DUH!!

 

[Greco_Wiz]

Well no fucking shit... the odds that a once in a century pandemic happened to originate, just down the road from a class IV bio lab, that just happened to not only be studying, but also performing gain of function research on the exact type of virus that caused the pandemic... and a lab that had a history of previous lab leaks, seems to be a little unlikely are they not?

If anyone actually believes that it suddenly appeared somewhere other than that lab... I have a bridge to sell you.

You should sell that bridge to domain experts who have published their findings in the most reputable journals available.

It’s not down the road. The early cases cluster 10 miles away from the WIV, across the river at a market that was selling wild mammals susceptible to sars2. One of four such markets in a city of 11+ million people. And at that same market, the entirety of the early genetic diversity of the virus was sampled from animal cages.

A lab leak doesn’t explain any of the scientific evidence, including the epidemiology of early cases, two independent spillovers, or a genome that looks exactly like what’d you expect from a virus created by natural recombination.

 

[gatchaman]

You should sell that bridge to domain experts who have published their findings in the most reputable journals available.

It’s not down the road. The early cases cluster 10 miles away from the WIV, across the river at a market that was selling wild mammals susceptible to sars2. One of four such markets in a city of 11+ million people. And at that same market, the entirety of the early genetic diversity of the virus was sampled from animal cages.

A lab leak doesn’t explain any of the scientific evidence, including the epidemiology of early cases, two independent spillovers, or a genome that looks exactly like what’d you expect from a virus created by natural recombination.

Excuse my interjection, but I disagree with "a genome that looks exactly like what’d you expect from a virus created by natural recombination"

I never got a response to this post:

The authors did not cherry pick the two restriction enzymes. The restriction enzymes BsmBI and BsaI were chosen because these endonucleases were previously used by DARPA co-authors to engineer chimeric coronaviruses.

Spoiler

BsmBI: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.0030005
BsaI: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698&type=printable

International - Did COVID come from a Lab in China? US Energy Dept asserts it was a lab leak [megathread]

Fauci's a liar and criminally complicit in the GOF research and development of covid IN CHINA. He should be in jail. Put him in the Hillary Clinton Suite (Epstein cell)

forums.sherdog.com

If you look at all restriction enzymes and all viruses, a small minority of viruses will randomly be digested into roughly evenly sized nucleotide fragments. Applying Occam's Razor again indicates that the Covid-19 belongs to the majority of engineered viruses rather than the small minority of natural viruses.

But that's not all. Not only is it evidenced by the even distribution of restriction sites that the nucleotide sequence of Covid-19 was edited to add restriction sites, but two BsaI cut sites in Covid-19 are found in the same location as previously mentioned engineered cut sites, published in 2017: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698&type=printable

Spoiler

"BsaI or BsmBI sites were introduced into the junctions of Es/Spike and Spike/Fs. Then any spike could be substituted into the genome of SARSr-CoV WIV1 through this strategy."

What are the chances of random recombination events in nature mimicking engineering twice?

What are the chances of random recombination events in nature mimicking previously published engineering twice?

 

[Greco_Wiz]

Excuse my interjection, but I disagree with "a genome that looks exactly like what’d you expect from a virus created by natural recombination"

I never got a response to this post:

What are the chances of random recombination events in nature mimicking previously published engineering twice?

It doesn’t. I explained your misconception you just didn’t understand it. Washburne’s (unpublished) paper is a joke and even most lab leakers find it comically unconvincing. It’s a textbook example of selection bias combined with insufficient sampling, which is why he intentionally didn’t adjust for multiple comparisons. I’d fail my students for something so egregious. To demonstrate what everyone else knew, this author extended the same model to a larger set of Betacoronaviruses and big shocker — there’s absolutely nothing special about those restriction sites in sars2. So to answer your question, the odds are pretty high. Well, unless you think all of those viruses in nature are genetically engineered as well.

Updated analysis to reject the laboratory-engineering hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2 - PMC

A clear understanding of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is important for future pandemic preparedness. Here, I provided an updated analysis of the type IIS endonuclease maps in genomes of alphacoronavirus, betacoronavirus, and SARS-CoV-2. Scenarios to ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

'Trust the science' say scientists, as they cook up biological weapons in labs.

 

[Seano]

It would actually be almost a million miles. That's how small a virus is.

Could it be as much as a million bazillion?!?!?

This idea that viruses spread from their point of origin- Ridiculous.

 

[Fluffernutter]

The cables from the State Department regarding concerns of the Wuhan lab were sent on the unclassified system

 

[LangfordBarrow]

So they finally caught up with the rest of us.

This is like Sharpie Gate 2.0. Trump’s appointee takes control and releases this with a low level of confidence. Color me shocked. The politically deranged "See, we knew it all along, no matter what the scientists have claimed!".

 

[Hdfi]

Yes, Fort Detrick. It was an obvious US bioattack against China