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

[Hadron90]

and biden just pulled a 180 and ordered a 90 day investigation now.

...probably just to take credit for it since this was under trump. lolz.

(same url)

Biden Panics After CNN Reveals He Canceled COVID Origins Investigation, Orders 90-Day Report From US Intel Agencies

by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - 08:05 AM
Update (1522ET): Less than 24 hours after CNN threw Biden under the bus for canceling a State Department effort launched under Trump to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19, the Biden administration has backpedaled - and has ordered the US intelligence community to conduct a 90-day investigation into how the pandemic began.

In a statement via the White House website, the Biden administration claims that officials have been pursuing various possibilities - including "whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident," it's clear that the administration is in full damage control mode.

"I have now asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days," said Biden in the announcement.

Senile Joe doesn't know what he is signing. We are going to have tons of flip flopping like this. He will sign anything they put in front of him.

 

[Rob Battisti]

Zero faith in any institutions anymore.

News
Government
People

NONE

 

[DavidsGhost]

Well then. I guess u are just an idiot then. And can not see shit all around you going up in flames.

But those mean tweets are gone

What is going up in flames all around?

we have a steady economic recovery, stocks are rising, vaccines are outpacing demand, unemployment is falling

 

[Fugazy]

Can’t wait for that official inquiry to come back inconclusive or to definitely clear China of wrongdoing.

 

[SBJJ]

What is going up in flames all around?

we have a steady economic recovery, stocks are rising, vaccines are outpacing demand, unemployment is falling

Lol

Women and kids getting mass raped across the border. Gas prices soaring. Food costs spiking. Home building on hold because 400% increases in lumber. WORST miss on jobs report EVER. Middle East on fire. Kim Jung firing missles he hasn't for years. China threatening Taiwan. Biden covering for China unleashing this virus. Crime rates skyrocketing.

But Amazon, Google and FB are doing good!!

 

[M3t4tr0n]

you are. Plenty of people dont trust the vaccine, youre just boxing them into a corner. Im moderate and dont trust it.
youre assigning opinions and viewpoints to people based on parties.

but hey youre the one who took it not me. So idk why you care
your body, your choice. (It doesnt prevent you from getting Covid though )

Nope, I am not. Majority of the people who don't trust the vaccine are right wing. Plenty of Republicans let the whole misinformation and mistrust of the vaccine spread through the right while taking the vaccine. Left wing politicians advocate for the vaccine while the right wingers take the vaccine quietly and stay silent while their base pushes falsehoods.

 

[GoldenWolf87]

Trump and his family got it. Also several prominent Republicans.

Lol is that why we should still trust it? like how justin trudeau got his astrazeneca after 14 reports or more on the BC? lol.

I dont trust the polticans anymore.

 

[Streeter]

Everyone knows this virus was actually created by the dutch

 

[M3t4tr0n]

Lol is that why we should still trust it? like how justin trudeau got his astrazeneca after 14 reports or more on the BC? lol.

I dont trust the polticans anymore.

Sorry, I don't follow Canadian politics.

 

[CantCucktheTuck]

Orange man bad politics has literally killed hundreds of thousands of people.

 

[M3t4tr0n]

Orange man bad politics has literally killed hundreds of thousands of people.

 

[IamStryker]

Fauci that lying flip flopping POS.

 

[IamStryker]

Nope, I am not. Majority of the people who don't trust the vaccine are right wing. Plenty of Republicans let the whole misinformation and mistrust of the vaccine spread through the right while taking the vaccine. Left wing politicians advocate for the vaccine while the right wingers take the vaccine quietly and stay silent while their base pushes falsehoods.

I just want to know why the left completely ignores natural immunity from having already had the virus. Reminds me of how they lied about masks as well. They made this political instead of just being honest.

 

[DavidsGhost]

Lol

Women and kids getting mass raped across the border. Gas prices soaring. Food costs spiking. Home building on hold because 400% increases in lumber. WORST miss on jobs report EVER. Middle East on fire. Kim Jung firing missles he hasn't for years. China threatening Taiwan. Biden covering for China unleashing this virus. Crime rates skyrocketing.

But Amazon, Google and FB are doing good!!

The border crisis is the most credible complaint here. Much of these are pandemic-related data points that you've taken out of context. For example, gas prices were going to rise no matter what because demand would increase at some point. Along those lines, Trump's own policies, his stimulus, in particular, contributed to the inflation you've listed here. And the jobs report you're talking about was in the middle of a more significant stretch of record-breaking reports, which you should be excited about.

We are one of the only countries to be facing these economic issues and they are good problems to have because they indicate a legitimate recovery from the pandemic.

The latest jobs report was solid, and the latest stock market report was solid as well.


But the reality is that these positives would likely come under any president and aren't unique to Biden. And that gets at the root of my original point. We can look at every presidency and find negatives and positives and spin them however we want. It's easy. It's called cherry-picking data. It's the outliers that are harder to spin and thus easier to make judgments about. And Trump's rhetoric was excessively bad and excessively damaging to public dialogue. For a politician to overcome that is nearly impossible, and what you're suggesting is that Trump's policies and the state of things under him were so exceptional that they made up for the sloppiness at the oval office.

That's simply not true. The world was just as volatile:

Gas prices rose under Trump
Hate crimes rose under Trump
We narrowly dodged conflict with North Korea
Trump's drone strikes increased civilian deaths since 2016



To reiterate, I'm not saying the world was meaningfully worse off because of Trump. Rather, I'm saying that it wasn't meaningfully better, and certainly not enough to excuse the many ways in which he was exceptionally bad at his job. You want Trump's policies? Vote for any number of the people who could achieve the same as him without the bull shit. Desantis comes to mind.

Anyways, I don't think everything is on fire and I think you're just a hater.

 

[SBJJ]

The border crisis is the most credible complaint here. Much of these are pandemic-related data points that you've taken out of context. For example, gas prices were going to rise no matter what because demand would increase at some point. Along those lines, Trump's own policies, his stimulus, in particular, contributed to the inflation you've listed here. And the jobs report you're talking about was in the middle of a more significant stretch of record-breaking reports, which you should be excited about.

We are one of the only countries to be facing these economic issues and they are good problems to have because they indicate a legitimate recovery from the pandemic.

The latest jobs report was solid, and the latest stock market report was solid as well.


But the reality is that these positives would likely come under any president and aren't unique to Biden. And that gets at the root of my original point. We can look at every presidency and find negatives and positives and spin them however we want. It's easy. It's called cherry-picking data. It's the outliers that are harder to spin and thus easier to make judgments about. And Trump's rhetoric was excessively bad and excessively damaging to public dialogue. For a politician to overcome that is nearly impossible, and what you're suggesting is that Trump's policies and the state of things under him were so exceptional that they made up for the sloppiness at the oval office.

That's simply not true. The world was just as volatile:

Gas prices rose under Trump
Hate crimes rose under Trump
We narrowly dodged conflict with North Korea
Trump's drone strikes increased civilian deaths since 2016



To reiterate, I'm not saying the world was meaningfully worse off because of Trump. Rather, I'm saying that it wasn't meaningfully better, and certainly not enough to excuse the many ways in which he was exceptionally bad at his job. You want Trump's policies? Vote for any number of the people who could achieve the same as him without the bull shit. Desantis comes to mind.

Anyways, I don't think everything is on fire and I think you're just a hater.

The Delusion is strong in this one. And lol at "last stock market report". You don't even know what u are saying.

As for your fake numbers. Its all bullshit. Gas prices averaged 50% less than now during a stronger economy. Crime did not spike like this under Trump

You are actually correct on drone strikes and I called Trumps fat ass out on it. Because unlike u, I'm not a blind partisan

 

[HunterAcosta]

Lol

Women and kids getting mass raped across the border. Gas prices soaring. Food costs spiking. Home building on hold because 400% increases in lumber. WORST miss on jobs report EVER. Middle East on fire. Kim Jung firing missles he hasn't for years. China threatening Taiwan. Biden covering for China unleashing this virus. Crime rates skyrocketing.

But Amazon, Google and FB are doing good!!

This plus the economic “ bailout “ ( for corps ) from last year will come due with the inevitable stock market amd real estate crash. We’re living on basically credit in this country .

 

[SBJJ]

This plus the economic “ bailout “ ( for corps ) from last year will come due with the inevitable stock market amd real estate crash. We’re living on basically credit in this country .

Yea sadly, I think it's coming

And the millions sitting at home refusing to work are gonna find their jobs gone with the immigrant surge.

This could get ugly

 

[The Audience]

The lab-leak hypothesis for COVID-19 is becoming a conspiracy theory

"Though there is no direct evidence for either idea, the natural origins hypothesis has scientific precedence.There is no even indirect scientific evidence that the virus was created in a lab.

If the question is “are both hypotheses possible?” the answer is yes. Both are possible. If the question is “are they equally likely?” the answer is absolutely not. One hypothesis requires a colossal cover-up and the silent, unswerving, leak-proof compliance of a vast network of scientists, civilians, and government officials for over a year. The other requires only for biology to behave as it always has, for a family of viruses that have done this before to do it again. The zoonotic spillover hypothesis is simple and explains everything. It’s scientific malpractice to pretend that one idea is equally as meritorious as the other. The lab-leak hypothesis is a scientific deus ex machina, a narrative shortcut that points a finger at a specific set of bad actors. I would be embarrassed to stand up in front of a room of scientists, lay out both hypotheses, and then pretend that one isn’t clearly, obviously better than the other.

Besides the hazy science, there is an undeniable political aspect to this argument. There’s a choice being made here between two ideas — one that falls neatly within the world of biology, and the other that knots together conspiracy theory, political intrigue, and xenophobia. And since we will never be able to prove the exact moment that SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an animal to a human, this is instead going to devolve into a culture war.

Creating a webbed story of cover-ups and conspiracy allows us to ignore how in many ways all humans caused the COVID-19 catastrophe. What if it wasn’t one bad Chinese government’s fault, but the whole world’s fault for destroying habitats, mining too deeply, and creating the perfect conditions for natural viral spillovers? The lab-leak hypothesis will soon be in league with climate change denialism — a conspiracy that absolves humanity of its mistakes, and lets us live our lives as if nothing had ever happened."

[massive science]

 

[Crispy Cream]

Facebook: *censors conspiracy virus came from lab*
News: “The virus may have come from a lab.”
Facebook: *uncensors it*

This behavior right here should be illegal. If we had been allowed to discuss this openly then different and perhaps better political and social choices would have been made. Not to mention this was plain closing our minds from a serious possibility just because FB pretended to know everything. The point of conspiracies is that they help us understand things that perhaps the facts and evidence of the day do not properly cover like people religiously insist it does.

 

[Hadron90]

The lab-leak hypothesis for COVID-19 is becoming a conspiracy theory

"Though there is no direct evidence for either idea, the natural origins hypothesis has scientific precedence.There is no even indirect scientific evidence that the virus was created in a lab.

If the question is “are both hypotheses possible?” the answer is yes. Both are possible. If the question is “are they equally likely?” the answer is absolutely not. One hypothesis requires a colossal cover-up and the silent, unswerving, leak-proof compliance of a vast network of scientists, civilians, and government officials for over a year. The other requires only for biology to behave as it always has, for a family of viruses that have done this before to do it again. The zoonotic spillover hypothesis is simple and explains everything. It’s scientific malpractice to pretend that one idea is equally as meritorious as the other. The lab-leak hypothesis is a scientific deus ex machina, a narrative shortcut that points a finger at a specific set of bad actors. I would be embarrassed to stand up in front of a room of scientists, lay out both hypotheses, and then pretend that one isn’t clearly, obviously better than the other.

Besides the hazy science, there is an undeniable political aspect to this argument. There’s a choice being made here between two ideas — one that falls neatly within the world of biology, and the other that knots together conspiracy theory, political intrigue, and xenophobia. And since we will never be able to prove the exact moment that SARS-CoV-2 jumped from an animal to a human, this is instead going to devolve into a culture war.

Creating a webbed story of cover-ups and conspiracy allows us to ignore how in many ways all humans caused the COVID-19 catastrophe. What if it wasn’t one bad Chinese government’s fault, but the whole world’s fault for destroying habitats, mining too deeply, and creating the perfect conditions for natural viral spillovers? The lab-leak hypothesis will soon be in league with climate change denialism — a conspiracy that absolves humanity of its mistakes, and lets us live our lives as if nothing had ever happened."

[massive science]

Science doesn't work like that. You don't just get to rule out a claim because you don't like it, and you don't get to just default to another claim because of "scientific precedence". The origins of Covid are unknown right now. Period.