I’ve been posting occasionally on the lab-leak hypothesis for a while in the Protecting thread. For better Longecity hygiene, I should continue in this devoted thread.
The Italian-origin hypothesis is new to me. If the observations claimed in the thread are correct, it has a few points in its favor. In a cursory search I found that,
These findings simply document that the epidemic in China was not detected in time," Giovanni Apolone, scientific director of National Cancer Institute (INT) and a co-author of the study, told a news conference in Milan.
https://www.usnews.c...e-virus-origins
That weakens but does not decisively dismiss the Italian hypothesis.
Competing hypotheses:
Italian bat exposure
Broader zoonotic
Accidental China lab-leak (gain of function)
Accidental China lab leak (Mojiang Miners’ Hypothesis)
Deliberate China lab-leak
Unz – deliberate US rogue-neocon bioweapon attack on China
As so often, there is no direct evidence for any of the hypotheses, and only indirect evidence favoring some hypotheses more than others, but not weighty enough to single out one as most likely. Given the indeterminacy of evidence to date, my view is that Occam’s Razor recommends the accidental China lab-leak (gain of function) hypothesis. From Vanity Fair:
Why, in all places in the world, did the outbreak begin in the city with a laboratory housing one of the world’s most extensive collection of bat viruses, doing some of the most aggressive research?
My view doesn’t matter though. What’s next is to continue to pursue empirical observations that support or undermine the various hypotheses. Now, for some new observations.
The Nicholas Wade story was big news, as was the surprising reversal of socially acceptable opinion. Here is a new report from Vanity Fair by Katherine Egan, The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins.
It quite strongly suggests that a faction of the U.S. government worked to suppress knowledge of the U.S. role in funding Wuhan gain of function research, among MANY other new revelations. It is long, full of detail, and will trigger much controversy. Bigger than Wade.
A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step. In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.
In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.”
There is a long, well-documented history of natural spillovers leading to outbreaks, even when the initial and intermediate host animals have remained a mystery for months and years, and some expert virologists say the supposed oddities of the SARS-CoV-2 sequence have been found in nature….
There are reasons to doubt the lab-leak hypothesis….But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds....
Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the CDC, said he received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN he thought the virus likely escaped from a lab. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science,” he said.
Edited by bladedmind, 03 June 2021 - 07:59 PM.
