355 replies to this topic

[Mind]

A large coalition of former government officials has issued a strongly worded statement about the origins of the SARS-CoV2 virus, taking time to correctly excoriate the Lancet for their biased and unscientific statements from early in the pandemic.

[Mind]

Another well-written piece about the origins of SARS-CoV2. Besides the almost overwhelming and very logical evidence that it was created in a lab, you also have the fact that the virus was circulating around the world at least several months before the media-created panic in January of 2020. It didn't just pop out of a wet market in Wuhan in late December 2019.

[Daniel Cooper]

I don't think any scientist that isn't tainted by vested interest is still touting the wet market theory anymore. Even Fauci has gone back and forth on that.

 

 

[Mind]

According to recently released emails, Dr. Fauci lied about his involvement in suppressing the lab-leak theory. He was actively trying to squash the theory behind the scenes.

[Daniel Cooper]

Lab leak WAS the 'most likely' cause of Covid-19 UN experts claim

 

The authors of two United Nations reports into the origins of the pandemic say they believe a laboratory leak was the most likely cause of Covid-19, accusing top British and American scientists of helping China deliberately to suppress debate on the issue.

 

...

 

They say ‘a pall of suspicious secrecy, deceit and conflicts of interest’ shrouded high-risk experiments being carried out in Wuhan, the Chinese city where Covid first appeared, and argue that it was ‘enforced not only by China but by Western funding bodies and influential Western scientists’. The dramatic intervention comes from epidemiologists Colin Butler (based at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health in Canberra, Australia) and Delia Randolph (of the University of Greenwich, London).

 

...

 

Professor Randolph, lead author of the first report, admits that she was concerned by the possibility of a lab ‘pathway’ but felt that the agency ‘was averse to including anything so controversial’ in the study that she led.

Prof Butler was initially sceptical about a lab leak, but he fought to include mention of the theory in his report as evidence began to emerge about hidden data, controversial ‘gain of function’ experiments and the risky research environment in Wuhan.

 

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 29 January 2023 - 02:29 AM.

[Mind]

A good video about how Collins and Fauci forced the "natural origin" theory upon the public, even though they were being told from multiple reputable sources that it was a lab leak.

 

Both Fauci and Collins should face a criminal inquiry, at a minimum.

[Mind]

Just another comprehensive look at the timeline of the lab-leak discussion and its suppression - a lot of material that was covered in this thread already - collated into one article.

[Mind]

The U.S. Dept of Energy now says it was most likely a lab leak - citing new intelligence.

 

For those not following along the entire discussion, three years ago the vast majority of scientists around the world thought that this new disease resulted from a lab leak. A small cabal of public figures and researchers that were involved in the gain of function research pushed an unlikely "natural origin story". They convinced the U.S. media to push this (natural origin) theory and encouraged censorship and harassment of anyone who disagreed.

 

A natural origin was always an unlikely scenario. Witness how easy it was for a small number of public figures to sway public opinion away from the most likely scenario.

[Daniel Cooper]

The U.S. Dept of Energy now says it was most likely a lab leak - citing new intelligence.

 

For those not following along the entire discussion, three years ago the vast majority of scientists around the world thought that this new disease resulted from a lab leak. A small cabal of public figures and researchers that were involved in the gain of function research pushed an unlikely "natural origin story". They convinced the U.S. media to push this (natural origin) theory and encouraged censorship and harassment of anyone who disagreed.

 

A natural origin was always an unlikely scenario. Witness how easy it was for a small number of public figures to sway public opinion away from the most likely scenario.

 

The Wall Street Journal - surely an acceptable media outlet.  And in any case they are simply quoting a statement from the Department of Energy.

 

It is strange to me that the DoE is the one that is making this statement. It surely was approved at a very high level of the government, but why the DoE? Seems out of their wheelhouse.

 

The thing that has aggravated me on this subject is that the US intelligence apparatus undoubtedly knows with near certainty whether Covid-19 was the result of a lab leak or not.

 

Fairly early in the pandemic, there were leaks out of the NRO that photoreconnaissance satellites had noted that the parking lots at the WIV had gone empty for an extended period several months before covid was officially announced. The sort of thing you'd do if you had a dangerous biological leak at one of your research labs and you locked everything down to avoid further spread. If that's true, then that would be considered pretty unequivocal evidence in my book.

 

Barring that, we have a pretty damned good circumstantial case.

 

If there were a criminal case and I were on a jury in the US where the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt" then I might not be able to vote for a conviction of the WIV.

 

On the other hand, if this were a civil case where the standard is "by a preponderance of the evidence" I would absolutely vote to award damages to the plaintiff.

 

 

[geo12the]

The Wall Street Journal - surely an acceptable media outlet.  And in any case they are simply quoting a statement from the Department of Energy.

 

It is strange to me that the DoE is the one that is making this statement. It surely was approved at a very high level of the government, but why the DoE? Seems out of their wheelhouse.

 

The thing that has aggravated me on this subject is that the US intelligence apparatus undoubtedly knows with near certainty whether Covid-19 was the result of a lab leak or not.

 

Fairly early in the pandemic, there were leaks out of the NRO that photoreconnaissance satellites had noted that the parking lots at the WIV had gone empty for an extended period several months before covid was officially announced. The sort of thing you'd do if you had a dangerous biological leak at one of your research labs and you locked everything down to avoid further spread. If that's true, then that would be considered pretty unequivocal evidence in my book.

 

Barring that, we have a pretty damned good circumstantial case.

 

If there were a criminal case and I were on a jury in the US where the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt" then I might not be able to vote for a conviction of the WIV.

 

On the other hand, if this were a civil case where the standard is "by a preponderance of the evidence" I would absolutely vote to award damages to the plaintiff.

 

Supposedly they have new information that caused them to make this conclusion. That new information must be released and evaluated by the public and by scientists. It's way too important of an issue. I have always said it could be a lab leak, you can check my old posts from the very beginning,  because I know from experience that biosafety hoods get holes in the filters that render them less than 100%effective. I believe they are supposed to be serviced every 6 months but if one fails before the inspection time it could result in contamination outside the hood. And many safety protocols in place depend on the people enforcing them. You get doofuses in all labs who are perhaps unintentionally bad at checking for holes in gloves and things like that. All it would could is one drop from a pipet to fly onto someone or seep into a hole in someone's glove. The public needs to know what the new information is.

[Advocatus Diaboli]

 "Satellite data suggests coronavirus may have hit China earlier:Researchers"

 

Related to info in post #249, here is a link which discusses hospital traffic in Wuhan.

 

 

[Daniel Cooper]

The DoE should indeed share whatever new information they have (if in fact they have new information) that has caused them to release this new opinion.

 

The strangeness of this coming out of the DoE is still striking to me. Why not the CDC? Or the NIAID? Or one of the intelligence services? How is the Department of Energy tied up in this?

 

This has the feeling of the beginning of information being let out in drips and drabs over some time by seemingly unrelated government sources in order to soften the rather stark admission. 

 

Will there be an apology from the government or specific government officials that essentially ridiculed as kooks anyone that suggested that the virus might had come from the WIV rather than that now famous wet market? Will Dr. Fauci issue a mea culpa?

 

Will the social media platforms apologize for deplatforming and silencing people that made similar statements to what an official government agency just stated publicly?

 

 

 

 

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 27 February 2023 - 06:43 AM.

[joesixpack]

The DoE should indeed share whatever new information they have (if in fact they have new information) that has caused them to release this new opinion.

 

The strangeness of this coming out of the DoE is still striking to me. Why not the CDC? Or the NIAID? Or one of the intelligence services? How is the Department of Energy tied up in this?

 

This has the feeling of the beginning of information being let out in drips and drabs over some time by seemingly unrelated government sources in order to soften the rather stark admission. 

 

Will there be an apology from the government or specific government officials that essentially ridiculed as kooks anyone that suggested that the virus might had come from the WIV rather than that now famous wet market? Will Dr. Fauci issue a mea culpa?

 

Will the social media platforms apologize for deplatforming and silencing people that made similar statements to what an official government agency just stated publicly?

 

My guess is the DOE has not been completely replaced by the current administration. So they decided to tell the truth.

[Daniel Cooper]

My guess is the DOE has not been completely replaced by the current administration. So they decided to tell the truth.

 

Jennifer M. Granholm is the head of the DoE. She's a political appointee and a former Democrat governor of Michigan.  So I don't think that's the case.

 

Normally the government does things like this (and both parties do it) when they believe information is going to get out anyway and they want to get ahead of the curve. There's a couple of different strategies for this. One of them is you release a very soft statement from an unexpected department, usually on a Friday afternoon after the press is wrapping up for the week.

 

If so, you might see a few other releases over time, each with a bit more solid information that makes the case for a WIV leak.  But they normally won't release everything at one time because that's a big story that the press will have to cover it.

 

As the information releases get more significant, if they get questioned about it they'll reply "Well, as you recall six weeks ago, the DoE made a statement with respect to blah blah blah". 

 

Either that, or there's some valid reason that the Department of Energy should be making public statements about the origin of a global pandemic.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 27 February 2023 - 03:25 PM.

[Hebbeh]

The DOE is in charge of virtually all the government labs and that is their involvement. All the stories have been clear on that.

And the DOE released their report with the caveat as "LOW DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE" ... Certainly no smoking gun but more of an opinion and all the stories have been clear on that.

Quite some time back, the FBI released their own report stating essentially the same thing with "MEDIUM DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE" and nobody seemed to notice or talk about that.

[Daniel Cooper]

The DOE is in charge of virtually all the government labs and that is their involvement. All the stories have been clear on that.

And the DOE released their report with the caveat as "LOW DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE" ... Certainly no smoking gun but more of an opinion and all the stories have been clear on that.

Quite some time back, the FBI released their own report stating essentially the same thing with "MEDIUM DEGREE OF CONFIDENCE" and nobody seemed to notice or talk about that.

 

So CDC labs are controlled by the DoE?

 

And what new information was discovered in a DoE lab that shed new light on this issue?

 

And the FBI being an investigative agency releasing a report makes some sense.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 27 February 2023 - 04:58 PM.

[Hebbeh]

That's my understanding that the DOE is in charge of government labs... At least that's what the stories I've seen are saying. And my understanding is that the DOE had the appropriate government labs study the virus to determine the likelihood of whether it was likely to have developed naturally or whether it was likely to have been engineered. Really nothing new here that hasn't been considered previously. Thus their finding that they're leaning towards lab leak engineered virus with a "low degree of confidence". Still no smoking gun.

[Mind]

This is one of many discussions surrounding the media-created COVID panic that was squashed by U.S. media, Facebook, Google, and fact-checkers. They also censored almost all discussions involving masking as a pandemic response. They are currently suppressing almost all discussions of COVID injection side effects. These organizations are awful. No one should believe their claims of what constitutes misinformation or disinformation. They have done incalculable damage to society as a whole.

[Daniel Cooper]

In any case, we have two different government agencies saying with varying level of confidence that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. My prediction is that more will follow.

 

So, will all the government officials that tried to suppress that story and called people suggesting that the virus came from the Wuhan lab "kooks" be issuing a heartfelt apology?

 

Will all the social media platforms that shadow banned and deplatformed people be issuing a mea culpa?

 

What about people that had their livelihood and careers damaged? Will they be made whole?

 

If I'm not mistaken we even had a few people here that suggested that believing that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab put one in the ranks of QAnon conspiracy cranks. Do we get so much as a Scusi. Mille regretti?   

[Mind]

Now the FBI director is saying that the origin of SARS-CoV2 was most likely a lab leak.

 

Everyone suddenly coming around to this opinion - especially the SAME people who tried to censor and shut down any discussion of this three years ago (called people COVIDIOTS and conspiracy nuts) - has a lot of people speculating as to the timing and the reasons.

 

Some people think it is because the walls are closing in. The pandemic response was an utter failure and there is more and more discussion of the COVID injections causing increased deaths. I have seen some people speculating that they US (and UK) bureaucrats who were responsible for the COVID disaster are trying to shift the blame to China. I don't think that will work since the US/NIH and Google funded the gain of function research - even holding conferences about it.

[Daniel Cooper]

It is really quite amazing.  The forbidden opinion that the powers that be tried to banish from the internet has now become pretty much the conventional wisdom. 

 

 

 

 

[zorba990]

It is really quite amazing. The forbidden opinion that the powers that be tried to banish from the internet has now become pretty much the conventional wisdom.

Unless all the labs world-wide are disclosed I'm not sure how anyone is sure of origin. Similarly banished opinions point elsewhere if you stretch your neck.

[Daniel Cooper]

Unless all the labs world-wide are disclosed I'm not sure how anyone is sure of origin. Similarly banished opinions point elsewhere if you stretch your neck.

 

There's a pretty good circumstantial case. There wasn't a lot of places in the world studying bat coronaviruses. WIV was sort of the epicenter of that research because of the 2002 SARs outbreak.

 

You had perhaps the preeminent bat virologist in the world - Shi Zhengli (i.e. The Bat Lady) at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 

WIV had visited caves and collected bat virus samples from all over China and Southeast Asia. Including the particular cave where the natural virus with the closest known genetic similarity to SARS-CoV-2 exists.

 

Finally, WIV had published papers detailing their experiments which entailed taking some of these bat viruses and repeatedly running them through mice with humanized immune systems (one way to produce a highly adapted to humans zoonotic virus) and they had been directly manipulating them at the genome level - adding "novel spike proteins" and furin cleavage sites optimized for human transmission.  This was all detailed in a series of published papers from WIV.

 

You can never prove anything in this world with 100% certainty.  But that's a pretty damned good case.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 02 March 2023 - 09:38 PM.

[geo12the]

Politics has of course played an unhelpful role in rational debate on this topic. The first 11 minutes of this podcast succinctly encapsulates this issue. Worth a listen if you have 11 minutes to spare:

https://podcasts.goo...jYmU4ZGM0?ep=14

[geo12the]

We were watching Bill Maher last night-he talked about COVID stuff with Russel Brand- and it started a discussion with my husband about the lab leak theory.  My husband  pointed out that previous related viruses -MERS and SARS- were not from lab leaks. But suggested that if China had evidence that COVID did indeed come from the wet market and was not a lab leak they would be shouting it from the rooftops. The fact that they are not is a tell. And he then brought up a possibility I had not considered-  Maybe it was a lab leak but China itself did not know for sure it was a lab leak. Maybe they are clueless about the origin and afraid to dig too much? Afraid of what they might find? But if was a lab leak I think someone has to know. If it was a lab leak leak, how many people at the institute and Chinese government know about it? If it was a lab leak, only if one of those people spills there guts will we know the truth. 

[joesixpack]

A Chinese scientist whistleblower has been here for the last year and a half telling everyone who will listen that it was a lab leak. She has been ignored by media and the Biden administration.

 

Here is a story about her https://7news.com.au...laims-c-1311415

 

Look her up and check out the story.

[geo12the]

A Chinese scientist whistleblower has been here for the last year and a half telling everyone who will listen that it was a lab leak. She has been ignored by media and the Biden administration.

 

Here is a story about her https://7news.com.au...laims-c-1311415

 

Look her up and check out the story.

 

From what I have read so far many scientists question the evidence she is presenting and she is controversial. But I will read what she has written and try and try and make heads or tails of the situation. I will report back but will not be till later this week when I have chance to dig more.

[joesixpack]

Right the same scientists that have tried to bury her for the last 2 years, have "questioned her evidence".

 

But two US major departments, the department of energy and the FBI, have announced that it is more likely than not, that it came from the Wuhan lab. Expect more to quietly admit the same in the weeks to come.

 

It is time to take her seriously.

 

[Mind]

CNN staff were told to ignore the lab-leak story, according to insiders. You might recall that staff were caught on undercover video detailing how they ramped-up irrational fear of COVID for ratings. CNN is awful. They are directly responsible for a lot of the detrimental effects of the COVID pandemic policies. They are propaganda, pure and simple. I don't believe anything they report.

 

Let us not forget how awful Dr. Fauci has performed as a public "health" servant. After being told that there was a good possibility it was a lab-leak, he immediately "prompted" Kristian Andersen to write a paper debunking the lab-leak hypothesis. Through the evidence of his actions, it is clear Dr. Fauci is a liar and a megalomaniac. He needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I can't believe people still believe anything he says.

[Daniel Cooper]

After being told that there was a good possibility it was a lab-leak, he immediately "prompted" Kristian Andersen to write a paper debunking the lab-leak hypothesis. 

 

That little episode really chaps my hide. Within a day or two of Andersen telling Fauci that "this virus looks engineered" he's writing a paper promoting the exact opposite position. After that mysterious conference call prompted by Fauci of which there is no released transcript.

 

Kristian Andersen should be ashamed of himself, but I'm guessing he got whatever grant money he was chasing out of Fauci.