> That’s like saying that if a new flu came out of Atlanta, the fact the CDC is there proves it came from a lab, and must be true because someone’s janitor cousin who worked there one summer said it was true.
Well in this case it’s more like if if a new flu burst onto the scene with the following all being true:
- the epicenter of the outbreak being within a few miles of the CDC
- the CDC working specifically on gain of function for new strains of the flu
- the CDC being cited in whistleblower reports to the outbreak for poor safety and security protocols in the years prior to the outbreak
- inability to find the natural reservoir the virus crossed over from, despite years of searching in the biggest virus hunt in human history
- the closest naturally occurring relative of the virus being found in bats that are only native in areas hundreds of miles away (in this analogy, something like the upper Midwest), that also happen to be among the species of bats being studied by the lab at the CDC
- several CDC employees being among the earliest discovered cases, so early that they occurred before the disease was even picked up in the radar and were only discovered when searching for the earliest cases
- the US government preventing any none government health officials in or out of the area of the infection for several weeks after the outbreak
- the sole other identified potential outbreak location, the wet market nearby, was completely sterilized by the US government within the first two weeks of the outbreak, over the protests of international investigators who hadn’t yet been given access to it, thereby preventing them from ever being able to confirm or deny if it was the actual ground zero of the outbreak.
“Low confidence” doesn’t mean there is a lack of evidence, it means there is a lack of direct evidence. Problem is there is a lack of direct evidence for any alternative theory as well. There is, however, and overwhelming about of circumstantial evidence supporting the lab leak. The CIA isn’t going to issue accusations like this without a smoking bullet, which they will never have.
The reality is that had this occurred under any other administration, the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t be so taboo. But Trump is a serial conspiracy theorist and pugilistic nationalist, so the second he floated it everyone on the left, which includes much in academia, immediately disputed it in a knee jerk reaction, despite not having much evidence either way. Since then what evidence exists has increasingly supported the lab leak theory, but many are walking back from entrenched positions. If this had happened when Obama was president I don’t think anyone would be pushing back on this with the evidence that exists.
Coordinating medical information is notoriously hard, particularly when the government doesn't want to acknowledge something. Let's take Florida as an example.
There was a point at the beginning of the covid pandemic where the governor was declaring that the state only hand a few cases, and there was not great need for concern. The pneumonia death rates for the previous months showed a different story. For the previous two months the death rates were 10x higher that normal. Nobody seemed to have noticed that at the state level.
Most outbreaks follow a pattern where the disease shows up in small pockets for many years before it becomes an epidemic. HIV is an example. The first HIV death in the USA happened in 1969. The oldest confirmed case in Africa is in '59. The oldest suspected death in the US is '52.
Crossover tends to happen multiple times, and there is no reason to expect otherwise with covid-19. The problem with finding these cases is that it happened in an area governed by an authoritarian ruler. Authoritarians don't want to admit that there are things out of their control, and by inclination they conceal bad news, or news that makes them look like they're less than omnipotent. They shift blame rather than dealing with problem.
The love of the lab theory in the US seems to be driven by the same desire to push the blame on someone else. It takes the focus away from the incompetent response.
The pandemic was discovered by ordinary doctors in Wuhan who noticed the unusually high volume of sick and dying patients. Only then were specialists engaged to identify the cause, and the viral genome was first published by Zhang Yong-Zhen in Shanghai. The WIV isn't known to have played any role in this.
Perhaps the WIV secretly discovered the new virus by more sophisticated means before those doctors did. There's no evidence for this, but maybe. There is no possibility that a Wuhan-level outbreak occurred in a different city first, though. China keeps tight control of their mass media, but mortality on that level is impossible to conceal. Do you not remember 2020? The coffin shortages? So your implication that the WIV's presence somehow caused the first cases in a natural pandemic to get ascertained in Wuhan just doesn't make sense.
This topic is unfortunately politicized, and you're not helping. I think it would be helpful to spend more timing studying the scientific evidence, and less time speculating over the motivations of one's perceived ideological opponents.
Well in this case it’s more like if if a new flu burst onto the scene with the following all being true:
- the epicenter of the outbreak being within a few miles of the CDC
- the CDC working specifically on gain of function for new strains of the flu
- the CDC being cited in whistleblower reports to the outbreak for poor safety and security protocols in the years prior to the outbreak
- inability to find the natural reservoir the virus crossed over from, despite years of searching in the biggest virus hunt in human history
- the closest naturally occurring relative of the virus being found in bats that are only native in areas hundreds of miles away (in this analogy, something like the upper Midwest), that also happen to be among the species of bats being studied by the lab at the CDC
- several CDC employees being among the earliest discovered cases, so early that they occurred before the disease was even picked up in the radar and were only discovered when searching for the earliest cases
- the US government preventing any none government health officials in or out of the area of the infection for several weeks after the outbreak
- the sole other identified potential outbreak location, the wet market nearby, was completely sterilized by the US government within the first two weeks of the outbreak, over the protests of international investigators who hadn’t yet been given access to it, thereby preventing them from ever being able to confirm or deny if it was the actual ground zero of the outbreak.
“Low confidence” doesn’t mean there is a lack of evidence, it means there is a lack of direct evidence. Problem is there is a lack of direct evidence for any alternative theory as well. There is, however, and overwhelming about of circumstantial evidence supporting the lab leak. The CIA isn’t going to issue accusations like this without a smoking bullet, which they will never have.
The reality is that had this occurred under any other administration, the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t be so taboo. But Trump is a serial conspiracy theorist and pugilistic nationalist, so the second he floated it everyone on the left, which includes much in academia, immediately disputed it in a knee jerk reaction, despite not having much evidence either way. Since then what evidence exists has increasingly supported the lab leak theory, but many are walking back from entrenched positions. If this had happened when Obama was president I don’t think anyone would be pushing back on this with the evidence that exists.