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Biotech Government

Virologist Disputes WSJ Report on a Minority Opinion Suggesting Covid 'Lab Leak' Origin (wsj.com) 282

Three long-time Slashdot readers all submitted this story — schwit1, sinij, and DevNull127.

DevNull127 writes: Four U.S. agencies have concluded that the Covid-19 virus originated at the Wuhan market, the Wall Street Journal reports. The U.S. National Intelligence Council reached the same conclusion. Then there's two more agencies (including America's CIA) that are "undecided."

But there is one agency that decided — with "low confidence" — that the virus had somehow leaked from a lab. (And the FBI also decided with "moderate confidence" on that same theory.) "The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic's origin," writes the Wall Street Journal — adding that unfortunately U.S. officials "declined" to give any details on what led to the Energy Department's position.

The Wall Street Journal also notes: Despite the agencies' differing analyses, the update reaffirmed an existing consensus between them that Covid-19 wasn't the result of a Chinese biological-weapons program, the people who have read the classified report said....

Some scientists argue that the virus probably emerged naturally and leapt from an animal to a human, the same pathway for outbreaks of previously unknown pathogens. Intelligence analysts who have supported that view give weight to "the precedent of past novel infectious disease outbreaks having zoonotic origins," the flourishing trade in a diverse set of animals that are susceptible to such infections, and their conclusion that Chinese officials didn't have foreknowledge of the virus, the 2021 report said.

Also responding to the Department of Energy's outlying position was a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at Canada's University of Saskatchewan, who posted a series of observations on Twitter: The available evidence shows overwhelmingly that the pandemic started at Huanan market via zoonosis. I have no idea what this evidence that Department of Energy has is. All I know that it is "weak" and resulted in a conclusion of "low confidence".

It reportedly comes from the DOE's own network of national labs rather than through spying. But I do know that to be consistent with the available scientific evidence, the DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs....

Claims of a progenitor at WIV are pure speculation & unsupported by evidence.... Despite 3 years of a global search for this evidence, it has not materialized, while evidence supporting zoonosis associated with Huanan has continued to stack up. At some point, an absence of evidence might just be evidence of absence.

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Virologist Disputes WSJ Report on a Minority Opinion Suggesting Covid 'Lab Leak' Origin

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 26, 2023 @04:26PM (#63324976)

    I am confused that so many different government departments feel the need to spend time and money on investigating and then publishing reports specifically on the "origin" of COVID.

    Despite that confusion, I am particularly interested in what expertise that the Dept of Energy might have brought to the table that wasn't available to International Association of Shoemakers or the United Auto Workers Unions (who have yet to release a report AFAIK)

    • There is great political benefit in demonizing China. That is why even though all major institutions have found with reasonable confidence that the virus emerged naturally, only some scientists believe it did, like only some scientists believe smoking and cancer are related, or human are negatively impacted the climate

      There is also just some fear based on superstition. We canâ(TM)t defend against natural outbreaks. So we tend to attribute to acts of mice or god, and pray.

      In fact the only weaponizat

    • by Wrath0fb0b ( 302444 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @05:38PM (#63325144)

      I am confused that so many different government departments feel the need to spend time and money on investigating and then publishing reports specifically on the "origin" of COVID.

      If you read the WSJ article, this would not confuse you, as it says: [ quoting WSJ quoting US National Security Advisor ]

      âoePresident Biden specifically requested that the national labs, which are part of the Energy Department, be brought into this assessment because he wants to put every tool at use to be able to figure out what happened here,â Mr. Sullivan said.

      So yeah, they didn't "feel the need" to do it -- they were given a specific request by their boss. You can agree or disagree with whether that was a wise or prudent use of their efforts, but that disagreement should be with Mr Biden and not imply that the agency just went off to do it for no reason.

      I am particularly interested in what expertise that the Dept of Energy might have brought to the table

      A quick trip to Wikipedia would show you that the DOE operates many of the most prestigious scientific labs in this country and sponsors more physical sciences research than any other agency in the Federal Government. In particular, those labs have a fairly large and deep staff of scientific expertise that the President might be interested in bringing to bear here.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @04:28PM (#63324982)
    I know my first stop is always the national police force and they guys who keep my lights on. Asking a virologist is just plain silly.
    • by nojayuk ( 567177 )

      The US Dept. of Energy is in charge of nuclear weapons development, materials, warhead stockpiles etc. A bit more than "keeping the lights on". It does not have much to do with disease, medicine etc. though.

      As for the origin of the SARS-nCoV-2 virus, no-one disputes that the SARS-1 virus was of zoonotic origin. It didn't spread fast and far and was contained and so it didn't get the press and public attention of the 2019 SARS virus, that's all.

      The Wall Street Journal is a curious publication -- it is absolu

  • We also know the Chinese government punished the doctor who first reported the outbreak and forced him to recant. That doctor later died from covid. Whether it came from a wet market or from a lab does not matter. The Chinese government is responsible for the pandemic and is still completely mishandling their response to it.

    • That doctor died of Covid at 33 and without any serious medical conditions that were obvious or made public. He received the best care possible at the time right away. Even unvaccinated and with high exposure, with no Covid specific treatments available it was still likely a couple hundred to one odds. Personally I think that given 1/200 chance or the Chinese government quietly offing him for blowing the whistle, I’m at least split 50/50.

      further it spread from the city first according to reports,
  • Evidence? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by haggie ( 957598 )

    We live in an era where even WITH evidence proving that Covid came solely from the market, Republicans would still use this to claim Biden is either soft on China or a pawn of China and that the US is letting China run roughshod over us and the whole thing was organized by Democrats+Media+Soros.

  • While not directly related [youtube.com], it does relate to Dr. Angela Rasmussen's comment about wanting to see the evidence:

    But I do know that to be consistent with the available scientific evidence, the DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs....

    It should be noted the confidence of this report [cnn.com], that covid started in a Chinese lab, is low:

    Two sources said that the Department of Energy assessed in the intelligence report that it had “low confidence” the Covid-19 virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

    Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence. A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion.

    As always, show the evidence. Though in this case, doing so would most likely jepordize sources and methods so we'll probably never see how this determination was made.

  • I'm not a proponent of conspiracy theories. However, I'll take a crack at proposing one. I don't believe it but it seems more likely than most conspiracy theories. The thing about conspiracy theories is they are quite entertaining. China has a terrible demographic problem. They are the fastest aging population on the planet. Partly because of the one child policy. Soon they won't have enough young people to take care of all the old people much less conquer the world. One way to solve this problem is to
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @06:01PM (#63325188)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      China certainly isn't going to help you prosecute China. Any chance of having an international investigation into the origin of COVID went out the window as soon as people started to talk about blame and compensation.

      I don't think we can do anything to fix it either. As soon as a new virus is found we will want to stop travel from that country, despite it likely being too late anyway. So that country of origin will want to downplay it and find reasons to claim it came from somewhere else.

      Internationally or

  • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @06:10PM (#63325198)

    At this point the trail may be too cold to definitively answer the origin question. But the contention made by the University of Saskatchewan virologist that "the DOE has to explain how the virus emerged twice over 2 wks in humans at the same market the size of a tennis court, over 8 km & across a river from the only lab in Wuhan working on SARSr-CoVs" seems pretty weak.

    8 km isn't very far at all - I'm sure people in that region walk that far and more daily - and presumably there's a bridge across the river. It seems likely that lab employees, and/or friends and family, visited the market. And asymptomatic infection has always been a thing with this virus. Given this, and the lack of an animal "patient zero", zoonotic origin and lab-leak origin seem equally likely to me.

    Instead of virologists, I'd really rather hear epidemiologists weighing in on this question. I think they're better equipped to look at all the disease vector variables and evaluate the likelihood of one scenario or the other.

  • Instead of reporting the news as it is -- that the DoE now believes COVID came from a lab -- what does slashdot promote? A rebuttal. Pathetic.
    • People commenting on Twitter are the highest source possible in any debate. Haven't you learned anything about modern science?
  • by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @06:45PM (#63325284)

    It's difficult to provide compelling proof for a lab leak when China has lied so much, and so consistently, about Covid's spread. Examine this case of China repressing reports to understand that analyzing China's numbers on the start and source of its spread are very unreliable.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Citing the timing of early reports as proof of the wet market origin theory is simply not reliable, especially when Chinse bureaucrats would wish to desperately conceal an accidental outbreak from a government research lab with now verified reports of their unsafe practices.

  • Who benefits financially if the wet market leak theory prevails? Virology funding goes up.
    Who benefits financially if the accidental lab leak theory prevails? Lab security and safety funding may go up but all other funding goes down because the scientists and bureaucrats can't be trusted.

    Follow the money

  • by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Monday February 27, 2023 @09:00AM (#63326532) Homepage
    Ofcourse the US 'intelligence' agencies say it is from a lab leak, as they themselves have actually leaked the virus in the neighbourhood of those labs so they could point fingers to China.

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