Comment by Hikikomori
16 hours ago
>"it's so friggin likely it came from the lab", even after they published a paper
This particular was over a month before it was published, who's lying again? But this is discussions between colleagues as new evidence was coming in. If the investigation was tilted in the direction of the wet market we would have seen evidence of that, instead we see different people having different opinions on early and incomplete evidence and eventually coming to an agreement on what is more likely based on evidence they had at the end.
>"now we know the wet market was not the source, it was an amplifier"
Doesn't exclude that it was from natural origin. Amplifier meaning where it entered the human population and started spreading widely.
> The evidence it came from the Wuhan lab is overwhelmingly strong
There is a lot of conjecture for the lab leak theory, no real evidence. Meanwhile there's plenty of actual evidence that points to the wet market, such as the initial spread was clustered around the market.
>to the extent that anyone who believes otherwise should be suspected of motivated reasoning.
This sentence alone is rather telling...
I am not the user you responded to, but you are making a fairly egregious logical error. China is an authoritarian, autocratic state. It will never permit any incriminating evidence to surface. Arguing that hard scientific evidence is required for us to come to any conclusions is a de facto rejection of any scenario in which China, its provinces, or any individuals are culpable of anything. Ever. This is much closer to an ideological position than a logical or evidence-based position.
In these situations we rely heavily on intelligence services. For example, the German secret service has assessed an 80-95% probability that it was leaked from a lab in Wuhan and presented a report to then Chancellor Angela Merkel. [The assessment was later leaked and was published in a German Newspaper.](https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/corona-bnd-china-li.3217...) I think the German intelligence services are far better equipped, resourced, and have far wider access to sensitive and privileged data, than either of us.
> I am not the user you responded to, but you are making a fairly egregious logical error. China is an authoritarian, autocratic state. It will never permit any incriminating evidence to surface.
you aren't saying anything here. "well the evidence could have been destroyed because China doesn't want it exposed" is not an argument for or against a lab leak. In fact, you and most people in these threads arguing for lab leak theory aren't providing evidence at all - you are just doing the classic "well isn't this weird"
You are making the same argument they are: that China cannot ever, for any reason be responsible for doing anything bad. I'm sorry, but I don't find your ideological position tenable. Destroying evidence doesn't exonerate one of culpability.
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>China is an authoritarian, autocratic state.
As opposed to current America?
Scientists can still asses information and evidence with that in mind and still say which option is more likely to have happened. Or even say that China has faked evidence if they did so.
>In these situations we rely heavily on intelligence services
I don't think intelligence services are equipped to do this. But if we go by who has the better data, better equipped and resource I would assume that America wins on that, so should we believe them more?
https://archive.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Rep...
>The National Intelligence Council and four other IC agencies assess that the initial human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal that carried SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor, a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARSCoV-2
> Scientists can still asses information and evidence with that in mind and still say which option is more likely to have happened. Or even say that China has faked evidence if they did so.
They cannot evaluate evidence if all evidence has been destroyed.
> I don't think intelligence services are equipped to do this. But if we go by who has the better data, better equipped and resource I would assume that America wins on that, so should we believe them more?
I find it odd that you would cite an American intelligence report right after implying that America is authoritarian and autocratic. You can't have it both ways.
To point, the US intelligence report “does not address the merits of the two most likely pandemic origins hypotheses.” Its purpose was to declassify information concerning potential WIV connections and describe what US intelligence knew about WIV activities. You cited a report you didn't read or didn't understand.
I should also point out that the US agencies couldn't agree. In 2023, FBI favoured a lab incident, Department of Energy favoured a lab incident, CIA favoured lab incident, and NIC + four other (name withheld) intelligence agencies favoured natural spillover.
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