Senior Biden officials finding that Covid lab leak theory as credible as natural origins explanation

[BIG LEEMELONE]

The head of the World Health Organization acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the COVID-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak, and he said Thursday he is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus.

In a rare departure from his usual deference to powerful member countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the international team that traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of COVID-19. The first human cases were identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Tedros told reporters that the U.N. health agency based in Geneva is “asking actually China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic.”

He said there had been a “premature push” to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan - undermining WHO’s own March report, which concluded that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely.”

WHO chief says it was 'premature' to rule out COVID lab leak

The head of the World Health Organization has acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the COVID-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak.

apnews.com

 

[sharpshooter718]

If it is a lab leak, the world must hold the Chinese regime accountable. This is far worse than what anyone has ever done. Accountability means full removal from power.

How you gonna removed a communist regime from power????

 

[Hank Scorpio]

Let's be real here. The Chinese most likely did create this **** in a lab and probably leaked. But they will never let it be known to the public outright or provide tangible evidence.

 

[sharpshooter718]

Wow what do you say.......

I would appreciate if i got access to post in the covid thread again considering i was banned for posting something (From one f China's main newspapers BTW) similar.

Lol.. I was banned there too good luck...

 

[flyknitjb]

You have to wonder how something this infectious escaped mankind of this long. I get there are new diseases out there but nothing gets out like this, especially in the modern world.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

Let's be real here. The Chinese most likely did create this **** in a lab and probably leaked. But they will never let it be known to the public outright or provide tangible evidence.

The US and its agents are implicated in the potential manufacturing of this virus as well as the cover up

 

[americangenius]

The US and its agents are implicated in the potential manufacturing of this virus as well as the cover up

People were called crazy on here for even entertaining the thought that this was possibly covered up.

 

[DCAllAfrican]

Let's be real here. The Chinese most likely did create this **** in a lab and probably leaked. But they will never let it be known to the public outright or provide tangible evidence.

Read the articles.

Most people saw this as plausible, we just needed a credible source to corroborate the claim.

I respectfully disagree. Like others have said, people that even entertained this idea were called nuts.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

About a year ago, more than 200 data entries from the genetic sequencing of early cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan disappeared from an online scientific database.

Now, by rooting through files stored on Google Cloud, a researcher in Seattle reports that he has recovered 13 of those original sequences — intriguing new information for discerning when and how the virus may have spilled over from a bat or another animal into humans.

The new analysis, released on Tuesday, bolsters earlier suggestions that a variety of coronaviruses may have been circulating in Wuhan before the initial outbreaks linked to animal and seafood markets in December 2019.

As the Biden administration investigates the contested origins of the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, the study neither strengthens nor discounts the hypothesis that the pathogen leaked out of a famous Wuhan lab. But it does raise questions about why original sequences were deleted, and suggests that there may be more revelations to recover from the far corners of the internet.

“This is a great piece of sleuth work for sure, and it significantly advances efforts to understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the study.

Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who wrote the new report, called the deletion of these sequences suspicious. It “seems likely that the sequences were deleted to obscure their existence,” he wrote in the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.

Scientist Finds Early Virus Sequences That Had Been Mysteriously Deleted (Published 2021)

By rooting through files stored on Google Cloud, a researcher says he recovered 13 early coronavirus sequences that had disappeared from a database last year.

www.nytimes.com

 

[getback]

we humans are savages. Its the norm to be evil.. It be the ones that are team extreme.. . Left or right

This seems like a bit of a stretch.

 

[mr jordan04]

How you gonna removed a communist regime from power????

And how we gonna get our new Nikes!?

 

[thenewjs23]

Wife and I spent all of December 2019 in South Africa traveling all over the country. We ran into a group of girls that worked for the CDC. CDC had called all OCONUS employees back to DC and Atlanta, due to something going on in China. They were working in East Africa, instead of going straight back they decided to take a couple days vacation. They also mention the Peace Corp folks being recalled as well.

THEY ALREADY KNOW HOW IT HAPPEN.

 

[sonoftony]

whether the Virus was lab created or not, The past administration knew about it all along. They had all the tools to protect their citizens but did nothing until cases were piling up cause they thought it was a flu.

 

[gry60]

I’m not surprised if it’s confirmed to be man made and purposely leaked.

Why would the Chinese government do that when they have an impending population crisis on their hands due to a national decrease in birth rates?

China’s population growth slowing in challenge to global ambitions

China has eased birth limits, but couples are put off by high costs, cramped housing and job discrimination faced by mothers.

www.nbcnews.com

A dwindling population could affect China's economic domination, disturb social structures and halt foreign policy goals to become a global superpower.

Nobody tests their own weapons on their population indiscriminately, especially when they rely on their population numbers to attain foreign policy goals. Even the US had the good sense to test nuclear weapons on military personnel, far away from the mainland.

Also, from the article:

As more US officials have come to see the lab leak theory as credible, their tone toward Beijing has also become firmer.

But

The person familiar with the probe said there will likely not be a definitive answer as to Covid's origins at the end of the 90-day review— instead, any final assessment will likely lay out both theories and evaluate their pros and cons. The source said the relationship with China is too delicate to make an endorsement of one theory over another without smoking gun evidence, which doesn't exist right now.

With the US withdrawing from Afghanistan and the Middle East and setting her sights on the Pacific, I see the announcement of the Biden administration to consider the lab leak theory as a way to put pressure.on Beijing.

Not saying it can't be the case that the virus did escape from a lab, but the State department isn't exactly above using a good story (or shifting public opinion) to gain geopolitical advantage over its main rival.

 

[wayniac211]

This seems like a bit of a stretch.

I wanna think that too… really do ..
Biological warfare may be the end of us..

 

[TURBO UNO]

Why would the Chinese government do that when they have an impending population crisis on their hands due to a national decrease in birth rates?

Nobody tests their own weapons on their population indiscriminately, especially when they rely on their population numbers to attain foreign policy goals. Even the US had the good sense to test nuclear weapons on military personnel, far away from the mainland.

With the US withdrawing from Afghanistan and the Middle East and setting her sights on the Pacific, I see the announcement of the Biden administration to consider the lab leak theory as a way to put pressure.on Beijing.

Not saying it can't be the case that the virus did escape from a lab, but the State department isn't exactly above using a good story (or shifting public opinion) to gain geopolitical advantage over its main rival.

I was under the impression that they had too many people, especially seniors who can’t contribute anymore. Government is cruel so I don’t put it past them.

 

[Majorbread]

The leak theory has seemed very reasonable to me since the beginning. Largely because of how China reacted; completely closing cities, blocking tunnels for travel etc etc. You could tell something wasn't right and they knew a lot more that we didn't. Actions spoke louder than words.

It's the main reason I want any part of getting it, even if I am healthy, vaccinated, etc I don't wanna chance it on some potentially altered virus.

Also felt like this is finally something that could bring the anti maskers and maskers together? wishful thinking probably

 

[blastercombo]

Wife and I spent all of December 2019 in South Africa traveling all over the country. We ran into a group of girls that worked for the CDC. CDC had called all OCONUS employees back to DC and Atlanta, due to something going on in China. They were working in East Africa, instead of going straight back they decided to take a couple days vacation. They also mention the Peace Corp folks being recalled as well.

THEY ALREADY KNOW HOW IT HAPPEN.

Trump already knew this was happening months before. He just chose to do nothing.

 

[HIM]

How do we decide when to believe government officials?

 

[gry60]

I was under the impression that they had too many people, especially seniors who can’t contribute anymore. Government is cruel so I don’t put it past them.

Their government may be cruel, but it's not self-destructive. If their military strength partly comes from the number of people they can throw in a conflict and if their economic strength partly comes from the number of people they can employ in factories, does it make sense to reduce those numbers?
In 2015, the CCP adopted a three-child policy to counter the long term effects of the one-child policy with very low approval (more of their women want a career instead of the stay-at-home lifestyle). How does it make sense to release a virus that can kill so many people (in absolute terms) in so little time when you're trying to grow your population? The intentional part of the lab leak hypothesis doesn't make sense to me.

We should also remember what the context was like at the onset of the pandemic: the loudest xenophobe with a Twitter account started to use the lab leak hypothesis to declare open season on Asians, so it made sense for global stability to shut that kind of talk down, especially when there was even less evidence publicly available than today.
It's one thing to use that kind of rhetoric against citizens of Central American countries whose governments can't do much against Western interests; it's another thing to do it to the people of the second most powerful nation in the world, which happens to be deeply relied on by many of the West's largest economic actors.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

The first news reports about a potential lab accident in Wuhan as the cause of the outbreak were speculative at best. The Daily Mail appears to have been the first major Western publication to suggest the virus had a human origin. In an online story published Jan. 23 of last year, just a few weeks after Chinese officials disclosed the existence of a mysterious illness, the Mail wrote that “scientists warned in 2017 that a SARS-like virus could escape a lab set up that year in Wuhan, China, to study some of the most dangerous pathogens in the world.” It presented no evidence of a new “escape.”

The story was followed three days later by one in the Washington Times, which added a new wrinkle — that the facility, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, may have conducted bioweapons research in conjunction with the Chinese military. Its story hinged on a quote from Dany Shoham, an Israeli bioweapons expert, who hinted vaguely that “certain laboratories” in the institute “have probably been engaged” in covert bioweapons research.

The stories energized widespread discussion of the lab-leak theory on social media, which quickly became meshed with theories about bioweapons research — a strain of speculation that scientists still strongly discount. Within days, Facebook began warning users about spreading “false or misleading” information about the virus’s origins.

But other mainstream media outlets tended at the time to side with the doubters — of whom there were many, including the World Health Organization and 27 scientists who wrote in the Lancet medical journal strongly condemning “conspiracy theories” about human involvement in the virus’s creation. (One of the organizers of the statement was later revealed to be the head of an American organization that has funded the Wuhan lab.)

NPR reported in April 2020 that there was “virtually no chance” that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory in China “or anywhere else.” Such an accidental release, it said, “would have required a remarkable series of coincidences and deviations from well-established experimental protocols.”

Other articles and headlines characterized the theory as “false” or “debunked.”

But many of those news organizations have begun to amend their approach in light of a shifting consensus.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/the-media-called-the-lab-leak-story-a-conspiracy-theory-now-its-prompted-corrections--and-serious-new-reporting/2021/06/10/c93972e6-c7b2-11eb-a11b-6c6191ccd599_story.html?outputType=amp

 

[DCAllAfrican]

How do we decide when to believe government officials?

Great question.

I guess we tend to believe them whenever what they are promoting lines up to what we want to be true?

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

whether the Virus was lab created or not, The past administration knew about it all along. They had all the tools to protect their citizens but did nothing until cases were piling up cause they thought it was a flu.

Does this mean the current administration is responsible for the present day surge in cases?

 

[DCAllAfrican]

I'm sure they all knew what was going on all along.

Past and Present Admin.

#ProWrestling

 

[blastercombo]

Does this mean the current administration is responsible for the present day surge in cases?

Lol what? One person lets the dog loose and leaves, the other person is in trouble for not catching all the dogs yet? How does that logic work?

let’s also take into account the surge is in people refusing to take the widely available and free vaccine simply out of spite.

I Will fault any administration for what they do wrong but this isn’t even up for debate