Dr Fauci trusted China's data and concluded COVID is just a more serious flu back in Feb 28

C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins
A new analysis that began under the Biden administration is released by the C.I.A.’s new director, John Ratcliffe, who wants the agency to get “off the sidelines” in the debate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/politics/cia-covid-lab-leak.html

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They know that by looking at the DNA sequence.

 

FIFY

 

to paraphrase Craig Ackerman . . .

Your CIA!! OUR CIA!!! AMERICA'S CIA!!!

 

It's just funny that this is what the new CIA director is focused on - changing the narrative on COVID to give political fodder versus actually addressing threats.

 

c'mon big guy, tip off is in three minutes. Take the night off from politics and join us in the game thread. There. Will. Be. Memes.

 

Big win - you guys still use the game thread?

 

you bet

 

I figured everyone had migrated over to the channel on playback.

 

I find that format annoying. Too small on the computer, people talking nonsense over the broadcast, comments flying by at the speed of light never to be seen again . . . while the GARM is forever.

 

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/26/covid/

21 minutes ago
“No Consistent Patterns:” Scientists Find No Evidence that Closing Schools Materially Reduced Transmission
by jonathanturley
January 26, 2025

For years, scientists and commentators who questioned COVID policies were censored, blacklisted, and canceled across the country. Many of these dissenting views have since been vindicated from the lab origins theory to the lack of efficacy of surgical masks to the opposition to the closure of schools. Now, a new study in the Journal of Infection further undermines the once orthodox views of the pandemic, concluding that “reopening schools did not change the existing trajectory of COVID-19 rates.” In other words, we shut down our schools, travel, and businesses without any substantial benefit to the country. We did, however, succeed in reducing free speech in the name of combating “disinformation.”

The report is based on one of the comprehensive studies to date on the pandemic:

“Data were extracted from government websites. Cases and COVID-19 hospitalization and death incidence rates were calculated during the Delta and early Omicron periods in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom, for two weeks preceding and six weeks after schools reopened. We summarized stringency of public health measures (GRI), COVID-19 vaccination rates by age and SARS-CoV-2 testing rates.”​

In comparing these different countries, the scientists found no significant differences in reported cases: “No consistent patterns in cases, hospitalizations or deaths despite school re-openings or changes to public health measures,”

The suppression of the lab theory and the targeting of dissenting scientists show the true cost of censorship and viewpoint intolerance.

The very figures claiming to battle “disinformation” were suppressing opposing views that have now been vindicated as credible. It was not only the lab theory. In my recent book, I discuss how signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration were fired or disciplined by their schools or associations for questioning COVID-19 policies.

Some experts questioned the efficacy of surgical masks, the scientific support for the six-foot rule and the necessity of shutting down schools. The government has now admitted that many of these objections were valid and that it did not have hard science to support some of the policies. While other allies in the West did not shut down their schools, we never had any substantive debate due to the efforts of this alliance of academic, media and government figures.

Not only did millions die from the pandemic, but the United States is still struggling with the educational and mental health consequences of shutting down all our public schools. That is the true cost of censorship when the government works with the media to stifle scientific debate and public disclosures.

Many still hope that Congress and the incoming Trump administration will conduct a long-needed investigation into the origins to allow for a more credible and open debate. That hope was increased by the nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the organizers of the Great Barrington Declaration, to be the next head of the National Institutes of Health.

One of the most lasting costs was born by our children who have shown both educational and psychological harm from the shutting down of schools. The study confirms what dissenters said all along: there is no evidence that this was necessary or had any benefit to society:

“Our findings show that there were no consistent patterns to case, hospitalisation or death rates in each country or jurisdiction, irrespective of whether schools were open for onsite learning or changes to PHSM. School closures were adopted by many countries as part of a suite of PHSM but in the future should only be implemented where there is strong evidence of effectiveness. Predesigned and approved study protocols, along with scenario-based planning for schools are needed to prepare for the next pandemic. The negative consequences on child health and development are profound, so understanding the role of schools in SARS-CoV-2 transmission should be a priority for pandemic preparedness and response.”​

In my recent book, I explore the suppression of dissenting voices in higher education as the true cost of censorship. The media joined the government, corporations, and academia in labeling these experts as extremists, conspiracy theorists or, in the case of the lab theory, racists. As a result, we never had a robust debate that might have curtailed the massive costs from the pandemic policies.It now turns out that it may have been these censorship advocates who were spreading disinformation in the name of combating disinformation.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”


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Oldtimer

 

exactly. I'm practically a 99er

 

I was always more a fan of the game chat that R2K ran back in the Yao/T-Mac days. That was a lot of fun. I enjoy the commentary from actual fans - Ryan Hollins is awful. Dave knows a lot but he's not a fan of Sengun so I guess that turns a lot of people away.

 

@Salvy
@Os Trigonum
lol all the dumb wokes here believed it came from anywhere but China

 

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-cia...na-health-875d73ee?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s

The CIA Wakes Up About Covid’s Origin
New director Ratcliffe releases a judgment Biden had kept secret.
By The Editorial Board
Jan. 26, 2025 at 4:15 pm ET

It took five years, but the Central Intelligence Agency has finally come around to thinking the likeliest source of the Covid-19 virus was a lab in Wuhan, China. That was the news this weekend after new CIA director John Ratcliffe released an agency assessment that the Biden Administration had declined to make public.

“I had the opportunity on my first day to make public an assessment that actually took place in the Biden Administration. So it can’t be accused of being political,” Mr. Ratcliffe told Fox News. He said the CIA “has assessed that the most likely cause of this pandemic that has wrought so much devastation around the world was because of a lab-related incident in Wuhan. And so we will continue to investigate that moving forward.’’

The agency has “low confidence” in its judgment, but that’s still a switch from its previous belief that Covid likely had natural causes. The Wuhan Institute of Virology origin was always the Occam’s razor explanation given that the virus first appeared in, well, Wuhan.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation had long ago judged the lab to be the likeliest source. Other investigators, notably journalist Matt Ridley, have painstakingly marshaled the evidence and come to a similar conclusion.

This is also continuing vindication for the likes of Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who raised the lab possibility in these pages early in 2020. The U.S. intelligence and healthcare bureaucracies resisted that conclusion, perhaps in part because U.S. grants may have financed the “gain of function” research that allowed the virus to jump to human hosts.

One benefit of the recent change in U.S. government control is that Trump officials, such as Mr. Ratcliffe, may be able to restore public trust by being more transparent about controversial intelligence findings or facts that the Biden Administration wanted to stay secret.

The CIA switcheroo shouldn’t dictate President Trump’s China policy, but it does give Americans one more reason not to rely on Chinese assurances about anything the U.S. can’t persuasively prove itself.

Appeared in the January 27, 2025, print edition as 'The CIA Wakes Up About Covid’s Origin'.



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The CIA Report: Why a Low Confidence Finding is the Height of Hypocrisy
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/...nfidence-findings-is-the-height-of-hypocrisy/

 

Continues to conflate “lab leak” with the virus being “man-made”.

 

The lab leak theory promoted in the beginning wasn't the same as we know it today. Trump was claiming the Chinese created a bio weapon and deliberately leaked it while knowing it would target westerners. It was a reflexively racist and inflammatory claim that many magats still believe in today.

It took a good half a year to uncover a general understanding of what was going on in that lab though most of the fact finding came from independent online researchers (leakers?) than the media.

It was fair game for the press to question Trump's claim, but just like the Hunter Biden revenge-p*rn laptop story, they overreached in their expertise and credibility by dismissing everything related to lab leak as a Trump exaggeration or tin foil conspiracy theory.

The response by the Establishment Left was a bit like a 70s spy movie or the X-Files that hid under a deliberately false conspiracy theory to deliver some hidden agenda.

Getting a group of expert signatures to seal a credibility deal has mostly been ill fated and should be reexamined as a lesson into looking deeper into half truths without silencing discussion. They were unequivocal in claiming it wasn't a lab leak while using the media to work the Trump conspiracy theory angle. We still don't fully understand their motivations (Wuhan ties) and that only focuses more attention on long lasting Fauci allegations

With Trump flooding the zone again and with zero trust in establishment media providing clear and unfiltered information (whether it's people can't handle the truth or assuming they are too stupid to understand The Science), knowing original context and narrative shifts is getting even more difficult when these topics are the last priority in our day to days.