Former CDC director believes virus came from lab in China. www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/03/26/sanjay-gupta-exclusive-robert-redfield-coronavirus-opinion-origin-sot-intv-newday-vpx.cnn
Tin foil hat time: SARS CoV 2 was a lab leak. The CIA has basically completely cracked Chinese ciphers but will do everything to keep this a secret like we did with the Crypto AG post WWII. The vaccine candidate was realized almost immediately after the virus showed up in Italy and after extensive testing the US rolled out Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Trump was left mostly in the dark but knew the vaccines would be potent so he foolishly undersold the severity of the pandemic to the public. Russia too had intelligence and was able to pump out Sputnik V months into the pandemic. No one wants to show their cards that China ****ed up because the intelligence operation is worth more than the accusation.
Didn't you notice how quickly public opinion changed in HK? Clearly, a special variant was deployed there.
On the Russia/Sputnik part here, I’m 100% convinced that Sputnik is just a stolen formula of Pfizer or Modernas vaccine. It was reported months into vaccine trials that Russia had been caught doing some pretty brazen hacks into both companies. I’m certain that’s what they wanted. To steal and take credit. What sort of blows the theory here is the fact that China didn’t hold the cards and have leverage with their own vaccine that would force the world to dump billions into their economy with a monopolized vaccine. Before they “launched” the virus they would have spent years developing a vaccine that only China could produce. So the theory that China launched the virus to me doesn’t make much sense given the circumstances. I don’t see a ton of benefit for anyone here. Everyone sort of lost.
The leak was on accident and was not initially known. American pharmaceuticals are still probably 10 years ahead of Chinese pharmaceuticals. We had the engineering know how to actually build a factory to mass produce an mRNA vaccine.
It's entirely plausible that it leaked out of the Wuhan lab which was already cited for security violations and they specifically study coronaviruses there. They also had personnel there that supposedly got sick in Sept/Oct with some type of pneumonia...not to mention it's right near the wet market they say it originated from. Why would we believe a single world from the CCP? They would be completely embarrassed and do everything in their power to change the narrative...
You don't have to believe anything the CCP says to say that it wasn't an engineered virus deliberately released by the CCP. It just takes basic logic.
He qualified his remark by saying that he has no evidence, kinda like Trump believing that he is a billionaire
Which is a plausible scenario. What I don’t see evidence of so far is any motive by the Chinese, the Democrats, and Dr Fauci which is the favorite theory among the GQP.
Man made in a lab or man made via horribly foolish conditions putting animal cages on top of each other. Or it happened in nature. People really seem to be declaring one way or another is the correct process when they have no evidence. It's well known many countries have bioweapons, and there have been accidents causing deaths. It's not Q level scenarios.
Yeah it’s tin foil hat stuff. But I also think at this point it does not matter. The virus is now everywhere and will probably be with us for the rest of our existence. But eventually it should become another endemic coronavirus kids get and we get afterwards with cold symptoms.
DNI updated assessment. Not biological weapon. China's official did not have foreknowledge. Not enough info to agree if it's genetically engineered or natural origin. Declassified-Assessment-on-COVID-19-Origins.pdf (dni.gov) Key Takeaways Scope Note: This assessment responds to the President’s request that the Intelligence Community (IC) update its previous judgments on the origins of COVID-19. It also identifies areas for possible additional research. Annexes include a lexicon, additional details on methodology, and comments from outside experts. This assessment is based on information through August 2021. The IC assesses that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, probably emerged and infected humans through an initial small-scale exposure that occurred no later than November 2019 with the first known cluster of COVID-19 cases arising in Wuhan, China in December 2019. In addition, the IC was able to reach broad agreement on several other key issues. We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way. Finally, the IC assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged. After examining all available intelligence reporting and other information, though, the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of COVID-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident. Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors. One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These analysts give weight to the inherently risky nature of work on coronaviruses. Analysts at three IC elements remain unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, with some analysts favoring natural origin, others a laboratory origin, and some seeing the hypotheses as equally likely. Variations in analytic views largely stem from differences in how agencies weigh intelligence reporting and scientific publications and intelligence and scientific gaps. The IC judges they will be unable to provide a more definitive explanation for the origin of COVID-19 unless new information allows them to determine the specific pathway for initial natural contact with an animal or to determine that a laboratory in Wuhan was handling SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor virus before COVID-19 emerged. The IC—and the global scientific community—lacks clinical samples or a complete understanding of epidemiological data from the earliest COVID-19 cases. If we obtain information on the earliest cases that identified a location of interest or occupational exposure, it may alter our evaluation of hypotheses.
That's always possible. No one has found the "missing link" on its origins. China ain't the most open state to conclusively pinpoint anything, and their mentality is that any origin will make them lose face so why bother with broadcasting "the truth"...
More evidence that the virus came from the Wuhan market rather than the Virology Institute. There are pics at the links showing the animals in question. To note this doesn't completely rule out a lab leak theory or does it exonerate the PRC for their very poor handling of the virus early on. Striking new evidence points to Wuhan seafood market as the pandemic's origin point March 3, 20224:34 PM ET Was it a few raccoon dogs, inside a metal cage and stacked on top of a chicken coop? Or perhaps a lone red fox, curled up in the corner of its cage. Could one of these wild animals have triggered the entire COVID-19 pandemic late in 2019? Over the weekend, an international team of scientists published two extensive papers online, offering the strongest evidence to date that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in animals at a market in Wuhan, China. Specifically, they conclude that the coronavirus most likely jumped from a caged wild animal into people at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where a huge COVID-19 outbreak began in December 2019. Scientists who weren't involved in the research papers are calling the new data "very convincing" and a "blow" to the lab-leak theory — that the virus somehow escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which does research on coronaviruses. In reaction to the papers, they say the newly published data is tipping the scales toward wildlife sold at the market. "The studies don't exclude other hypotheses entirely," says virologist Jeremy Kamil, who's at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport and was not involved in this research. "But they absolutely are pushing it toward an animal origin." Neither of the papers provides the smoking gun — that is, an animal infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus at a market. But they come close. They provide photographic evidence of wild animals, which can be infected with and shed SARS-CoV-2, sitting in the market in late 2019 — such as raccoon dogs and a red fox. What's more, the caged animals are shown in or near a stall where scientists found SARS-CoV-2 virus on a number of surfaces, including on cages, carts and machines that process animals after they are slaughtered at the market. The papers are preliminary. They still need to be reviewed by outside scientists. But if the analyses turn out to be accurate, the new data paints an incredibly detailed picture of the early days of the pandemic. Photographic and genetic data pinpoint a specific stall at the market where the coronavirus likely was transmitted from an animal into people. And a new genetic analysis estimates the time, within weeks, when not just one but two spillovers occurred. It predicts the coronavirus jumped into people once in late November or early December and then again few weeks later. So now, for the first time, the timing of the earliest known coronavirus infections coincides almost exactly with the timing of the outbreak at the seafood market, which began in early December and likely involved hundreds of people working or shopping at the market. That outbreak also spilled over into the surrounding community, as one of the new studies shows. At the same time, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention found two variants of the coronavirus inside the market. And an independent study, led by virologists at the University of California, San Diego, suggests these two variants didn't evolve in people, because throughout the entire pandemic, scientists have never detected a variant linking the two together. Altogether, the new studies suggest that, most likely, the two variants evolved inside animals. Evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey helped lead two of the studies and has been at the forefront of the search for the origins of the pandemic. He has spent his career tracking down the origins of pandemics, including the origin of HIV and the 1918 flu. Back in May, Worobey signed a letter calling for an investigation into the lab-leak theory. But then, through his own investigation, he quickly found data supporting an animal origin. This week, NPR spoke to Worobey, who's at the University of Arizona, to understand what the data in these new studies tells us about the origin of SARS-CoV-2; how, he believes, the data may shift the debate about the lab-leak theory; and the significance of photos taken five years before the pandemic. Here are key points from the conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length. Live animals that are susceptible to COVID-19 were in the market in December 2019 It's clear-cut these wild, live animals, including raccoon dogs and red foxes, were in the market. We have photographic evidence from December 2019. A concerned customer evidently took these photos and videos of the market on Dec. 3 and posted them on Weibo [because it was illegal to sell certain live animals]. The photos were promptly scrubbed. But a CNN reporter had communicated directly with the person who took the photos. I was able to get in touch with this reporter, and they passed on those photos from the source. So we don't completely verify the photos. Live susceptible animals were held in a stall where SARS-CoV-2 was later detected on a machine that processed animals in the market We analyzed a leaked report from the Chinese CDC detailing the results of this environmental sampling. Virtually all of the findings in the report matched what was in the World Health Organization's report. But there was some extra information in the leaked report. For example, there was information not just on which stalls had virus in them — or had samples positive for SARS-CoV-2 — but also how many samples in a given stall yielded positive results. We found out that one stall actually had five positive samples — five surfaces in that stall had virus on them. And even better, in that particular stall, the samples were very animal-y. For example, scientists found virus on a feather/hair remover, a cart of the sort that we see in photographs that are used for transporting cages and, best of all, a metal cage in a back room. So now we know that when the national public health authorities shut down the market and then sampled the surfaces there, one of the surfaces positive for SARS-CoV-2 was a metal cage in a back room. What's even weirder — it turns out that one of the co-authors of the study, Eddie Holmes, had been taken to the Huanan market several years before the pandemic and shown raccoon dogs in one of the stalls. He was told, "This is the kind of place that has the ingredients for cross-species transmission of dangerous pathogens." So he clicks photos of the raccoon dogs. In one photo, the raccoon dogs are in a cage stacked on top of a cage with some birds in it. And at the end of our sleuth work, we checked the GPS coordinates on his camera, and we find that he took the photo at the same stall, where five samples tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. So we connected all sorts of bizarre kinds of data. Together the d
