U.S. spy agencies say origins of Covid-19 may never be known
reuters.com
reuters.com
Second we need to focus on how we will prevent the next pandemic irregardless if it comes from a lab or animal to human transmission. Most important is to contain it and provide the tools for the global community to respond such as gen sequencing and money for the affected area. If a state would receive funds and there was a very clear strategy they would be less likely to hide such an outbreak.
The biggest issue I see it how do we get something like this setup without there being issues like we see with the WHO. The US managed to turn any trust this organization had into the trash (although the US had the biggest influence in it) letting the countries that always had doubts about it get their confirmation.
(edited because I forgot about New START)
The problems tackled by WHO are mostly cooperative, while the ones tackled by the IAEA are mainly competitive. It's easier to get consensus on subjects where everyone stands to benefit than in subjects where everyone is looking to take power away from you.
Uhh, it matters a lot.
an important part of effective oversight programs is accountability .. which requires knowing if the virus was fucking man-made.
Also the WHO lost any credibility it still had when it started bending over for China.
The international rules you want to set against (eg) gain-of-function research, or rules on moving research abroad to bypass local ethics requirements can be created without knowing what caused SARS-CoV-2.
I don't see any benefit to society trying to punish people for it. It's a colossal waste of focus. Just stop it happening next time.
What do you propose we do if we catch someone not following the rules?
Because China seems fairly happy continuing as if there were no crime. If you want to take it further than that, you're going to unravel decades of every country on the planet shipping their manufacturing off to China, because while they make everything we need, sanctions just hurt us. There's rarely a second hub we can use to provide those goods.
If you want this to be illegal in China in the future, you might have more luck. Getting the people who provide money for this sort of work (which is much more international) to adhere to ethics rules wouldn't be a bad thing.
But while we're still in this, talking about hunting down exactly where this leaked from so we can make an example of somebody, seems both unrealistic and ineffective. Wear a mask, get your jabs. Focus on what's important in your life.
you may think you're being a realist, but really it just sounds like you're giving up because it's easier
I've told you what's actually possible in any measurable way to make the future safer, and that largely involves limiting how people spend their money on research. Long term diversification of manufacturing wouldn't be a silly idea either, for many reasons.
But if you can see a way to actually achieve what you want, please share it. Your little quips only amount to pathetic sabre rattling, wasting everybody's time and most importantly, distracting people from what we all need to do to get through this.
also i don't think i was being dismissive, i correctly characterized your argument.
if you believe that accountability is neither possible nor effective (in this case? in all cases?) then there's really nothing to argue. I can't change the mind of someone that doesnt want to have their mind changed.
i do think think your comment about improved reporting and scrutiny over funding is interesting. because we are still funding the wuhan lab. and we did have reports of gain of function from EcoHealth Alliance back in 2018 that the NIH is denying.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-r...
who watches the watchers? at the end of the day, accountability is an unavoidable solution if we want to have any hope of a fair and just system.
or, we can be fatalist-deafetists that think such a system is impossible and we just have to accept whatever disasters happen to us.
Who watches the watchers? Thanks for joining me on the same page.
I'm not fatalist —I think things can be improved, and have said how— I just don't think there's anything to gain from demanding the revenge you seem to think you're owed.
https://financialpost.com/diane-francis/diane-francis-canadi...
That is enough to say that it will probably happen again in our lifetime from an actual lab leak. We have the technology, the world is large, there are a lot of foolish researchers in it. We need to be more prepared to curtail or cease international travel.
Or would the US and its allies release a virus it knowingly funded (for plausible deniability) in a state it constantly calls its 'greatest adversary & threat' during the 2019 war games?
One of these seems more likely than the other to an objective observer since this isn't the first time the US and its allies have engaged in chemical & bio-warfare against the Chinese.
The foreign aircraft carriers and war ships surrounding the Chinese coast are perhaps yet another clue...
Yes it can. Labs specifically study, and propagate, mutations. A lab can do in years what might take nature decades. If it did originate from a lab, we very likely would never find a close enough progenitor in nature to know where things started (what strain the lab started with).
There is a probabilistic aspect to this though. If we happen to find the exact wild virus population Cov-19 originated from (whether it then mutated naturally or in a lab) then I think we'll nail it. On the other hand if we just find an adjacent population that diverged from the actual Cov-19 source some time ago it could be harder to pin down the route.
It's not a recipe to create virus in a lab. It's a recipe to manufacture copies of the virus in a lab.
Just because China refuses to cooperate (as stated by the article), does not mean that trying to find a natural cause is the only way to resolve the issue.
It's a bit misleading as well as the vast majority of the agencies mentioned in the article do not believe in a natural origin.
>The ODNI report said four U.S. spy agencies and a multi-agency body have "low confidence" that COVID-19 originated with an infected animal or a related virus.
Unless the virus was literally constructed using base chemicals from the ground up entirely artificially, something that as far as we know has never been done and the technology for which doesn't yet plausibly exist, the virus must have a natural progenitor from which it either evolved, was bred or was engineered. That does not exclude the possibility that the virus was engineered from a progenitor virus in a lab and is "artificial" in that sense.
So yes you are technically correct (which of course is the best correct), but could you be more clear what you mean by natural, and what alternatives you think are being excluded?
And if you think that genome synthesis is not possible, look up "DNA printer". But i don't think that's what you mean.
Natural = produced by nature
We know for a fact that coronaviruses were being engineered in unsafe BSL2 lab conditions literally blocks away from the epicenter of the outbreak.
With China's refusal to cooperate, they are asking you to believe that this is all merely coincidence.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-...
If we can find that original natural source strain of virus, we should be able to compare it to Cov-19 and determine the likely path of development. This has been done many times before for other viruses, such as SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, etc.
Of course the viruses have a natural origin, where do you think the original samples come from?
I don't know where you are interpreting your stance from, and I am sorry if I am being unclear, english is not my first language.. but just because viruses are being engineered in a lab does not mean they build them molecule by molecule, but they do transfer genes between existing viruses.
BTW, there are few other labs, which are candidates for forensic analysis: Vector BSL4 lab in Novosibirsk, RF, which had major incident right before epidemic, and maybe other labs should be checked too, because China and US have different strains of SARS CoV2 with common ancestor outside of both countries.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-tim...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-italy-...
[3] there has been dispute about this, as well: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dispute-over-italian-co...
P.S.: Mind that the allegations are not about a loose probability, but about a very specific scenario, involving the lab and the outbreak at the wet market at a certain date.
And if the Chinese government did allow such an investigation, and it found China innocent? How many of those currently inclined to hate or blame China would believe it? Not getting into such a "heads we lose, tails they win" mess seems perfectly rational.
But in any case, yes, there are plenty of institutions in the West that would make such a cover up near impossible. The exception might be if the events happened within a military institution -- and even then, in the US or Europe, there would be calls for inquiries.
Of course if you're part of the "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" or "the CIA killed JFK" crowds, that won't convince you of anything. Reasonable people will however recognize that covering up such events under such scrutiny is a risky move, and as such unlikely to stand for long. The calls for more investigation would never stop, just consider how riled up antivaxxers are for no good reason; do you really think there would npt be a much larger number of citizens up in arms and furious if there was any hint of such a cover up in their country?
True, and I was obnoxiously snarky. But for something so high-profile and emotionally charged, the loss of face, loss of control, and other big downsides (for those in power) kick in as soon as a nation even pretends to allow a serious international investigation.
I will not argue that a cover-up in most Western countries would have nearly the prospects of success that one would in China (also not asserting that China is doing any meaningful cover-up on this). I will argue that those in power would (per Churchill) probably do the right thing only after exhausting every possible alternative. Note that most Western countries have had their citizens "up in arms and furious" for a good while now, over the endless screw-ups handling COVID. Sadly, that has neither ejected many politicians from office, nor caused a mass outbreak of government honesty or competence.
(Personal aside on the "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" crowd - both of my grandfathers were country blacksmiths. That profession is only possible because iron and steel get soft enough to work with simple hand tools at temperatures far, far below their melting points.)
[Edit - add the obvious missing carriage return after quoting parent.]
The US would? Really?
How about a less controversial 'check', maybe let someone pop into fort knox and check if what they say is there is really there.
And its China that is getting away with it right?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false" -- CIA director William Colby
Something tells me that a different source of information should be sought...