FBI Director Says Covid Pandemic Likely Caused by Chinese Lab Leak

"Leaked from a lab" and "created in a lab" are different issues.

The intelligence community certainly knows things virologists don't, and vice versa.

Also, it does not necessarily have to be "engineered" to have been released. Both statements could be somewhat true.

Not that I buy either explanation yet. I have kind of accepted we will never definitively know COVID-19's source, and (though I understand the need to protect clandestine information) these announcements without evidence are not changing that sentiment.

Very good show, Dr. Daniel Griffin is my source for any covid information.

Yes, we don't know how to do this, nor does anyone. There's only a few hundred virologists in this tier and they all know each other and what their labs can do.

If anyone ever does claim it's man made I ask them why, if it is man made, does it have synonymous mutations?

The few times it happened (early in the pandemic), not one of them knew what a synonymous mutation was.

I don't see the FBI director mention that Sars-Cov2 was engineered anywhere. He said "probably the result of a laboratory leak".

If someone runs a lab, and they have Ebola or other virus in their fridges, and it leaks due to poor handling practice, that doesn't mean Ebola was engineered...

So it's possible to agree with both the opinions of the virologists-podcasters AND of the director of the FBI, isn't it?

personally, I don't believe them.

let me ask you, would it be fair to say that the virologists who are most knowledgeable about engineering virii come by this knowledge by conducting such experiments themselves?

wasn't there discussion in Fauci's emails of suspicions that this virus was engineered? and discussions of the value of such gain of function research? isn't there room for disagreement among experts as to the efficacy of such experimental paths weighed against our ability to keep them safely in the lab?

do researchers often find their work and careers stymied by process of getting funding?

would funding for these avid gene splicers possibly be put in jeopardy were politicians and the public to become scared of the experiments they do? didn't the discussion in Fauci's emails reflect that the govt had restricted such experiments?

Wouldn't that give them a bias in favor of downplaying such a possibility? Would a person be wrong for suspecting a massive bias?

It is a chimeric variant of SARS.

Nowhere in the article says it was engineered.

Laboratories study what's already available in animals...

>>> "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident,"

That's the actual quote from the FBI.

News article from 2021:

>>>FRANCE warned that the Wuhan lab linked to the Covid outbreak could be turned into a "biological arsenal" by the Chinese military four years before the pandemic, it is reported.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15729081/france-warned-wuhan-l...

you POV does match this possible (hypothetical) scenario:

while the US might have suspected the virus might have been developed and escaped from a chinese lab, it was considered in the US interest to suppress such an idea and focus on world cooperation in tamping down the pandemic. But now, with the pandemic seemingly over, and shifting geopolitics, it might now be considered OK to let the truth come out despite how angry it will make the chinese government.

After the balloon incident, and the US government cracking down on tiktok we now have a coordinated drop of lab leak articles in the press, with no new evidence presented at all. We know historically that the US government engages in propaganda, including the 2002 NIE that led to war with Iraq and the yellowcake/joseph wilson affair. But in real time we're always completely blind to the US government using propaganda and distorting intelligence. And I've heard "they know things we don't" used before to get people to uncritically accept falsehoods from US intelligence.