Probe censored DIA intelligence that Covid was likely from a lab | Hacker News Reader

Probe censored DIA intelligence that Covid was likely from a lab

skynews.com.au

37 pointsnvm0n210 comments

The article’s claims about the origin of COVID-19 being genetically engineered in a laboratory lack sufficient evidence and transparency, (relying on unnamed sources) to be considered credible.

Sky News in Australia is often compared to Fox News, and both have faced criticism regarding their “accuracy” on this topic.

wp:weasel-words.

Faced criticism by who? Would it be by the sort of people who insisted it could only have a natural origin? When comparing quality we should recall that the NY Times had a journalist investigating the possibility of a leak at the WIV. They fired and replaced him with someone who announced that the idea of a lab leak was "racist". It doesn't seem possible to journalism worse than that!

If true, why is in the interests of the US government to censor this info?

I think the argument is they were funding the research or atleast simalar research in Wuhan.

They = US ?

This is basically it, the NIAID under Dr. Fauchi pushed research money into CIA created front companies who then doled the money out to the Wuhan laboratory.

This research was at one time done in the US and deemed to dangerous, but because of the relentless pursuit of science it was passed off to a foreign facility.

Knowing that it’s a bad look to have helped create this virus and see it’s accidental spillover, the US is naturally hesitant to admit it’s involvement in wrecking the world for a couple of years.

The question I have is, what about the omicron variant; it had more mutations than time could possibly allow... my bet is it was released on purpose to act as a less deadly “vaccination”. There just so happens to be a US funded BSL facility in Africa too.

Great question, the US intelligence community is not in the business of covering for the CCP generally, it’s also worth pointing out that Sky News is the Fox News of Australia and the evidence they seem to be quoting seems to be leaving a lot to be desired.

Edit: I just saw who the author was on the story. She is a well known low quality source for what it’s worth and not thought of well amongst her peers.

> One of the scientists discovered that the size and location of a fragment of Covid-19 resembled the same fragment in Wuhan Institute of Virology research from more than a decade earlier, in 2008.

Can anyone with experience in that field weigh in how convincing that is if true.

Although I’ve had suspicions about the convenient timing of COVID putting an end to the Hong Kong democracy protests, I haven’t come across any compelling evidence to support this notion.

I’d advise taking the journalist’s words with caution, considering that her work (including her book) on the subject has faced criticism for lacking in details, presenting controversial scientific analysis, and omitting expert perspectives. This was pointed out in critiques of Markson’s thesis about the events in China.[1]

[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/09/sharri-markson...

I assume by "fragment" they mean "contig"[0]. This statement only has meaning if this particular contig is: a) found at WIV b) not found in the wild (to our knowledge, which we would expect to be incomplete) c) unlikely to have evolved in the wild from SARS-CoV-1 over the past 10 years.

My reading of this sentence indicates they're saying a), but they don't mention b) or c). A good biologist wouldn't bother mentioning this type of thing unless they had good evidence for b) and c), but the sources are uncited and there's no details here. So I really wouldn't take anything away from this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contig

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