Author: Unknown
Published on: 26/01/2025 | 00:00:00

AI Summary:
The CIA believes the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory. It points the finger at China, even while acknowledging that the spy agency has “low confidence” in its own conclusion. The nuanced finding suggests the agency believes the totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely than a natural origin. In fact, intelligence officials say it may never be resolved. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman praises Ratcliffe for declassifying the assessment. China’s U.S. Embassy says the CIA report has no credibility. Scientists think the most likely hypothesis is that it circulated in bats.

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  • SplashJacksonEnglish
    510·
    4 days ago

    Here and we were all told during the pandemic that it was caused by a guy with a fetish for bat soup, purchased from a farmer’s market that just happened to be next door to a major biotech laboratory specializing in study of coronavirii

    • Laser@feddit.orgEnglish
      61·
      4 days ago

      It points the finger at China, even while acknowledging that the spy agency has “low confidence” in its own conclusion.

      Translation for “low confidence”: here, we explore a scenario where we can’t rule out that it happened, but other options are more likely.

      CIA will most likely not create a report like this on a natural outbreak because that is rather the field of CDC and WHO.

    • AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.worldEnglish
      32·
      4 days ago

      The WIV was actually like 40 minutes away, the Chinese CDC was next to the Huanan market. It’s super funny, cause the CCDC is extremely shitty with all the information they gathered at the wet market as well.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanan_Seafood_Wholesale_Market

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57268111

      Better article from the BBC. We have no new information, anything we have from Huanan just as likely points to a superspreader event as a natural origin. China isn’t super interested in providing additional data to be looked at by western scientists.

      Unless they find the viral reservoir, there’s no confirmation on a natural origin, just like without them finding research or data from the WIV pointing to them working on a virus similar enough to C19 that it’s a smoking gun, the world has neither.

      We may be another decade from the discovery of a viral reservoir, but I doubt we’ll ever get the data of what they were working on in the WIV pre closure of data sharing.

      • SplashJacksonEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        What’s a superspreader event in the context of a natural origin?

        • AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          The wet market was a superspreader event either way. But the difference between natural origin and WIV accidental release (anything other than an accidental release has less than no evidence and is stupid to conjecture about IMO), is how the virus got to the market.

          We know animals in the market had the virus, we have samples based on stall location. But there isn’t enough evidence from animal tissue or blood samples to say more than that.

          That it condensed and spread from the market doesn’t really seem to be in question. There’s no way with current evidence to say much more. The world would need to locate the viral reservoir, or the world would need additional information from the WIV and CCDC that we won’t get.