Covid Likely Originated From Lab Leak

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Covid Likely Originated From Lab Leak, Energy Department Reportedly Finds—But Biden Aide Says There’s No ‘Definitive Answer’
Marisa Dellatto
Forbes Staff
I cover breaking news, arts and entertainment.

Topline

The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic was most likely caused by a laboratory leak, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, though National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said there is “not a definitive answer." on the virus’ genesis.

The Energy Department’s new conclusions are found in an updated classified report from the office of Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, which was recently provided to the White House and some members of Congress, according to the Journal.

The Energy Department, which oversees many U.S. laboratories, came to its conclusion based on new intelligence, but deemed its level of confidence in its judgment as “low,” people who read the report told the Journal.

The FBI also determined in 2021 with “moderate confidence” the virus came from a lab leak, but the agency came to its conclusion for different reasons than the Energy Department, U.S. officials told the Journal.

Other federal agencies disagree: Four agencies have reportedly determined with “low confidence” the virus was transmitted naturally through animals, and two others, including the CIA, remain undecided between the two origin theories.

The Energy Department told Forbes it “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed,” but would not comment on specifics to the Journal.

US Energy Department assesses Covid-19 likely resulted from lab leak
CNN
14.8M subscribers
60,104 views Feb 27, 2023 #cnn #cnnnewsroom #wuhan
The US Department of Energy has assessed that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely came from a laboratory leak in China, according to a newly updated classified intelligence report.
Two sources said that the Department of Energy assessed in the intelligence report that it had “low confidence” the Covid-19 virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan.
Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence. A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion.
The latest assessment further adds to the divide in the US government over whether the Covid-19 pandemic began in China in 2019 as the result of a lab leak or whether it emerged naturally. The various intelligence agencies have been split on the matter for years. In 2021, the intelligence community declassified a report that showed four agencies in the intelligence community had assessed with low confidence that the virus likely jumped from animals to humans naturally in the wild, while one assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident.
Three other intelligence community elements were unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, the report said.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the new assessment from the Department of Energy. A senior US intelligence official told the Journal that the update to the intelligence assessment was conducted in light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature and in consultation with experts outside government.
A Department of Energy spokesperson told CNN in a statement: “The Department of Energy continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed.”

I don't think we'll ever really know. Hard to say.

Key quote from the article quotes: "but deemed its level of confidence in its judgment as “low,” people who read the report told the Journal."

FBI Director Christopher Wray declares COVID-19 ‘most likely’ came from Chinese government-controlled lab in clearest statement on origins of virus

The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has given his clearest assessment yet that COVID-19 “most likely” came from a lab leak in Wuhan.
Tyrone Clarke

March 1, 2023

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray has spoken out for the first time on the agency's ongoing investigation into the origins of COVID-19, telling Fox News the deadly virus “most likely” came from a lab in Wuhan.

Mr Wray’s revelations came alongside a scathing rebuke of China’s controversial handling of the initial stages of the pandemic and the subsequent international inquiry.

He said the Bureau believed the lab-leak theory, rather than the widely circulated natural zoonotic jump to humans, was most likely cause of the virus which has so far killed more than 6.8 million people around the world.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Mr Wray told Fox News’ Brett Baier on Wednesday.

"Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab."

Are we going to hear an apology from the CCP?
"In your dreams."

But we can all have our own considered opinions.
I have mine, and they are "rusted on" to reason/rationality/objectivity rather than political maneuvering.

As noted by a conservative scientist on a recent podcast I listen to, the situation has always been tainted by politics, which has made it difficult to have an honest discussion. This scientist was very clear that we do not know the answer of how the virus came into the population (although he strongly believes it was nature, btw), and worried that the focus on a potential lab leak drew focus away from the fact that scientists in the field have seen signs indicating we are likely to face ANOTHER pandemic in the next five years as viruses continue to jump from animal to human populations in the same general region COVID-19 came from. THAT is what we need to worry about, in his opinion, and a major reason experts were downplaying the possibility of a lab leak from the start, before politics got involved. While scientists most definitely want to know the exact origin of every virus, this obsession with a lab leak is putting a huge barrier in the way of being prepared for the NEXT new virus they are anticipating.

We aren't out of danger for new viruses even if this one did turn out to come from a lab leak. That is the message we need to understand. China MUST get rid of its wet markets to reduce risk.

Dr Li Meng Yan told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight in September 2020 that the Chinese government intentionally manufactured and released the Covid-19 virus, leading to shutdowns and deaths.

But on Monday, Fox host Tucker Carlson asked Dr Yan if she still believed the virus was intentionally released, nearly three years after the pandemic started, and she doubled down on the allegation.

“Of course, it was not an accident,” she responded.

“Maybe for people who don’t have this kind of biosafety lab three or four [years] experience on coronavirus, maybe it’s easy for them to accept the accident lab leak.

“However, I’m a scientist, working in a research lab using coronavirus. And I can tell you, based on the print protocol and also the other surveillance system, it would be impossible for the lab leak to accidentally happen in such a lab and cause the Wuhan outbreak and also the pandemic.

“So definitely now we just reached the first step. It was from China’s lab, and we need to pursue the truth of origin, and we need to keep going on.”

Dr Yan described the US report as a “milestone achievement”, and said based on the evidence she has seen and the source she has spoken to, the virus was “intentionally brought out of this strict lab and released in the community”.

“However, I don’t think the outbreak in Wuhan was intentional.

“I would say it was because the CCP government and the military scientists underestimated the transmissibility,” she added.

“That’s why finally it got out of control and the cost was a local outbreak.

“However, we should know that the CCP government intentionally let it go all over the world to kill millions of people all over the world later.”

Dr Yan was a respected doctor who specialised in virology and immunology at the Hong Kong School of Public Health before fleeing in April 2020 after she began looking into the growing number of cases coming out of mainland China that involved human-to-human transmission.

She said she reported her findings to her supervisor on January 16, 2020, but that’s when he allegedly told her “to keep silent, and be careful”.

“As he warned me before, ‘Don’t touch the red line’,” Dr Yan said, referring to the government.

“We will get in trouble, and we’ll be disappeared.”

“It was not accidental to begin with. I was working in a Biosafety-3 lab in Hong Kong University with coronaviruses. It is a strict environment. Protocol and surveillance systems, even in the Wuhan Lab, don’t make it possible for such a leak to happen by accident,” she said, speaking exclusively to CNN-News18 as her “lab” theory continues to get more support.

She maintains the virus was developed as an “unrestricted bioweapon”.

“According to the People’s Liberation Army’s text book written by their General of bio-weapons, if you want the best weapon, if you want to optimize it, the best way is to do the trial in the same environment as your enemy’s. That means the human’s living area,” she says, when asked why China would purposefully release a virus.

As noted by a conservative scientist on a recent podcast I listen to, the situation has always been tainted by politics, which has made it difficult to have an honest discussion. This scientist was very clear that we do not know the answer of how the virus came into the population (although he strongly believes it was nature, btw), and worried that the focus on a potential lab leak drew focus away from the fact that scientists in the field have seen signs indicating we are likely to face ANOTHER pandemic in the next five years as viruses continue to jump from animal to human populations in the same general region COVID-19 came from. THAT is what we need to worry about, in his opinion, and a major reason experts were downplaying the possibility of a lab leak from the start, before politics got involved. While scientists most definitely want to know the exact origin of every virus, this obsession with a lab leak is putting a huge barrier in the way of being prepared for the NEXT new virus they are anticipating.

We aren't out of danger for new viruses even if this one did turn out to come from a lab leak. That is the message we need to understand. China MUST get rid of its wet markets to reduce risk.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: What Really Happened in Wuhan
Sky News Australia
3.12M subscribers
13,259,177 views Premiered Sep 28, 2021
Get Sharri Markson’s book ‘What Really Happened in Wuhan’ here: https://linktr.ee/WhatReallyHappenedI...

This Sky News Australia special investigation into the origins of COVID-19 reveals what really happened in Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic.

Award-winning journalist Sharri Markson spent more than a year investigating the potential leak of the virus from a top-secret laboratory in Wuhan.

Ms Markson uncovered evidence of a widespread cover-up and unpacks the new theory that “patient zero” worked in the Wuhan lab.

Sky News Australia anchor and Investigations Writer at The Australian, Sharri has been at the forefront of investigating the origins of COVID-19 since early in 2020 when the virus spread globally. Since that time, the precise genesis of COVID-19 has been hotly contested, with scientists, government officials, the World Health Organization, and the Chinese authorities releasing conflicting reports.

In a coup for Australian television, Sharri secures the first sit-down interview for an Australian broadcast media outlet with Donald Trump since he was elected president in 2016.

Sharri also speaks with a range of Chinese whistle-blowers, scientists, and high-ranking intelligence officials to bring us closer to discovering the truth of what happened in Wuhan.

These include John Ratcliffe, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence from 2020 to 2021, and former head of British intelligence service, Mi6, Sir Richard Dearlove.

How about the Chinese themselves? Huh? Why would they implicate themselves in one of the worst crimes in human history and invite an attack on themselves? If they have determined that they need to go to war, now when the West stockpiles are low due to Ukraine would be an optimal time.

BTW, how much personal research have you dedicated to this?

Zero, in the way of true scientific study, at least, and for very good reason, IMHO. I have never worked in a lab, studied infectious diseases, or gone past high school biology. Doing one's own research is a dangerous thing to do when you don't have a strong understanding of what you are looking at, and it is easy to be manipulated by presenters picking and choosing their facts. What I DO know how to do is find accurate and trustworthy sources. That is something I do every day in my job. So on this issue I've scoped out a large and broad selection of experts in the field, including ones with very different political interests, taken note of their opinions, and their reasons. I also have an adult daughter in the sciences, and two sisters who were working at companies directly involved with COVID-19 research at the start of the pandemic.

I know that none of that is definitive, but despite the shifts in the wind now that we are a few years down the road, I'm not seeing experts in the field willing to get on board with moving the likelihood it was a lab leak into a more likely than not position. They have admitted that way back at the start, the certainty it wasn't was overstated for non-science reasons, but that's it.