Covid-19 most likely came from a lab leak,,,,,,,,,duh

[Valcazar]

The CIA has made no statement, most likely because they don't see there being any conclusive evidence (and they are the leading source of foreign intel).

Sorry, just want to clarify.
The agencies have all weighed in, they just aren't identified in the classified summary.
The FBI went and stated that yes, they were the ones who said likely with moderate confidence.

The DOE was identified in the reporting as the one that recently switched, but hasn't actually confirmed anything.

The CIA has been identified (but hasn't said anything) as one of the agencies that said "we don't have enough conclusive evidence" (The only options for the CIA are they don't have enough conclusive evidence or they believe it was zoonotic, since the other options are accounted for.) but they haven't confirmed that.

Right now, only the FBI has gone on the record identifying which analysis was theirs. The usual thing in these kinds of summary reports, from what I understand, is that the agencies don't identify who recommended what. (Although I suspect they strategically leak it to reporters without confirming it, which is why we think the CIA is in the "not enough info" group.)

No one should guess "they haven't said anything because" - they just usually don't say anything and the "we don't really know" is already included in the report.

 

[WyattEarp]

If you don't believe the satellite paper, why bring it up?
..............................................You can speculate wildly about whatever evidence they might have to your heart's content.
I pointed out that satellite imagery probably wouldn't tell you much. You responded with a paper of satellite imagery that didn't tell us much.

To clarify, I did not post a paper on the Wuhan satellite imagery. I posted a CNN article that there was speculation that the outbreak could have occurred earlier than noted. This speculation was derived from analyzing hospital activity in the Wuhan area from 2019 satellite data.

Again, I interpreted one of your comments to mean you didn't hear about satellites revealing hospital activity. That is the only reason why I posted the CNN article. I never provided it as evidence or suggested such.

Perhaps you dived into a paper referenced in the CNN article that discussed the hospital activity. If the major hospitals are incidentally close to the lab as you noted, that is an excellent point.

Which wasn't any kind of statement that the FBI was using this evidence and it played into their conclusion. Just that people have looked at satellite imagery of Wuhan.
If you are just guessing that the FBI has drawn inference from satellite data, then fine.
People are guessing they drew inference from witnesses.

Neither of which has been commented on by the FBI as true so there isn't any reason to spend much effort making up what they might have shown.

I have been completely upfront that it was conjecture. In the end without Chinese cooperation, the FBI's conclusion is likely made from a mosaic of intelligence.

 

[Valcazar]

To clarify, I did not post a paper on the Wuhan satellite imagery. I posted a CNN article that there was speculation that the outbreak could have occurred earlier than noted. This speculation was derived from analyzing hospital activity in the Wuhan area from 2019 satellite data.

Again, I interpreted one of your comments to mean you didn't hear about satellites revealing hospital activity. That is the only reason why I posted the CNN article. I never provided it as evidence or suggested such.

Perhaps you dived into a paper referenced in the CNN article that discussed the hospital activity. If the major hospitals are incidentally close to the lab as you noted, that is an excellent point.

To be clear, I hadn't heard anything about the FBI using satellite imagery.
Not that satellite imagery hadn't been used for anything.

But we basically agree here. This isn't particularly revealing and we know nothing about what satellite imagery the FBI may have used. (And I remain skeptical anything useful could be gained by that method.

In the end without Chinese cooperation, the FBI's conclusion is likely made from a mosaic of intelligence.

I agree completely. All the agencies are presumably using a mosaic of intelligence that they have available.

 

[Valcazar]

In other news, some interesting data about what sequences were available at WIV.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1632652392650117120

 

[jcpro]

Can we be honest for a change?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1632759962278535169

 

[WyattEarp]

In other news, some interesting data about what sequences were available at WIV.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1632652392650117120

What should we take from this?

 

[WyattEarp]

Can we be honest for a change?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1632759962278535169

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1632823348433485824

What this woman says is true, but I think there is great economic pressures today. With the advent of multiple 24/7 cable news outlets and the newspaper industry declining, the fight for eyeballs has never been this intense. Network news of the past was also considered for its prestige by their operators. As we are seeing with the pressure on CNN now, cable news outlets have to justify their existence with their bottom line.

 

[Valcazar]

What should we take from this?

Did you read the thread?

What we can take from this is more evidence that the WIV didn't have a precursor of SARS-CoV-2 they were studying.
Is it definitive? No. It goes to 2018.
But a lot of the various lab leak stories require them to have had it and in ones where they were working on GoF they would have needed it for some time.
So it pushes those even further into the "unlikely" category.

 

[Valcazar]

What this woman says is true, but I think there is great economic pressures today. With the advent of multiple 24/7 cable news outlets and the newspaper industry declining, the fight for eyeballs has never been this intense. Network news of the past was also considered for its prestige by their operators. As we are seeing with the pressure on CNN now, cable news outlets have to justify their existence with their bottom line.

And this is why the "Fox news wins in the ratings" is such a silly talking point for why people should believe them.
Fox News has expressly decided that telling their audience what they want to hear is the way to better ratings (and they are correct).

Good journalism is expensive to do and rarely gets the same kind of audience.
Fox pulling in those kinds of ratings while still getting to pretend to be a news organization created tremendous pressure on the other cable news organizations to follow suit. (And there already was a lot of pressure for the reasons you cite.)

 

[jcpro]

And this is why the "Fox news wins in the ratings" is such a silly talking point for why people should believe them.
Fox News has expressly decided that telling their audience what they want to hear is the way to better ratings (and they are correct).

Good journalism is expensive to do and rarely gets the same kind of audience.
Fox pulling in those kinds of ratings while still getting to pretend to be a news organization created tremendous pressure on the other cable news organizations to follow suit. (And there already was a lot of pressure for the reasons you cite.)

LOL! Fox didn't tell its viewers that lab leak was debunked and a conspiracy theory. Fox didn't tell its viewers that Rogan took horse medicine. Fox didn't tell its viewers that the laptop was Russian misinformation, etc, etc, etc. Fox opinion side certainly said objectionable things, too Point is- if you're going to toss rocks, step out of the glass house Mr. Ideologue. All MSN is guilty of something- some of them are so guilty, their viewers fled, like the CNN.

 

[WyattEarp]

And this is why the "Fox news wins in the ratings" is such a silly talking point for why people should believe them.
Fox News has expressly decided that telling their audience what they want to hear is the way to better ratings (and they are correct).

Good journalism is expensive to do and rarely gets the same kind of audience.
Fox pulling in those kinds of ratings while still getting to pretend to be a news organization created tremendous pressure on the other cable news organizations to follow suit. (And there already was a lot of pressure for the reasons you cite.)

I haven't checked Fox News' ratings in awhile, but it always seemed to me that the CNN, MSNBC and the network news split up the non-conservative news. The NYT and WaPO also have a lot of reach.

When I hear 3 million people tuned in to watch Tucker Carlson, I think that's good but that's a little over 1% of American adults. (Although it seems judging by this forum, that 10 million Canadians are watching him. Lol.). That 3 million is good business, but it's hardly a national wave tuning into his show. I'm guessing of that 3 million many are in the audience every night. So what's his overall reach 4 million?

I'm sorry Rachel Maddow hurts my ears and more importantly my brain. She makes Don Lemon seem like lemon chiffon.

 

[Valcazar]

I haven't checked Fox News' ratings in awhile, but it always seemed to me that the CNN, MSNBC and the network news split up the non-conservative news. The NYT and WaPO also have a lot of reach.

They do.
And yes, you can say that the other networks all split up the non-conservative news but I don't think that's quite right.

The issue is you can't point to ratings and say "they do the best news".

It's just the wrong metric.

The ratings show that a lot of people want what Fox is delivering. That's it.

Pointing to CNN beating MSNBC or whatever (I have no idea which does better in the ratings) also doesn't tell you anything about the quality of their news.
It tells you about what people watch.
It sometimes can tell you a bit about who people trust, but even that's probably indirect and again, that actually says nothing about the quality of their news.

When I hear 3 million people tuned in to watch Tucker Carlson, I think that's good but that's a little over 1% of American adults. (Although it seems judging by this forum, that 10 million Canadians are watching him. Lol.). That 3 million is good business, but it's hardly a national wave tuning into his show. I'm guessing of that 3 million many are in the audience every night. So what's his overall reach 4 million?

I'm sorry Rachel Maddow hurts my ears and more importantly my brain. She makes Don Lemon seem like lemon chiffon.

There are a lot of people who hate Rachel Maddow's approach, which developed in radio and still has a lot of radio news tics as far as I can tell.

Again - that says absolutely nothing about the quality of the reporting in any way. (It may say something about the quality of the commentary, since those shows are as much about commentary as they are about transmitting the news.)

 

[WyattEarp]

Again - that says absolutely nothing about the quality of the reporting in any way. (It may say something about the quality of the commentary, since those shows are as much about commentary as they are about transmitting the news.)

I see obvious bullshit on Fox, MSNBC and CNN. Awhile back, MSNBC gave the green light to their anchors to provide commentary within their supposed newscasts. If we're talking about commentary, Fox News had cordoned off their news hours from their commentators.

The Fox audience is obviously rewarding commentators over news anchors, but I think MSNBC has the same dynamic. I don't watch Fox News, but if Martha MacCallum lost her hour and Jesse Watters was given an hour that would be an obvious shift to commentary. But again, one would have to be a fool to not know the difference.

 

[Valcazar]

I see obvious bullshit on Fox, MSNBC and CNN. Awhile back, MSNBC gave the green light to their anchors to provide commentary within their supposed newscasts. If we're talking about commentary, Fox News had cordoned off their news hours from their commentators.

The Fox audience is obviously rewarding commentators over news anchors, but I think MSNBC has the same dynamic. I don't watch Fox News, but if Martha MacCallum lost her hour and Jesse Watters was given an hour that would be an obvious shift to commentary. But again, one would have to be a fool to not know the difference.

The problem is Fox News as a network doesn't report the news other than incidentally.
Yes, their anchor/commentator parts are the most egregious, with Tucker just being flat out a propagandist, but their news desk as well is not something that feels beholden to any journalistic standards.
That's always been the case to some degree, but it has gotten worse over time from what I can tell.

But as you say, this has been a big problem for years in all cable news. They need to fill time, and random speculation and punditry is easier to fill time with.
There is a reason Crossfire was being pilloried back in the day before it got canceled. It was exactly that kind of bullshit.

 

[basketcase]

...

No, I'm simply pointing out that in 2020 the intelligence agencies and cooperative media partners didn't represent the information they had in hand accurately....

And what do you base that on? Do you have an intelligence summaries from 2020? Do you have anything other than Trump's ridiculous claim and the fact that there is a lab across the city?



Sorry but in the absence of definitive evidence (or even the intelligence agencies releasing their evidence), science always goes with the most probable answer. Until I get my ultra-top secret clearance, we're left with three possibilities.

a) The outbreak occurred in the immediate area of a market with live animals because of zoonotic transfer which we have seen occur many times
b) The outbreak occurred in the immediate area of a market because a lab leak occurred on the other side of the big city, infecting a worker who didn't infect anyone in the vicinity of the lab but only broke out near the market.
c) The outbreak occurred earlier around the lab because of a lab leak but the Chinese government locked it down except for one individual who spread it to the market where for some reason they were unable to lock it down.


a) is a definite possibility. b) is possible but ... c) well that's just conspiracy thinking.

 

[basketcase]

As the female news anchor said in the video: "We actually don't have different outlets covering the same kind of news...............
What you believe becomes completely determined by the news channels you watch."
...

Absolutely true.

I know it's a study so it won't get play in right-wing circles but Democrat leaning voters have a much broader range of news sources than the right. Seems Fox views only trust Fox while the rest of us make a point of looking at a variety of sources.

 

[jcpro]

They're gonna need a bigger carpet and a giant broom for this.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1633577964662149123

 

[squeezer]

 

[The Oracle]

Fuaci is just a weasel........

 

[squeezer]

Fuaci is just a weasel........

He told you the truth, what would you like from him? Would you prefer he lies and says, YES WE KNOW for sure it was a lab leak?