Germany’s foreign intelligence service believed there was a 80-90% chance that coronavirus accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab, German media say. Two German newspapers say they have uncovered details of an assessment carried out by spy agency BND in 2020 but never published.
The intelligence service had indications that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been carrying out experiments where viruses are modified to become more transmissible to humans for research, they say.
China repeated its denial saying the cause “should be determined by scientists” - and pointed to a World Health Organization investigation which found the lab-leak theory was “extremely unlikely”.
The lab leak hypothesis has been hotly contested by scientists, including many who say there is no definitive evidence to back it up. But the once controversial theory has been gaining ground among some intelligence agencies - and the BND is the latest to entertain the theory. In January, the US CIA said the coronavirus was “more likely” to have leaked from a lab than to have come from animals.
Are we seriously back on this again?
Oh look, fake news to make China look bad!
We’re supposed to trust spies working for nation-states that support Israel?
Not every news article and decision on the world revolves around Israel and/or Gaza.
My point is we shouldn’t be trusting spy agencies working on behalf of nation states at all, which includes pushing geopolitical narratives with the aim of Western supremacy.
“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” -1984
Bot/shill.
no u
Although I think the support to Israel (which I am against too) does not play a role in the sake of this argument, I agree with you: it independent scientists couldn’t find scientific evidences to support that, spies are for sure not reliable.
Okay, thank you for getting that. In retrospect, I can see how my comment might be perceived as potentially antisemitic but, I’m coming from an anti-imperialist perspective. And, the West is going to keep flooding us with anti-East and anti-Middle East propaganda.
So, to me, Germany’s support of Israel and their demonization of China is one and the same.
Lab leaks/accidents are fairly common. This didn’t require some malicious intent or a “perfect storm” of events to occur. There are like 1 or 2 every year, that we know of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents
A study investigated and saw the following from 2000 to 2021 (https://www.chathamhouse.org/laboratory-accidents-and-biocontainment-breaches/scale-problem-today):
“… identified laboratory-acquired infections in 309 individuals, documented in 94 incident reports covering 51 pathogens of varying degrees of hazard. Some of these infections were fatal, and some resulted in the spread of laboratory workers’ infections to others in the community. In addition, the researchers identified 16 incidents of pathogen escape from biocontainment facilities during the period.”
And that’s not even including all the smaller incidents which adds up to about a hundred a year.
So a lab leak is not only plausible, it’s very likely. It requires no malice or conspiracy. And Wuhan actually has a lab that was studying the COVID virus. The communist party however has already covered up, so actual evidence is hard to get.
The communist party however has already covered up
The conspiracy theory here is this.
Who needs peer-reviewed science when you can just listen to western spy agencies?
Not at all. It’s the CCP’s MO. They probably didn’t even know where it exactly came from. But started covering up anyway. It’s a common theme. There was a chinese kindergarten, and rumours got around that the military was abusing the children in a basement. Instead denying it and starting an investigation, the government censored the whole thing, ordered parents to stay quiet and completely shut down the school. In the end it was just rumours, no evidence was ever found. But just in case they start covering up, almost as a reflex.
Cool campfire story
But the once controversial theory has been gaining ground among some intelligence agencies
ie someone at the CIA who wont put their name to it, and a couple of corporate owned German newspapers who they fed it to
Only because the propaganda arms got defunded, but the CIA, the biggest one, didn’t.
It doesn’t matter where it came from! It doesn’t change the fact that the government and corporations left us die, then they picked over our carcasses.
They keep “believing” that’s what happened because they have not presented any concrete evidence that can be used to get rid of that qualifier.
Remember when hinting at this would get you banned from Youtube? Good times
You can’t even say dead or killed or rape on youtube.
Yeah makes me not want to watch anything on there. Wife was watching some true crime and I was so confused on why they kept saying essay (SA) and grape.
BBC
Go back to sleep, this is just repeat cope for failing to handle a pandemic and shifting the blame to another country.
“Germany’s foreign intelligence” LOL
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Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: misinformationWhat, we’re supposed to remove UK state-affiliated media articles about German state intelligence assessments?
They are so well trained that even when their own governments retroactively admit they lied, they will not believe it and still say lab leak is a conspiracy theory.
Two German newspapers say they have uncovered details of an assessment carried out by spy agency BND in 2020 but never published.
But the once controversial theory has been gaining ground among some intelligence agencies - and the BND is the latest to entertain the theory.
The SARS-CoV-2 gain of function research was going on under Fauci’s watch.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022: A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus
- New Yorker, 2023: Mad Scientists - Nowhere is the lab-leak debate more personal than among the experts investigating the origins of COVID
- Consortium News, 2024: What the US Might Owe the World for Covid-19 - A U.S.-funded laboratory origin of Covid-19 would certainly constitute the most significant case of governmental gross negligence in history
I really don’t think it’s that hard to believe that some postdoc in Wuhan screwed up and let it loose accidentally.
But it is even easier to believe that the CIA and their toady media are lying again
The complication is the double jump.
In the early days of COVID, there were 2 strains spreading. One of those fizzled out and disappeared after a few weeks. Genetically, they seemed to be independent jumps. A single mistake wouldn’t account for this.
It’s also worth noting that the first known infected all spent time in Wuhan wildlife market. They got fairly good tracking from mobile phones, even if the direct evidence was destroyed by the containment/cleaning effort.
Basically, the surrounding evidence doesn’t fit an accidental leak (2 jumps). It doesn’t really fit an intentional release (very geographically focused). It is consistent with it jumping from a sustained infection pool in the market. (Multiple jumps from the same small area at different times).
They got fairly good tracking from mobile phones
They being China’s communis party who in no way, shape or form are willing to participate in any investigation that could potentially place the origin of COVID within China’s borders.
They did eventually participate. While their initial behaviour wasn’t the best, I also understand why they dragged their feet. There was a definite witch hunt going on, for someone to blame. Once that calmed down, they did actually help with investigating it.
They allowed a team from the WHO limited access. All kinds of samples were missing. They weren’t allowed to test any samples. And the list goes on. It was a show, not an investigation. The CCP has 0 incentive to investigate. Because either they already know. Or they suspect. Either way the Chinese narrative now is that it came from abroad and was brought into China. So any investigation that could show the contrary is a non-starter.
That seems like a reasonable challenge to the lab leak hypothesis, but I have to defer to my wife on it. She has a relevant background in microbiology, medicinal chemistry, and pharmacology and says that something about the structure of the viruses suggests convincingly that at least one of the COVID variants was of man-made origin. She’s also been working in labs for almost twenty years and has seen too many accidents and near-misses. As a lay person, that explanation makes enough sense to me to find the lab leak hypothesis plausible. Also, I’m not going to disagree with a well-published scientist who is also my wife.
Ultimately, it’s of mostly academic interest. Where do we need to tighten down on things to avoid a repeat incident. The best answer would be “Both”.
Also, do you have a link to any papers talking about the man-made origin theory? I’ve not checked in a while, but last time I looked it sent me down a lot of rabbit holes, with nothing ultimately backing it up.
Plausibility is not evidence, however. I think it’s dangerous to try to place blame on somebody for nothing more than a maybe.
At least the lab leak hypothesis isn’t as sinophobic as the “wet market” one.
I think the biggest problem in this whole debacle is the utter opaqueness offered by China when trying to get to the source. Is this China’s fault? Well hold on. While this accident may have happened in China, China’s lax attitude toward safety precautions are an open secret. It’s much like the shady labor practices in, well China for one, that we turn a blind eye to. Why?Because it’s cheaper. So partly it is the unevenly applied and audited safety standards. If people are giving China research money, then those labs should be held to an international standard.
Arguing there is no evidence is extremely disingenuous when Chinese government hid most of it. One should be careful about saying “There is no evidence.” too confidently. At a certain point it sounds like an accomplishment and not a result.
Hey so just a question, are the Chinamen shabby, rushed and incompetent, or are those dirty commies so incredibly, inconceivably competent and meticulous to instantly hide all information that would make them look bad?
Both paradoxically must be true for your sinophobic conspiracy theory to work.
It’s really hard to ‘hide evidence’ in your comparison. No, sorry, that’s stupid. Even Trump can hide evidence, it’s a baby skill. The shabbiness of Chinese industry is by state mandate to quickly scale up China in a short amount of time. Am I racist for saying the Afghani Space Program may not be doing well?
The lab was in China but it the experiments were run by the US. The NIH admitted they funded illegal gain-of-function research in Wuhan. Have you considered that this was perhaps a US bioweapon “accidentally” deployed against China? The US has a history of this: it used biological weapons in Korea in the 50s and lied about it for decades.
And if that is the case (not saying it is; i’m still not 100% convinced of the lab leak theory) then it backfired spectacularly as China took the most serious measures of any country on earth to keep its people safe. No other country managed to maintain Zero Covid for as long as China did.
Over 1.2 million people died in the US. One third of their entire population was infected, potentially suffering long term health damage. In China it was just over 5,200 deaths, not even one hundredth of the US numbers with a population more than four times that of the US.
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
If that to you says “lax safety precautions” then we are not speaking the same language.
The fact that you ridicule the lack of evidence and imply that this indicates China is covering something up is telling. If there was evidence you would say they are guilty. If there is no evidence then they are also guilty. That is called an unfalsifiable orthodoxy. There is nothing that can convince you otherwise because you have already decided what you want to believe and you don’t care what the evidence or lack thereof indicates.
By that same logic i could claim that the lack of evidence just “proves” that the US are very good at covering their tracks and erasing evidence of a bioweapon attack. Do you see how that logic is bad because it can be used to justify virtually any conclusion?
Why is it always the Chinese government that supposedly hides things? How about it’s actually the US government that has been hiding the truth all along?
Be that as it may let’s put the speculation aside and stick to the facts:
The fact is that China responded to the best of their abilities to a novel and highly contagious disease, which may or may not have been released from a US funded lab. It is objectively demonstrable (the stats prove it) that China had the world’s most successful Covid response. It is not China’s fault that the rest of the world is so incompetent or indifferent to the wellbeing of their citizens.
The US has a history of this: it used biological weapons in Korea in the 50s and lied about it for decades.
And a history of using them against its own people, domestically, for that matter.
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