By John Mecklin, August 27, 2021
US intelligence agencies have been unable to reach consensus on how the COVID-19 pandemic began after a 90-day investigation ordered by US President Joe Biden, an unclassified summary of the results of that inquiry released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says.
Made public Friday, the summary says that four elements of the intelligence community assess with “low confidence” that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus.
One agency found with “moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the summary says. A New York Times’ report on the summary suggests that agency is the FBI.
And three other elements of the intelligence community were unable to decide between those two possible origins for the pandemic, “with some analysts favoring natural origin, others a laboratory origin, and some seeing the hypotheses as equally likely,” the summary says.
The summary also says that the intelligence and scientific communities lack the clinical samples and other data from the earliest COVID-19 cases needed to make a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19. China’s cooperation would be needed to gain that information, the assessment asserts, and Beijing has refused to cooperate because of its “own uncertainty about where an investigation could lead as well as its frustration the international community is using the issue to exert political pressure on China.”
In a statement also issued Friday, President Biden criticized China for withholding information and vowed to do everything possible “to trace the roots of this outbreak that has caused so much pain and death around the world, so that we can take every necessary precaution to prevent it from happening again.”
“The world deserves answers, and I will not rest until we get them,” Biden’s statement said. “Responsible nations do not shirk these kinds of responsibilities to the rest of the world. Pandemics do not respect international borders, and we all must better understand how COVID-19 came to be in order to prevent further pandemics.”
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Neither the IC Summary nor the NYT article even mentions the detailed and comprehensive 84-page House report that says "the preponderance of the evidence proves the virus did leak from the WIV," that "a natural or genetically modified virus could have easily escaped the lab and infected the community," and that American and Chinese scientists years before Sept. 2019 "had the ability to genetically modify coronaviruses without leaving any trace evidence." The House Report remains to this date unreported by the NYT, although it has been publicly accessible since Aug. 2.
You left out two important details. First, it's a minority report from the GOP. Second, it's from a House subcommittee. It's nowhere as elevated as you claim to make it.
Since facts are fleeting for the GOP, a solid fact-check is necessary.
This publication seems to have staked its entire credibility on promoting this lab leak theory, which has gone nowhere, appears to be mostly likely false and has seriously damaged the reputation of science worldwide, harmed international cooperation and engendered extraordinarily acute geopolitical hostility at the most perilous time. For a group that is concerned about mitigating these extreme tail-end risks, it seems shockingly cavalier and even self-satisfied about promoting reckless speculation over outrageous, circumstantial claims.
The National Intelligence Council (IC) low confidence in nature origin of Covid-19
“Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2.”
“Unclassified Summary of Assessment on Covid-19 Origins’, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-Summary-of-Assessment-on-COVID-19-Origins.pdf
Is the IC assessment of low confidence that Covid-19 originated in nature, an unbelief and distrust in the conclusions of the mainstream scientific community, that Covid-19 originated in nature. From the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the scientific community has uniformly held that Covid-19 originated in nature.
“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),1 and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, ”
“Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19”, by Jeremey Farrar, Christian Drosten, Peter dasak, and many others, https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930418-9
This February 18, 2020 “statement of support”, referenced a February 16, 2020 version of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”. http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/398 That February 2020 version is only partially available online, and has been replaced by the April 2020 version. This article “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”, by virologists Rambaut, Holmes, Anderson, Garry, and Lipkin concludes that Covid-19 originated in nature.
"since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory based scenario is plausible."
These world renown scientists examined the unique features of Covid-19, and found that those features can be found in nature, no laboratory origin for them.
(1) Polybasic cleavage site
(2) predicted O-linked glycans
(3) SARS-CoV-2 seems to have an RBD that binds with high affinity to ACE2 from humans (4) “some pangolin coronaviruses exhibit strong similarity to SARS-CoV-2 in the RBD including all six key RBD residues”
By examining or commenting on all the unique features of Covid-19 on the first day of Covid-19’s arrival, these scientists helped desensitive the American public to the uniqueness of Covid-19 features. This desensitiving is ongoing. In May 2020, Ralph Baric reaffirmed the conclusions of these world reknown scientists, when he wrote,
“These patterns suggest that the global ecology has shifted and now favors the continued emergence of zoonotic coronaviruses, resulting in micro-outbreaks, continued low-level epidemics, or global pandemics. As the pace of coronavirus emergence appears to be accelerating, these data not only underscore a common event in nature “
‘SARS-CoV-2: Combating Coronavirus Emergence’, by Ralph Baric and R. Graham, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7207110/pdf/main.pdf
If the Intelligence Community has low confidence in the research and conclusions of our scientists, perhaps they should tell the American public why. In August 2021 twenty one of the top virologists, including Jeremy Farrar, reaffirmed the nature origin of Covid-19 in August 2021 when they wrote,
“As for the vast majority of human viruses, the most parsimonious explanation for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is a zoonotic event. The documented epidemiological history of the virus is comparable to previous animal market-associated outbreaks of coronaviruses with a simple route for human exposure…. There is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin.” https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00991-0.pdf
From day one of Covid-19's appearance, most leading world scientists have concluded that Covid-19 originated in nature. Not to trust science, are signs of conspiracy thinking and unAmericanism