C.I.A. Now Favors Lab Leak Theory to Explain Covid’s Origins

[WVK]

The C.I.A. has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.

But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory.

https://dnyuz.com/2025/01/25/c-i-a-now-favors-lab-leak-theory-to-explain-covids-origins/

[psyche101]

No new information 

New head of department 

Still at odds with the science.

A blatant attempt to get the new presidents attention and approval. 

It's getting more pathetic by the day. What has shown is that he will favour the government over science. Just what he is accusing china of. How ironic. The US and CCP acting in lockstep. 

Edited January 26 by psyche101

[+and-then]

4 hours ago, WVK said:

But the agency issued a new assessment this week, with analysts saying they now favor the lab theory.

They're still trying to have it both ways.  They're saying either theory is "possible" but the slight edge is to a lab accident.  Again, I'll make the point that the damage done was caused by the CCP choosing to disperse a known deadly novel corona virus through air travel to most countries while locking their own down, immediately.  If the choice were mine, I'd create a new policy that says that the next time such a thing happens and the CCP is unwilling to have inspectors come in, the US will treat the situation as an attack with WMD and we'll answer in kind...

[+DieChecker]

Saw this today.

Apparently BIDEN, about six months ago, told CIA to go look again. Probably he hoped it would fall the other way.

I wish they'd follow the Biden signed Law, and release all their info.

Low confidence.

I downloaded the release, and I see if there's anything new there.

[+DieChecker]

A few things I noticed...

I had trouble copy-paste, so I took screen shots.

So WIV did know how to make undetectable genetic modifications.

And the closest known match was COLLECTED BY WIV in 2015. So... that virus was there at some point. Probably there in 2020.

I don't think i previously read who collected that sample. Being WIV researchers would seem obvious.

So even if it was done the hard way by force adapting it, they could have done it over only a couple years.

So it's known from previously shared documentation that WIV did exoeriments with covid viruses in lower biosafety than might have been necessary.

Say if a liquid contact virus went to an aerosol virus 

So China didn't even admit the closest relative existed till 2020, and other bat viruses from the same mine/cave they didn't admit to till 2021.

Not hiding anything....

Overall add only a touch more than previously known.

I'd still give the Crossover the greater chance, but something like 66% to 33%. 

China definately had the training, the methods, the equipment, and motive.

[+joc]

On 1/25/2025 at 9:52 PM, psyche101 said:

No new information 

New head of department 

Still at odds with the science.

A blatant attempt to get the new presidents attention and approval. 

It's getting more pathetic by the day. What has shown is that he will favour the government over science. Just what he is accusing china of. How ironic. The US and CCP acting in lockstep. 

You never did tell me the exact animal that it spread from.  You do realize that without that smoking gun you are just blowing smoke out your ass right?

[psyche101]

5 hours ago, joc said:

You never did tell me the exact animal that it spread from.  You do realize that without that smoking gun you are just blowing smoke out your ass right?

Why do you blow smoke out your ass on subjects you don't actually know anything about? You're talking about the intermediate host anyway, if nothing else but to make a point. 

Here’s how scientists know the coronavirus came from bats and wasn’t made in a lab

 

How exactly do we know that this virus, SARS-CoV-2, has a “zoonotic” animal origin and not an artificial one? The answers lie in the genetic material and evolutionary history of the virus, and understanding the ecology of the bats in question.

An estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and 75% of all new, emerging, or re-emerging diseases in humans have animal origins. SARS-CoV-2 is the newest of seven coronaviruses found in humans, all of which came from animals, either from bats, mice or domestic animals. Bats were also the source of the viruses causing Ebola, rabies, Nipah and Hendra virus infections, Marburg virus disease, and strains of Influenza A virus.

The genetic makeup or “genome” of SARS-CoV-2 has been sequenced and publicly shared thousands of times by scientists all over the world. If the virus had been genetically engineered in a lab there would be signs of manipulation in the genome data. This would include evidence of an existing viral sequence as the backbone for the new virus, and obvious, targeted inserted (or deleted) genetic elements.

But no such evidence exists. It is very unlikely that any techniques used to genetically engineer the virus would not leave a genetic signature, like specific identifiable pieces of DNA code.

[psyche101]

On 1/26/2025 at 5:35 PM, DieChecker said:

Saw this today.

Apparently BIDEN, about six months ago, told CIA to go look again. Probably he hoped it would fall the other way.

I wish they'd follow the Biden signed Law, and release all their info.

Low confidence.

I downloaded the release, and I see if there's anything new there.

Why would he want it to fall any particular way? 

That seems an incredibly silly ct. 

Your new CIA is just yes men. 

Edited January 27 by psyche101

[psyche101]

On 1/26/2025 at 6:11 PM, DieChecker said:

A few things I noticed...

I had trouble copy-paste, so I took screen shots.

So WIV did know how to make undetectable genetic modifications.

And the closest known match was COLLECTED BY WIV in 2015. So... that virus was there at some point. Probably there in 2020.

I don't think i previously read who collected that sample. Being WIV researchers would seem obvious.

So even if it was done the hard way by force adapting it, they could have done it over only a couple years.

So it's known from previously shared documentation that WIV did exoeriments with covid viruses in lower biosafety than might have been necessary.

Say if a liquid contact virus went to an aerosol virus 

So China didn't even admit the closest relative existed till 2020, and other bat viruses from the same mine/cave they didn't admit to till 2021.

Not hiding anything....

Overall add only a touch more than previously known.

I'd still give the Crossover the greater chance, but something like 66% to 33%. 

China definately had the training, the methods, the equipment, and motive.

 

I've already given you the paper explaining exactly why the RatG13 can't have been modified into SARS 2. And why the furring cleavage methods can't be applied to get Covid 19 out of RaTG13. 

 

Was it too difficult to understand or something? 

 

Damn your memory is short, and you are getting more gullible. There was a time you would have pointed me at the paper, even to your own arguments detriment, all to illustrate a fair and balanced debate. Now you can't even recall it when posting on the subject. 

What happened? 

[+joc]

9 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Why do you blow smoke out your ass on subjects you don't actually know anything about? You're talking about the intermediate host anyway, if nothing else but to make a point. 

Here’s how scientists know the coronavirus came from bats and wasn’t made in a lab

 

How exactly do we know that this virus, SARS-CoV-2, has a “zoonotic” animal origin and not an artificial one? The answers lie in the genetic material and evolutionary history of the virus, and understanding the ecology of the bats in question.

An estimated 60% of known infectious diseases and 75% of all new, emerging, or re-emerging diseases in humans have animal origins. SARS-CoV-2 is the newest of seven coronaviruses found in humans, all of which came from animals, either from bats, mice or domestic animals. Bats were also the source of the viruses causing Ebola, rabies, Nipah and Hendra virus infections, Marburg virus disease, and strains of Influenza A virus.

The genetic makeup or “genome” of SARS-CoV-2 has been sequenced and publicly shared thousands of times by scientists all over the world. If the virus had been genetically engineered in a lab there would be signs of manipulation in the genome data. This would include evidence of an existing viral sequence as the backbone for the new virus, and obvious, targeted inserted (or deleted) genetic elements.

But no such evidence exists. It is very unlikely that any techniques used to genetically engineer the virus would not leave a genetic signature, like specific identifiable pieces of DNA code.

Well you can't really dazzle anybody with your brilliance and I Don't think you are actually baffling anyone with your Bull **** either. 

Edited January 27 by joc

[psyche101]

2 hours ago, joc said:

Well you can't really dazzle anybody with your brilliance and I Don't think you are actually baffling anyone with your Bull **** either. 

Which part are you struggling with?

[+DieChecker]

17 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Why would he want it to fall any particular way? 

That seems an incredibly silly ct. 

Your new CIA is just yes men. 

Why? Because he (Joe) wanted to give China a bit of a gift, with it (covid19) being even further confirmed as natural, and Trump being more wrong.

[+DieChecker]

17 hours ago, psyche101 said:

 

I've already given you the paper explaining exactly why the RatG13 can't have been modified into SARS 2. And why the furring cleavage methods can't be applied to get Covid 19 out of RaTG13. 

 

Was it too difficult to understand or something? 

 

Damn your memory is short, and you are getting more gullible. There was a time you would have pointed me at the paper, even to your own arguments detriment, all to illustrate a fair and balanced debate. Now you can't even recall it when posting on the subject. 

What happened? 

All I did is post what the report says and comment on each.

And your paper was from July 2020, yes? So most of these facts weren't known yet. The paper is wrong, and there's published medical papers that prove it. The references are there in the CIA report.

In response to you accusation. I'd say there used to be a time when you did not resort to Ad Hom... In almost every post.

Edited January 28 by DieChecker

[+DieChecker]

18 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Here’s how scientists know the coronavirus came from bats and wasn’t made in a lab

You left thus part out...

Quote

But no such evidence exists. It is very unlikely that any techniques used to genetically engineer the virus would not leave a genetic signature, like specific identifiable pieces of DNA code.

And yet that's what was later found. Techniques that leave no telltale. At least according to the medical literature. 

That the genome was passed around  a thousand times is neither here, nor there. Who looked at it. A thousand farmers could look and have no idea.

That new SARs and Covid viruses come from animals is not here or there. All these viruses exist in laboratory collections.

Quote

However, other related coronaviruses do have similar features, providing evidence that they have evolved naturally rather than being artificially added in a lab.

Proves nothing. Other than, yes, the virus could be added. But would leave evidence, yes? But, wait we just covered that...

Quote

In fact, SARS-CoV-2 most likely evolved from a viral variant that couldn’t survive for a long period of time or that persists at low levels in bats. 

And who knows how many bats have been tested, but so far zero hits.

However, we do know China had added to the spike protein before. We know they had been tried in ways to hide that change. We know they had experienced personel. We know they had the necessary equipment. And we know they often worked on projects at a lower safety level than should have been used.

Again, I'm not even saying it's the more likely theory, but it is a likely theory. 

Quote

It is also important to remember that around one in five of all mammal species on Earth are bats, with some found only in certain locations and others migrating across vast distances. This diversity and geographical spread makes it a challenge to identify which group of bats SARS-CoV-2 originally came from.

This is also just filler. There's no actual evidence Covid19 even came from bats. 

True the closest virus was from bats. Bur this same article says the two viruses are so far apart one couldn’t be fromthe other. 

Quote

This might sound very close but in evolutionary terms...

...This shows that RaGT13 is not the ancestor of SARS-CoV-2.

 

Edited January 28 by DieChecker

[Cho Jinn]

12 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

And your paper was from July 2020, yes? So most of these facts weren't known yet. The paper is wrong, and there's published medical papers that prove it. The references are there in the CIA report.

It comes down to this statement, in Nature (sigh!):

Furthermore, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one of the several reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used

Probably?  Well, ok.  And that cites to 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-018-0118-9

a 2019 Chinese report authored by, inter alia,

CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China

L-O-L.

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, DieChecker said:

Why? Because he (Joe) wanted to give China a bit of a gift, with it (covid19) being even further confirmed as natural, and Trump being more wrong.

What a huge steaming pile of bs. 

Why does Biden want to give china a gift?  That's some wild speculation there. He ordered a study into the lab leak, he's not popular with the CCP.

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, DieChecker said:

All I did is post what the report says and comment on each.

And your paper was from July 2020, yes? So most of these facts weren't known yet. The paper is wrong, and there's published medical papers that prove it. The references are there in the CIA report.

No. December 2021.

Remember this?

Reverse genetic technology can only be used to produce infectious clones of a known virus. Phylogenetically, the RaTG13 genome sequence recovered from bats is the most closely related viral sequence to SARS-CoV-2; however, the corresponding RaTG13 virus is yet to be isolated or cultured in a laboratory. Therefore, the so-called bat coronavirus RaTG13 could not have been used as a starting strain or “backbone” for genetic modification. Furthermore, it would be impossible to generate SARS-CoV-2 by inserting the furin cleavage site into the bat coronavirus RaTG13. It is critical for the prevention and control of SARS-CoV-2 to investigate the animal reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2, and this work is ongoing.

1 hour ago, DieChecker said:

In response to you accusation. I'd say there used to be a time when you did not resort to Ad Hom... In almost every post.

And there was a time I didn't have to go.baco and correct your memory on critical posts, you would have done it 

I ask again, what has happened? If you're going to post like a Breitbart junky, the quality of discussion is bound to go downhill. You are much better at this than the efforts you have been putting in of late. You're posting has taken a nosedive in quality. You are good at this usually. What's going on? 

[+DieChecker]

53 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

What a huge steaming pile of bs. 

Why does Biden want to give china a gift?  That's some wild speculation there. He ordered a study into the lab leak, he's not popular with the CCP.

Big Guy??

LOL.

Thumb in Trumps eye maybe? Because a ton of Democrats are willing to die on the Crossover hill? Because China owns Hunter? Could be lots of reasons. 

[psyche101]

2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

You left thus part out...

And yet that's what was later found. Techniques that leave no telltale. At least according to the medical literature. 

That the genome was passed around  a thousand times is neither here, nor there. Who looked at it. A thousand farmers could look and have no idea.

That new SARs and Covid viruses come from animals is not here or there. All these viruses exist in laboratory collections.

Proves nothing. Other than, yes, the virus could be added. But would leave evidence, yes? But, wait we just covered that...

All wrong. Read previous post. You know that's referring to a hypothetical variant of RaTG13 which was refuted. Scientists could tell if RaTG13 was modified into SARS-2.

Again, we have done this in depth like a week ago. Seriously, Wtf? 

2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

And who knows how many bats have been tested, but so far zero hits.

Thousands 

Almost 300 strains of corona virus just from one cave remember? You're not going to consider that coincidence surely. 

If Covid was the size of dogs, they would be on every street in the country. The lab leak idea is like saying a dog locked up in a pound twenty kilometres away is responsible because it's Xi's dog and none of the street animals could be responsible. Because Xi. 

2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

However, we do know China had added to the spike protein before. We know they had been tried in ways to hide that change. We know they had experienced personel. We know they had the necessary equipment. And we know they often worked on projects at a lower safety level than should have been used.

BS 

We know the US taught them how. The rest of fiction. 

Furrin cleavage is discussed in the aforementioned paper.

2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

Again, I'm not even saying it's the more likely theory, but it is a likely theory. 

No it's not. 

There's zero evidence 

The entire lab leak is based in Chinese are bad mkay. The so called supporting information isn't about a lab leak, it's more Chinese are bad stuff. 

2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

This is also just filler. There's no actual evidence Covid19 even came from bats. 

Yes, all evidence indicates they were likely the primary host that passed it into a, or several, intermediate hosts. 

2 hours ago, DieChecker said:

True the closest virus was from bats. Bur this same article says the two viruses are so far apart one couldn’t be fromthe other. 

RaTG13 you mean. 

Yes, no precursor virus existed at WIV making the lab leak idea impossible.

[+DieChecker]

51 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

No. December 2021.

Remember this?Reverse genetic technology can only be used to produce infectious clones of a known virus.

I don't think that's the process bring discussed anymore. The idea is that a chimeric virus was created. As when WIV adjusted furin sites on a virus tested on mice in 2015.

Quote

Phylogenetically, the RaTG13 genome sequence recovered from bats is the most closely related viral sequence to SARS-CoV-2; however, the corresponding RaTG13 virus is yet to be isolated or cultured in a laboratory. Therefore, the so-called bat coronavirus RaTG13 could not have been used as a starting strain or “backbone” for genetic modification.

If the RaTG13 had yet to be cultured,  or isolated, in 2021... How did they know in March 2020 it was a 96% relative. 

They were culturing it in February 2020.

Quote

a, Metagenomics analysis of next-generation sequencing of BALF from patient ICU06.

b, Genomic organization of 2019-nCoV WIV04. M, membrane.

c, Similarity plot based on the full-length genome sequence of 2019-nCoV WIV04. Full-length genome sequences of SARS-CoV BJ01, bat SARSr-CoV WIV1, bat coronavirus RaTG13 and ZC45 were used as reference sequences. 

And...

Quote

RaTG13 is the closest relative of 2019-nCoV and they form a distinct lineage from other SARSr-CoVs.

Quote

The receptor-binding spike protein encoded by the S gene was highly divergent from other CoVs (Extended Data Fig. 2), with less than 75% nucleotide sequence identity to all previously described SARSr-CoVs, except for a 93.1% nucleotide identity to RaTG13

So RaTG13 is the closest relative, and the closest with the spike differences. 

Therefore... this reasoning is bull****. Meant to baffle reporters and cow politicians.

Quote

Furthermore, it would be impossible to generate SARS-CoV-2 by inserting the furin cleavage site into the bat coronavirus RaTG13.

Excepting that WIV did just that in 2015 with a covid viruses to infect mice. Medical publications prove it.

Quote

And there was a time I didn't have to go.baco and correct your memory on critical posts, you would have done it

I ask again, what has happened? If you're going to post like a Breitbart junky, the quality of discussion is bound to go downhill. You are much better at this than the efforts you have been putting in of late. You're posting has taken a nosedive in quality. You are good at this usually. What's going on?

I've always tried to be clear between facts and opinion. That's what I've been doing. Posting facts, and giving opinion. That these facts conflict with preexisting opinions, doesn't make my new opinion wrong, and the old opinions correct. When new information appears, as in this report, than old opinions need to be reexamined. 

[psyche101]

2 hours ago, Cho Jinn said:

It comes down to this statement, in Nature (sigh!):

Furthermore, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one of the several reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used

Probably?  Well, ok.  And that cites to 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-018-0118-9

a 2019 Chinese report authored by, inter alia,

CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China

L-O-L.

So your saying they knew what to look for, didn't find it, so that means it's there? 

How's that work? 

[psyche101]

51 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

Big Guy??

LOL.

Thumb in Trumps eye maybe? Because a ton of Democrats are willing to die on the Crossover hill? Because China owns Hunter? Could be lots of reasons. 

So utter silly speculation then. 

Everytime you bend further into a political view you get further away from evidence of a lab leak and only keep piling up unfounded speculation to support unfounded speculation. 

[+DieChecker]

2 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

All wrong. Read previous post. You know that's referring to a hypothetical variant of RaTG13 which was refuted. Scientists could tell if RaTG13 was modified into SARS-2.

Again, we have done this in depth like a week ago. Seriously, Wtf? 

Except they can't. They've been trained how they could hide the change markers years before.

This is settled fact now. The technique is known. And the training of WIV personel was documented. 

Quote

Thousands 

Almost 300 strains of corona virus just from one cave remember? You're not going to consider that coincidence surely. 

If Covid was the size of dogs, they would be on every street in the country.

So where is the virus thst it came from? RaTG13 is the closest known. Yet is said to not be possible as the ancestor.

So just magically came out of no where? Those numbers basically enforce my point that they've zero idea where it came from.

As soon as they find a virus that could be the precursor in a bat population, I'll give over and assign the crossover theory at 100%. Do you think that will happen?

Quote

The lab leak idea is like saying a dog locked up in a pound twenty kilometres away is responsible because it's Xi's dog and none of the street animals could be responsible. Because Xi.

Rather more like finding a green dog outside a kennel that breeds green dogs. While scientists with a bias point at thousands of wild dogs, with zero of them being green.

Quote

BS 

We know the US taught them how. The rest of fiction. 

Furrin cleavage is discussed in the aforementioned paper.

And I just posted to that one. Basically it is wrong.

At least now you admit they knew how.

Quote

No it's not. 

There's zero evidence 

The entire lab leak is based in Chinese are bad mkay. The so called supporting information isn't about a lab leak, it's more Chinese are bad stuff. 

There's actually zero evidence of any infected animals also. Only correlation due to proximity of samples to cages.

Chinese had the tools, training, and motive (money). And had made a virus with the specific change before.

Quote

Yes, all evidence indicates they were likely the primary host that passed it into a, or several, intermediate hosts.

And yet no bat has been found with a closer pre-covid19 match that could have been the precursor. The other SARs viruses like MERs, had clear intermediary animals, and a clear precursor virus. Yet not so here?

And, we're told to gain the furin cleavage spike change, it would have had to have traveled within bats for quite a long time. Yet zero bats are positive for anything that could have mutated into Covid19.

Quote

RaTG13 you mean. 

Yes, no precursor virus existed at WIV making the lab leak idea impossible.

Except as the CIA report said, WIV didn't even admit they had RaTG13 till early 2020. So why would they openly admit to have an actual precursor virus? Especially after infections got out of China in early 2020.

If they were hiding viruses that couldn't have been the base. Why couldn't they be hiding the actual base? Answer: of course they could have.

Like you said, they have thousands of viruses, and most not cultured and genomes run. Not publicly anyway. 

Would China even tell anyone if they did find the precursor virus? I doubt it.

[+DieChecker]

22 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

So utter silly speculation then. 

Everytime you bend further into a political view you get further away from evidence of a lab leak and only keep piling up unfounded speculation to support unfounded speculation. 

Isn't you're very opinion based on the supposed US Political bias toward China?

[psyche101]

11 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

I don't think that's the process bring discussed anymore. The idea is that a chimeric virus was created. As when WIV adjusted furin sites on a virus tested on mice in 2015.

If the RaTG13 had yet to be cultured,  or isolated, in 2021... How did they know in March 2020 it was a 96% relative. 

Sigh 

The RaTG13 virus was discovered in 2013. In bat droppings. It was already identified. 

11 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

They were culturing it in February 2020.

And...

So RaTG13 is the closest relative, and the closest with the spike differences. 

Therefore... this reasoning is bull****. Meant to baffle reporters and cow politicians.

No, it was the closest known virus in 2020. Three closer relatives have been found in bats since. BANAL-52, BANAL-103 and BANAL-236. 

11 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

Excepting that WIV did just that in 2015 with a covid viruses to infect mice. Medical publications prove it.

Are you referring to transgenic hACE2 mice? 

If so I suggest you read it again, they were used to replicate SARS-2  models currently, not the other way around. 

11 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

I've always tried to be clear between facts and opinion. That's what I've been doing. Posting facts, and giving opinion. That these facts conflict with preexisting opinions, doesn't make my new opinion wrong, and the old opinions correct. When new information appears, as in this report, than old opinions need to be reexamined. 

Sorry no. And sorry if the kick in the complacency hurt. You are posting political arguments on a science based matter. That's as bad as using the bible to refute science. You wouldn't go there but you are with your political belief system. 

You're good at this usually. You need your mojo back. The thirst to learn. It's become a more complacent position akin to the dumbass Maga heads in here. Just happy to sling whatever social media craps out and rant the left right crap. You are good enough to unify people. Be proud that you are smart and show it again. Don't let that President lower everybody's bar.