Way, way too much intellectual energy has been spent of the lab leak/natural causes origins of COVID-19. To put it simply we've no hope of coming to any conclusion unless we get to investigate and interview the Wuhan lab and we've absolutely no hope China will ever let us. It would be worth noting if the Chinese had been working on a biological weapon but COVID-19 was nowhere near virulent enough to even middle aged healthy people to be a weapon and what state wants to let loose a weapon that can be relied upon to find its way to your own troops and civilians? If it was a weapon China has suffered greatly from it and is about to suffer even more from it in the coming months.
More understanding of confidence _intervals_ would probably help people's understanding of when something is made with low confidence. But yes, this is a relative nothingburger story.
I think Nate Silver comment was abundantly justified. People who suggested that the lab leak theory might be true were smeared as racists--Anne Applebaum said this about Sen. Tom Cotton, for example. Facebook banned any discussion of the lab theory until April 2021. Robby Soave has a nice article about this at "Reason", a publication for which Prof. Drezner has written in the past.
Search ‘Springer Series In Optical Sciences: Lasers And Applications’ Edited by W.ON Guimaraes, C.-T. Lin A. Mooradian . I am not to judge if this pamphlet has anything to do with this: What is interesting about it is that is popular amongst Italian Camorra websites. Articles says foreign actors have been ruled out but Criminal groups engaged in high value activities spy on each other allot. They employ IT professionals and ex soviet scientists behind this pamphlet on high frequency lasers and microwaves in an endeavour to gain data from mobiles or cause accidents like the Head Of Syria’s White Helmets falling from a balcony in Turkey?
As is often the case, we love our binaries. What's the mechanism for a lab leak? The virus escapes containment and floats to a civilian, who then goes to the wet market. Or maybe infects a lab worker, who goes to the wet market. Or maybe a lab worker was trying to catch an animal in southern China, got infected and developed symptoms on his way back to Wuhan. Or maybe she caught two animals and brought them back, but looking to pick up money on the side put one on sale in the wet market. Or maybe the virus passed from animal to lab worker on the way to Wuhan.
Way, way too much intellectual energy has been spent of the lab leak/natural causes origins of COVID-19. To put it simply we've no hope of coming to any conclusion unless we get to investigate and interview the Wuhan lab and we've absolutely no hope China will ever let us. It would be worth noting if the Chinese had been working on a biological weapon but COVID-19 was nowhere near virulent enough to even middle aged healthy people to be a weapon and what state wants to let loose a weapon that can be relied upon to find its way to your own troops and civilians? If it was a weapon China has suffered greatly from it and is about to suffer even more from it in the coming months.
Yep, unlike the other 2, whether COVID was due to a lab leak or was natural just has zero impact on anything forward-looking.
Show just vapid the foreign policy chattering classes are if they concentrate on that topic.
More understanding of confidence _intervals_ would probably help people's understanding of when something is made with low confidence. But yes, this is a relative nothingburger story.
I think Nate Silver comment was abundantly justified. People who suggested that the lab leak theory might be true were smeared as racists--Anne Applebaum said this about Sen. Tom Cotton, for example. Facebook banned any discussion of the lab theory until April 2021. Robby Soave has a nice article about this at "Reason", a publication for which Prof. Drezner has written in the past.
Re: ‘Havana Syndrome’
Search ‘Springer Series In Optical Sciences: Lasers And Applications’ Edited by W.ON Guimaraes, C.-T. Lin A. Mooradian . I am not to judge if this pamphlet has anything to do with this: What is interesting about it is that is popular amongst Italian Camorra websites. Articles says foreign actors have been ruled out but Criminal groups engaged in high value activities spy on each other allot. They employ IT professionals and ex soviet scientists behind this pamphlet on high frequency lasers and microwaves in an endeavour to gain data from mobiles or cause accidents like the Head Of Syria’s White Helmets falling from a balcony in Turkey?
Concerning the Covid source, I don't believe that evidence in Western hands is conclusive, but I am prejudiced by this report: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/28/1160162845/what-does-the-science-say-about-the-origin-of-the-sars-cov-2-pandemic?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=so
As is often the case, we love our binaries. What's the mechanism for a lab leak? The virus escapes containment and floats to a civilian, who then goes to the wet market. Or maybe infects a lab worker, who goes to the wet market. Or maybe a lab worker was trying to catch an animal in southern China, got infected and developed symptoms on his way back to Wuhan. Or maybe she caught two animals and brought them back, but looking to pick up money on the side put one on sale in the wet market. Or maybe the virus passed from animal to lab worker on the way to Wuhan.
Or... we'll never know?
And it doesn’t actually matter if we know or not. As I said above:
Yep, unlike the other 2, whether COVID was due to a lab leak or was natural just has zero impact on anything forward-looking.
Show just vapid the foreign policy chattering classes are if they concentrate on that topic.
Oh my, THANK you. Please keep writing.
I think there is plenty of expert opinion that C19 was man made. The real story is our government wanting to suppress this since it was inconvenient.
Where’s the commentary regarding the UAP issue? I would be interested in your view.
I don’t see suppression. I see judgement calls, virtually all with low confidence.
See Fauci emails to others who raised observations that virus was likely man made. See response to Barrington assessment.