[bitreality]

For that very reason, we cannot accept their narrative at face value. We certainly don't have enough information to confidently eliminate the lab escape theory. The media has largely suggested that the lab escape theory has been disproved.

[ethbr0]

If you ask a liar a question, and they lie, then the strongest conclusion isn't that you asked the right question -- it's that they're a liar.

China stonewalls pretty much every attempt by the international community to interfere with their internal control.

So this is more "business as usual" than "Clouseau found the smoking gun."

[bitreality]

The smoking gun is that labs in Wuhan were studying different coronaviruses in bats at the time the virus emerged. One of those labs was right near the seafood market which had one of the first documented outbreaks.

It's all circumstantial evidence of course, but that's really all you're going to get with a country like China. We can be damn well sure that they would never admit to the virus originating from a lab leak. To me, this is the clearest and most likely source of the outbreak.

[roelschroeven]

> The smoking gun is that labs in Wuhan were studying different coronaviruses in bats at the time the virus emerged.

As far as I know, those labs always study coronaviruses in bats -- it's a large part of what they do. That makes it less of a suspicious coincidence than your way of putting it implies.

By which I don't mean it didn't happen. There's just not enough information one way or the other.

[LargeWu]

If anything, it makes it inevitable. The probability of a coronavirus from a bat eventually escaping a lab that regularly studies coronaviruses in bats almost certainly approaches 100% over time.

[zo1]

Also, it's not like they can actually find out what happened now, a year later. Not without a time-machine or perfect recordings showing some sort of ridiculously straightforward sequence of events. E.g. They find a recording showing a bat biting someone in a lab and that person hiding it and then later showing him touching fish at the market. Come on, who thinks it'd be that easy?

What they'd most likely output is a "report" with "findings" that "point to" or "suggest" certain things like bad protocols or insecure procedures or disconnected safety sensors etc. Hardly evidence, and not really actionable even if they were allowed to get there and eventually publish it.

This is the same kind of crap as with the "election" report in the US. They couldn't find hard-evidence because despite this being 2020, camera's aren't everywhere, evidence isn't readily available, and not everyone is keep ridiculous-level audit logs and collating as much info as we want. All they eventually put in their report were discrepancies, not-installed windows updates, internet-connected machines, etc. No smoking gun, and understandably so because even if it did happen, there is no easy and straightforward way to prove it.

[fakedang]

> What they'd most likely output is a "report" with "findings" that "point to" or "suggest" certain things like bad protocols or insecure procedures or disconnected safety sensors etc. Hardly evidence, and not really actionable even if they were allowed to get there and eventually publish it

The WHO team wasn't even allowed near the labs, much less enter it. They got a very curated tour of Wuhan (which isn't surprising).

[j4yav]

Can a smoking gun really be circumstantial?

[nickalaso]

Being a little bit pedantic here, but isn't all evidence, for something that can't be proven mathematically or definitionally, circumstantial?

[gadf]

This article, and some top comments, are shifting the narrative to how we must not "demonize" China, and must work to deal with lab leaks in future, in effect, presuming the assumption that China is unequivocally to blame, covering it with the mere color of reasonableness and fairness. So with such careful narrative massaging, we get to hold onto our desire to pretend China is 100% to blame, but frame it reasonably.

This sort of bias, or propaganda, or narrative massaging, under the guise of reasonableness, and non-demoization is pernicious.

These sentiments are like, we can frame our China-blaming as reasonable, via pretending the assumption[0], so under the guise of "not demonizing China", "giving credit were due but still holding to account" we can hold onto our excuse to blame China, we can pretend the assumption that China is unequivocally to blame.

Bullshit. Unhelpful, bs. If you want to pretend that you are doing this under the guise of actually discovering the cause, you can to satisfy your own need to pretend that, but it's dishonest, and not actually helpful to discovering the cause.

Blaming the enemy of the day for the pestilence of the season is as old as the hills, and makes boring, and biased, history. And makes you all propagating such cant, useful idiots, manipulated puppets.

Also, how is everyone forgetting the childhood lesson that the one so eager to point the finger of blame is often the one with something to hide, so desperate to deflect suspicion away from themselves?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

[the-dude]

Could you please define "right near" ? Are we talking about the lab ~10km away ?

[mikhailfranco]

Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) is 300 m from the market.

Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), with the more highly classified work, is 14 km away, but linked to the PLA Hospital, WHCDC and seafood market on Line 2 of the Wuhan metro:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-the-laboratorie... (contains link to google maps)

https://zenodo.org/record/4119263

https://zenodo.org/record/4119263/files/COVID%20Pandemic%20B...

[MonsterBurger]

Would there be any entity that would travel between the two labs?

[exdsq]

The idea it spread via the seafood market has been largely debunked even by CCP and WHO -- there were cases before those occurred, there were no traces found there, etc...

[herbst]

And many initial cases having no connection to the market

[herbst]

On the other side we have a dying super power with a carot as president tgat proclaims the opposite is true.

Both sides cant be taken at face value.