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B) Pseudoscientific grifters such as RFJ jr are far far less credible than the CDC, and yet here we are. He specifically said COVID-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets Black and white people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
C) Do your own research and look at "The relativity of Wrong" recently submitted on this website.
The whole time, it was obviously wrong to reject the lab leak theory out of hand. Yet people are stupid herd animals, and instead of tri-state "it is irrelevant in the current context" they argued that the theory was definitely wrong. That same fallibility applies to people working for institutions (see also the early CDC lie implying that masks weren't effective, based on wanting to keep the supply for the healthcare industry).
Then after the dust settles, people stay dug in and the politically-colored battle lines never go away. I'd say this kind of establishment-clearly-wrong but dissent-with-nothing-productive underlies most of the energy fueling the destructionists.
There has always been tons of discussions if GoF is a good idea, for years. You don't know anything about the topic you are commenting about, do you?
It's the most bloody obvious explanation, and in a sane world where "MAGA" didn't just turn off everyone's brain cells and cause them to blindly repeat what they're told, any alternative would need some serious heft to be convincing.
The particular lab (Wuhan Institute of Virology) is not a 'coronavirus gain of function laboratory', but an institute studying viruses, including the coronavirus, and including gain of function research. And, critically, "the viruses used in these experiments were not physically present but rather consisted of synthesized genetic sequences, meaning they were not complete, nor infectious viral particles capable of replication, and the pseudo-virus experiments conducted to test human cell entry lacked the ability to replicate." (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12040609/).
It's possible that WIV did screw up and create, intentionally or otherwise, the virus responsible for the pandemic. And, WIV has been linked with military research programs. But, it's not a slam dunk, and the best/widest scientific consensus is still, in 2025, that the origin was natural/biological and came as a result of human/wild-animal contact.
Not the press, not some rando on twitter, not some anonymous and probably made up "source", not "people are saying"-- which actual CDC employee or appointee did this?
I keep asking, and people keep making up bullshit.
> Q Mr. President, I wanted to ask Dr. Fauci: Could you address these suggestions or concerns that this virus was somehow manmade, possibly came out of a laboratory in China?
> THE PRESIDENT: Want to go?
> Q You studied this virus. What are the prospects of that?
> DR. FAUCI: There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve. And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.
(The study he refers to is "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2" [1], published March 17.) It seems that much was made of this particular remark. It doesn't rule out the idea of an unmodified virus leaked from the lab, but the widespread theories have always been aimed at the gain-of-function research occuring there.
[0] https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/re...
This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines, and also please stop creating accounts to do that with? You're welcome here as long as you respect the same rules that apply to all commenters.
In any case, the assertion made me curious about what was actually said by government officials and affiliates regarding lab-leak theories, and drilling down into some of the blog posts led to that particular statement and the paper associated with it.
People do often specifically mean a human-modified virus when they talk about "the lab-leak hypothesis", especially given the GoF research conducted there, so I'd say it's true that Fauci wanted to cast water on that particular version of the hypothesis. (If there's anything that annoys me, it's when people equivocate over what is and isn't a lab leak. But if you must know, I personally find the stronger forms uncompelling.)
Of course, many have put far stronger language into the mouths of politicians and officials (most of whom in 2020 were quite careful with their words), and the tales can easily grow in the retelling, but it doesn't mean it's not worthwhile to focus on the kernel of truth about what actually occurred. "It wasn't the CDC, it was Fauci/others, and they were only talking about a manmade virus, against which the evidence is still strong" would have been much clearer than "it's all BS".
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cdc+fauci&df=2019-08-31..2020-09-0...
But he did consider that research to adequately "address" the concerns of a "manmade" virus, and I don't think it would be uncharitable to interpret that as a dismissal of those concerns. After all, he always could have ended his statement with a noncommittal "but this is just one study, and we need more evidence to really know for sure".
And a lot of people do specifically mean a virus that was genetically modified or otherwise selected for human transmissibility when they talk about a "lab leak", so at least he was trying to talk down that version of a lab leak theory.
(Personally, I do think a lot of the theories of an genetically-modified virus are overblown, both then and now, I just wanted to give some perspective for what he actually said.)
https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-emails/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/08/trumps-cdc-director...
Who gives a shit if they did? (and from looking at the comments below it seems like they actually didn't)
Does knowing it came from a lab help you not get Covid? It's called the Centers for Disease Control, not the Pandemic Origin Investigation Bureau.
It was Fauci's lot who tried to do a cover up.
Redfield's telling of the tale is quite interesting if you are in to that sort of thing https://youtu.be/oMlhvnMpRU0?t=119