German Spy Agency Concluded COVID Virus Likely Leaked From Lab (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0176704851
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/13/1835237/german-spy-agency-concluded-covid-virus-likely-leaked-from-lab
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/german-spy-agency-concluded-covid-virus-likely-leaked-lab-papers-say-2025-03-12/
> Germany's foreign intelligence service in 2020 [1]put at 80%-90% the likelihood that the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic was accidentally released from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, two German newspapers reported on Wednesday.
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> According to a joint report by publications Die Zeit and Sueddeutscher Zeitung, Germany's spying agency BND had indications that the institute had conducted gain-of-function experiments, whereby viruses are modified to become more transmissible to humans for research purposes.
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> It also had indications that numerous violations of safety regulations had occurred at the lab, the papers said. The spy agency assessment's was based on an unspecified intelligence operation code-named "Saaremaa" as well as on publicly-available data. It had been commissioned by the office of Germany's chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, but never published, the report said.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/german-spy-agency-concluded-covid-virus-likely-leaked-lab-papers-say-2025-03-12/
It was never published (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if they had published it, everyone involved in the report would immediately be labeled all sorts of disparaging words ending in "-ist" and "-phobe" regardless of how sound their logic was. Nonsense like that was why the orange one got elected.
Re:It was never published (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet Orange man pushed the lab leak theory ... I guess TDS has overcome science in the USA.
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ThEY wErE riGhT bUt TheYre STiLl duMB!
Jesus dude.
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Have you looked at your 401k recently?
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> He pushed it not because of insight but because that's what his dumbass base believed in. They were right this time because sometimes conspiracies are real. That still doesn't make him or them have wisdom. 99% of the shit they shovel is just that.
They're not right. Nothing has been published to show the infection started with a lab. No evidence has been shown for this.
If the orange goon had any evidence the infection started in the lab, he would made sure it got out. All he did was parrot what some people were saying because he wanted China to look bad. This is like Dick Cheney saying he knew Iraq had wmds and they knew where they were. No evidence, just a statement.
If you're going to make a statement that someone did something you better have the
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Actually the US intelligence agencies conclude the same thing for the same reason but because republicans headed up he committee liberals and their legacy media dismissed the findings.
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There is no consensus among US intelligence agencies that it came from a lab.
Four intelligence agencies have concluded natural exposure caused the pandemic (at least until Dec 2024).
Only two intelligence agencies came to that conclusion, and each blamed a different institute!
The FBI said it is the WIV, and the Dept of Energy said it is the Wuhan CDC.
And political leaning is at play as you say, but in the other direction: the FBI head was a Trump first term appointee, and the the new CIA head changed its sta
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I think Germany rather has no interest to provoke China like that
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Yet another a good point why orange man has social license to decimate the established order. The established order let all this happen to keep their profits from cheap chinese slave labour.
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I read (though admittedly I can't remember where) that the lab and the wet market shared a subway line.
The lab leak theory says that someone at the lab got infected while at the lab, then left and took the train, spreading it there.
Re:This doesn't explain (Score:5, Informative)
[1]This article [technologyreview.com] mentions the market is a half mile from the Hunan railway station, but that's it. It goes into detail how one virologist traced everything back to the wet market.
There is one scientist later on in the first part who does say they couldn't rule out someone who may have been infected at the lab visiting the market and starting the ball rolling, but they also say there is no evidence to back this up. Considering the number of people who ride that line each day, if there was a sick person from the lab spreading their infection, there should have been far more people getting sick all over the place. That didn't happen. The earliest known infections were all clustered around the market.
[2]This article [acsh.org] from February describes how zootonic spillover occurs. What they describe, based on the evidence, is what happened.
But again, if someone in the intelligence community is saying it inadvertently started in the lab, they need to provide the evience. Otherwise, this is another Iraq WMD scenario.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/19/1040390/covid-wuhan-natural-spillover-wuhan-wet-market-huanan/
[2] https://www.acsh.org/news/2025/02/04/covid-pandemic-probably-started-wuhan-market-animals-after-all-49277
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At this point it really does not matter the origin of COVID does it? What would it change?
We know NIAD and many of the people associated were conspiring to do gain of function research in contrivance of the law.
We know at least two supposedly credible first world intelligence services thought the lab leak theory to be the correct one.
We know how anyone who dared to continue to suggest the lab leak theory was treated punitively. The simple fact is we the public are so frequently lied to, manipulated, and fed
Re:This doesn't explain (Score:5, Insightful)
It does matter. If, as is most likely the case, this all started because China is harvesting wild animals in unsanitary conditions in close proximity to humans, that can be adjusted. You know, by NOT harvesting wild animals and puting them in casges in close proximity to humans.
This would be like saying what does it matter what the origin of the measles outbreak in Texas is from? What does it change? We know how to change this. Get vaccinated. The same with this. If everything points to the wet market, get rid of it.
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The answer to the measles outbreak in a Mennonite community in West Texas is to not let millions of illegals jump the border and bypass the shield of immunized population around it.
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Seriously, you're going to blame people in Texas being idiots on ... immigrants? You trump lickspittles are absolute ghouls.
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> It does matter. If, as is most likely the case, this all started because China is harvesting wild animals in unsanitary conditions in close proximity to humans, that can be adjusted. You know, by NOT harvesting wild animals and puting them in casges in close proximity to humans.
> This would be like saying what does it matter what the origin of the measles outbreak in Texas is from? What does it change? We know how to change this. Get vaccinated. The same with this. If everything points to the wet market, get rid of it.
I mean, most of the civilized world has already done this. It has nothing to do with Covid, or at least it shouldn't.
We know China is/was doing gain of function. We know wet markets are a cesspool for stuff like this. At this point it feels like the "where did it come from" question is an academic exercise so one group can go "I TOLD YOU SO".
China's rural economies depend on The wet markets (Score:2)
So they will be damned if they're going to let us take them down.
For me the real question is why is the German intelligence agency spewing obvious misinformation. Are they giving this to China in exchange for something? Because to your point China would very much like us to blame it on the lab leak so they can continue to run the wet markets. Also don't forget their slash and burn deforestation policies that also put people in close proximity to animals.
Whatever the case science is definitely on a b
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> At this point it really does not matter the origin of COVID does it? What would it change?
What kind of question is this? If we want to prevent a similar outbreak from happening, of course we would want to know the origin of Covid.
> What would it change?
If we understood the origin of Covid and whether it was preventable, you don't know what would change? The steps that could be taken to prevent this from happening again is what would change. Again, what kind of question IS this?
Lab week is also just silly (Score:2)
If you stop and think about it for a second. The virus does not spread well, really barely at all, by touch. And even the most rudimentary masking procedures are enough to stop it.
Never mind that the lab is supposed to have leaked from is a biohazard for lab. There is no lab on Earth so poorly run that you're going to have a virus like COVID-19 leak from it.
The counter argument is then that it was intentional and it was a bio weapon. If you have no clue about the science this one you could almost g
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Researchers from that lab sought medical help with rona symptoms a month before the first rona cases were officially reported by the Chinese government. [1]Here. [yahoo.com]
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/wuhan-lab-staff-sought-hospital-215837238.html
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Again, it does not say explicitly this is what happened. It says from an intelligence source. Either they have the information or they don't. Even the most recent CIA asessment does not say the lab leak theory is valid. It says it has low confidence.
Considering this came from the Trump administration, if they had any evidence to support this it would have been blasted from the towers.
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Nor does it explain the delay in China releasing the genomic data. Or the disappearance of Chinese whistleblowers. Or the gain-of-function Fauchi coverup/lies. There is a ton of fishy business surrounding something that seems pretty obvious.
Some people scream "but there is no evidence", well, I suppose you can go with what little "evidence" China supplied, to try and support a wet-market theory. And lack of evidence doesn't make something not true, just not verifiable.
Common-sense view: a novel coronavi
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It was already an epidemic in Wuhan by 22 November, which is the date that US intelligence first briefed trump in the White House on the outbreak in China. (I personally was informed of the epidemic on 11 December by a friend in Beijing, and neither of us is in immunology or epidemiology, or any medical field for that matter.) The article you linked to is simply based on incorrect or outdated information. The epidemic started in Wuhan probably in late October or early November, although Wikipedia cites pati
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Nothing found at the market was inconsistent with a lab leak origin, there was no animal found at the market... the worker who the virus hitched a ride with stopped at the market after work.
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> Nothing found at the market was inconsistent with a lab leak origin, there was no animal found at the market... the worker who the virus hitched a ride with stopped at the market after work.
False. Animals were found at the market AND investigators [1]narrowed it down to what type [cnn.com].
> After an in-depth analysis of the genetic material from hundreds of swabs taken from the walls, floors, machines and drains inside the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China — a site that’s been described as an epicenter of early spread of Covid-19 — scientists say they now know exactly which species of animals were in the same area where investigators also found the most positive samples the virus that causes Covid-19.
> Species present in the areas where the highest numbers of SARS-CoV-2 samples were found include raccoon dog, hoary bamboo rat, dog, European rabbit, Amur hedgehog, Malayan porcupine, Reeves’s muntjac, Himalayan marmot and masked palm civet.
> . . .
> Of the animals present at the market, rabbits, dogs and raccoon dogs are known to be susceptible to Covid-19 infections. Raccoon dogs have also been shown to transmit the infection, making them a strong candidate to be the animals that first passed the virus to humans.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/health/huanan-animal-market-analysis-covid-19/index.html
Re: This doesn't explain (Score:2)
It seems plausible to me that some janitor at the lab flogged a test animal to someone at the wet market instead of properly disposing of it
March 2019 .. (Score:1)
In March 2019 a breakthrough in producing a vaccine for SARS and MERS, then in 2020 we used the same breakthrough for Operation Warp Speed. How lucky.
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Just think of the mental gymnastics involved to be a part of MAGA and booing about the vaccine Trump helped create with operation warp speed. [1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/a... [nbcnews.com]
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1277404
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Most MAGA don't boo the vaccine because it exists, they boo it because of the mandates, false claims, and shaming of those who didn't want it, which later came along with it.
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Yeah, they sure are good at playing the victim and snowflake cards ...
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It's not really impressive that Trump did the bare minimum of what any president would do in the situation, but I guess his fans need to take whatever they can
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> In March 2019 a breakthrough in producing a vaccine for SARS and MERS, then in 2020 we used the same breakthrough for Operation Warp Speed. How lucky.
It's almost as if one [1]learns from the past and applies that knowledge [nih.gov] rather than starting from scratch.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7177048/
Didn't we all mostly agree on this (Score:2)
Maybe I'm misremembering this, but didn't a bunch of US emails come out where they admitted from international experts that this was a lab leak, but needed to be covered up? The likelihood of a natural mutation or evolution of a coronavirus being that destructive to humanity, is incredibly low, not zero, just very low. Pair that with the fact the reporting lab was studying and engineering viruses, and took a bunch of data rapidly offline, come on! If this wasn't a lab leak, they certainly went out of the
Uh oh (Score:1)
Has anybody disappeared their social media accounts yet? I thought that was the approved response.
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The left, that for decades was both skeptical of Big Pharma and believed in free speech, during 2020-2022 era was actively advocating mass censorship over COVID lab leak theory. Such historical abandonment of what used to be core beliefs cannot be simply explained by TDS.
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> "The left, that for decades was both skeptical of Big Pharma and believed in free speech, during 2020-2022 era was actively advocating mass censorship over COVID lab leak theory."
And forcing people to put the vaccine in their bodies, even if they didn't need it or want it. And forcing people to wear mostly ineffective simple masks. And trying to force through vaccine "passports." And quite a few other very anti-traditional-liberal stances.
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Do you have children attending a school? Were vaccines “forced” on them?
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Tons of Americans were forced to vaccinate or lose their jobs. It wasn't a secret. Had the previous administration gotten all it wanted, it would have been many more (over 100 million). Then there were all the State mandates and private ones as well. That isn't even counting children, who were at virtually zero risk.
No, it wasn't forced as in held-down and injected at gunpoint, but losing one's job would fit most people's definition of using force.
Re: So that's at least two now. (Score:1)
More - over in Europe and the Middle East where I lived and worked in the military at the time, the general story was that its a Chinese bioweapon research blunder, but that governments dont want to say that out loud and therefore spinned a different story for the public.
Also, German Spy Agency does not publish its data (Score:3)
So no independent veruification of the claims is possible. Hence their analysis is worthless.
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Data? That's not what spy agencies are up to. They are about hunting down sources and clues. They won't share their sources, for obvious reasons.
File it under: No Shit (Score:3)
The outbreak spread from a city with an Institute of Virology-lab in it. File it under: No shit.
Now let's talk about... (Score:1)
Mr "I am Science" Fauci, the research he authorized, the funding he authorized, and the amount of $ he made during COVID.
Is that allowed now? Or are we asserting the German Intel Services are secretly MAGA?
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Name someone better qualified in the field of virology than Fauci.
Bonus points if you can explain what gain of function means and whether it's good or bad.
Not possible (Score:2)
The technology to create COVID-19 via gain of function research simple speaking did not exist in 2019. Back in 2019, any virus created via gain of function research was basically pathetic at infecting actual people due to problems with the gain of function research methods at the time.
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Problems like what?
Wolf! Likely BS (Score:2)
...because in 2020 knowledge of the virus was limited. For example, changes that initially looked like tampering eventually were found in (natural) relatives of the virus. Viruses can and do exchange DNA (pervs!). Just because one can't initially think how nature could do something is not a reason to conclude it was artificial.
Look how many times they found "likely" signs of life on Mars only to back off. In one case the odd "organic like" nature of the soil in probe tests was eventually replicated via iner
I don't give a rat's ass what spy agencies say (Score:2)
I care what epidemiologists are saying and they're saying it wasn't leaked from a lab. They're saying that because that's what the evidence says.
I don't know what the German spy agencies are up to but whatever it is it's not good. I do find it hilarious that the sort of conspiracy theory nut jobs who would normally disbelieve a spy agency if they told them the sky was blue suddenly are all in on it.
The real problem though here is that by saying it's a lab leak it means we are going to blow off addre
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Well, at least there's a 10-20% chance you're right.
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> Right because it was people and not animals who carried it from the lab a short distance away.
It's like a 40 minute drive between the two.
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>> Right because it was people and not animals who carried it from the lab a short distance away.
> It's like a 40 minute drive between the two.
In many Chinese cities that's a 10 min walk
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here particularly it is a 2h walk
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gotta a chuckle out of this but don't have mod points to give you
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So, once you've concluded it came from the lab, what difference does the wet market even make? It originated at the lab. From there, it went to the wet market, and Amsterdam, and Provo, Utah... yeah, the world was infected. From the lab.
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Precisely.
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Both the wet market and the lab leak hypothesis can be true.
If somebody is selling used lab animals to make money on the side, we would not expect the other animals to be infected, as the contaminated food animals would be already dead at time of delivery to the market.
Wet Market (Score:3)
is it just me, or does that sound like a sexy place?