You got good advice from readers in your Lab Leak posts #1 – #3. The last one, not so much.
I do think it could be significant that the lab leak nonsense is surfacing in the same week as rather hawkish Congressional hearings and some weapon-rattling by usual suspects, but in a different way than correspondent #4. Namely, that the hawkish faction wants to stir things up, and Lab Leak is one of their tools. Is it possible that Chris Wray is just a little bit hawkish? Hm?
The DOE change is small and could easily be due to political forces, particularly at DOE headquarters. You think there are no hawks there? Hm?
In any case, the predominant opinion of the intelligence assessment remains zoonosis at low confidence or not enough information.
Your discussion in #4, though, is off-base. We do have a very good idea of how SARS-CoV-2 leapt into humans: zoonosis. At least three or four solid scientific papers support this, and it’s the default hypothesis. No strong evidence has been advanced for a lab leak, and those proponents don’t even have a single scenario. This Twitter thread explains it nicely:
There’s another difference between my approach to the Haiti cholera story and the lab leakers that I didn’t haven’t space to include: If you’re gonna make an extraordinary claim, you’re gonna have to clear a higher bar of evidence. https://t.co/yZ6w38A4JI
— Jonathan M. Katz may or may not be notable (@KatzOnEarth) March 2, 2023
