Not even March, February https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-bans-zero-hedge-coronav...
Now, I don't read that site. I don't know what evidence the state dept has now. I don't know where the virus came from. —- BUT, I do know CBS/Media, Twitter and critics didn't know then nor now either. To be fair ZeroHedge was guessing too.
I have reason to believe that if the outgoing administration claims to have reason to believe something but refuses to provide the evidence behind it, they are lying.
https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1350292056782954498
Here's a very serious, legitimate review of the possible origins of SARS-CoV-2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01205-5
Unfortunately, from my experience, most people are going to believe what they want to believe, based more on political affiliation more than anything else, and the empirical facts don't register too strongly.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/state-department-cables-corona...
If Pompeo is running for president in 2024, a war with Iran will benefit him in much the same way the war with Iraq (which was based on untrue claims) benefited Bush. It's in his interest (both in the sense of a personal interest and in the sense of consistent with his neoconservative / hawkish beliefs, which are much stronger than Trump's) to sour the relationship with Iran and also to prepare the American people for the idea that we should be going to war with them.
The Trump administration is stoking the flames against the mainland China on their way out.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-esca...
So this basically boils down to who to trust, your friend's uncle who works at Nintendo, or a highly regarded evolutionary biologist.
> After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cheney worried about the dangers of nuclear proliferation and effective control of nuclear weapons from the Soviet nuclear arsenal that had come under the control of newly independent republics-Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan-as well as in Russia itself. Cheney warned about the possibility that other nations, such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, would acquire nuclear components after the Soviet collapse.
and later in that biography:
> A draft Defense Planning Guidance issued early in 1992 envisioned several scenarios in which the United States might have to fight two large regional wars at one time–for example, against Iraq again, against North Korea, or in Europe against a resurgent, expansionist Russia.
Come Cheney's vice presidency, there was all of a sudden talk about an "axis of evil" - Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
Anyway, obviously Pompeo hasn't announced, but there is widespread speculation based on concrete actions by him - see e.g. https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-12-09/mi... - so I don't think it's unreasonable for me to say "If Pompeo is running."
And the most direct way it would be comparable to Bush/Iraq is that it would falsely allege that al-Qaeda is linked to the government of a Middle Eastern country and use it as an excuse for regime change in that country.
You may or may not have noticed, but there are some real problems we should be thinking about, including the very real probability that the B.1.1.7 variant is going to be much harder to suppress, and how to get our vaccination program on track. Instead we end up talking about these distractions that have much more speculation than evidence behind them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/politics/state-dept-ta...
> WASHINGTON — The United States said on Saturday that it would relax its restrictions on interactions between American officials and their counterparts in Taiwan as the Trump administration seeks to lock in a tougher line against Beijing in its final days.
> ...The moves, some outside experts said, are meant to lay a trap for Mr. Biden, forcing him either to pay a domestic political cost if he unwinds them or to sour relations with Beijing if he does not.
Jan. 11:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/politics/cuba-terroris...
> WASHINGTON — The State Department designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism on Monday in a last-minute foreign policy stroke that will complicate the incoming Biden administration’s plans to restore friendlier relations with Havana.
> ...On the campaign trail, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke of a return to Mr. Obama’s more open approach to Havana, pledging to “promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.”
> While the Biden administration can remove Cuba from the terrorism list, doing so will require a review process that could take months.
Jan 12:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/pompeo-iran-q...
> WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda’s new base of operations is in Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday, using his last days in office to tie together two of what he called the world’s greatest terrorism threats but offering no underlying intelligence as evidence.
----
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/opinion/mike-pompeo-state...
> But Mr. Pompeo has not been idle. Over the past week, he unleashed a series of actions whose only real purpose appears to be to make life as difficult as possible for his successor at the State Department. He put Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, he plans to designate the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization, he eased restrictions on contacts between American diplomats and Taiwan officials and he claimed that Iran is a “home base” for Al Qaeda.
> ...Some of the actions Mr. Pompeo took over the past week might be defensible, were they taken in the context of a coherent foreign policy. But coming days before a change in administration, their sole identifiable purpose is to maliciously plant obstacles — some commentators have called them time bombs or booby traps — before the incoming administration and President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for Mr. Pompeo’s successor at State, Antony Blinken, are in place.
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/1/21243148/why-some-labs-work-on-...
One of the best articles I have seen on the lab-made hypothesis is here:
https://yurideigin.medium.com/lab-made-cov2-genealogy-throug...
If you want to go down a more skeptical route, closer into conspiracy theories and Chinese politics, you can read some of the writings on this site:
https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/blog/scientific-evidence-and...
Please, when reading these, keep your scientist hat on and evaluate the claims with an open mind.
That being said, if anyone has links to rebuttals of some of the key ideas behind these articles, or further evidence of natural origin beyond the Andersen et al Nature paper, please link it, I'd very much like to change my mind.
That said, there are facts, and they are relevant: the fact that COV RaTG13 has 96.2% similarity to SARS-COV-2. The incredible diversity of bat coronaviruses, and the fact that only fraction are studied and understood, despite serious study by the WIV.
Here's another good quote from another good thread: And investigating zoonotic origins can take decades, and you may NEVER find the "smoking bat" or whatever other intermediate species that may be involved. It's like looking for a needle in a planet-sized haystack. -- https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/13497545972759142...
The main point that I was trying to make, which I stand by, is that most people are going to base their beliefs about this question on essentially political considerations: do you trust the CCP or the US State Dept more? Unfortunately, both of those institutions have done terrible damage to objective scientific inquiry, and in my opinion neither one is really deserving of trust. Better to follow the science where it leads, but this is an often frustrating and time consuming process.
The mask issue was a debacle from a scientific communications point of view. In the early days, there was legitimate debate among scientists regarding the value of masks. But I think the main thing that went wrong was a paternalistic attitude, trying to address supply chain issues of N95 mask usage by medical and other frontline workers by convincing people that masks weren't effective. That, I think most agree, was a huge mistake.
Of course, your actual statement that highly regarded virologists tweeting that masks were "stupid" and "couldn't be effective" is false, and you probably know that.