That noise from the social media sky this weekend was the gnashing of teeth that has angered coronavirus conspiracy theorists. U.S. government report Debunking their most cherished claims.

A long-awaited report released Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) lied on the theory that the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes the novel coronavirus leaked from a virology lab in Wuhan, China. . The disease was first detected in humans.

Lab leak conspiracy theorists believed the report justified their claims, which had hitherto had no valid scientific evidence.

Instead, it did the exact opposite.

The report was issued in response to the COVID-19 Origins Act, which President Biden signed into law in March. The law required intelligence agencies to declassify all information on the subject in their possession and to preserve information that could compromise national security or sources or methods of intelligence gathering.

If you think conspiracy theorists will be satisfied with the report’s conclusion that their claims have no basis, think again. As soon as the four-page document was made public, they outraged that intelligence agencies must be involved in an ongoing global cover-up and that it would be against the law not to come forward fully.

“It’s become so unbelievable Governments are not trying to hide what they know Origins of #Covid When you see a report like this that doesn’t contain any of the requested information,” tweeted leading lab leak conspiracy theorist Alina Chan.

Zhang is the co-author of a breathtaking book that claims the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was inadvertently or intentionally leaked to infect the world. I reviewed the book on these pages and explained why its “evidence” is lacking.

Chan’s co-author, British science writer Matt Ridley, said: similarly disappointing intelligence reportstweeted that “Intelligence agencies have been shown to be either incompetent or in serious violations of the law.”

Another response was to simply lie about the content of the intelligence report. That was the approach of Mike Pompeo, who was Donald Trump’s secretary of state when the coronavirus pandemic began, under the watchful eye of anti-China State Department officials. Concocted and promoted the lab leak scenario.

Pompeo’s view even on twitter It said the report “confirms what we knew from the beginning. The only logical explanation is that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan.” In fact, it didn’t say anything of the sort.

The release of the report is also unlikely to derail rising Republican congressional claims that US scientists are colluding with the Chinese government to cover up evidence of China’s complicity in the pandemic.

The same Friday as the intelligence report was released, the Republican-led House Coronavirus Pandemic Subcommittee said: Subpoena from Christian AndersenA top virologist at the La Jolla-based Scripps Research Institute, he has led Andersen, Anthony Fauci, and other real scientists to falsely claim that the virus reached humans through natural means rather than through human effort. The Chinese government as part of a closer investigation into whether it fabricated the conclusions.

The intelligence report also serves as an indictment to the press for believing the lab leak, despite the sheer lack of evidence. These organizations include: wall street journal, new york times, Atlantic and pro publica.

They cite the lab leak hypothesis with varying levels of credibility. The Wall Street Journal is perhaps the company that has been most eager to provide this half-baked—actually half-baked—applause trap. By lying to the oft-cited defense that its news pages are distinct from right-wing opinion pages. The lab leak theory has been promoted by newswriters and opinion writers alike.

The saddest example is that of Propublica. ProPublica has built on its reputation for painstaking and thorough investigative reporting in one case, including the critical and vital exposure of corrupt conflicts of interest by Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito, Jr. recently. Defiled by cooperating. An article published in Vanity Fair magazine last October does not have such a reputation.

After that article was published, I outlined various flaws in the article. as did others. The intelligence report specifically focuses on his two main allegations in the ProPublica article. More on that later.

First, let’s examine the content of the intelligence report and its background. Contrary to Pompeo’s assertions, the report “does not take advantage of the two most likely origins of the pandemic.”

The “zoonosis” hypothesis, accepted by most virologists and epidemiologists, is that the virus was transmitted to humans through wild animals, almost certainly through the wildlife market in the metropolis of Wuhan, where Animals believed to be intermediate carriers of the Sars2 virus were being sold. Scientists have found molecular and epidemiological evidence linking this market to the epidemic, which began in December 2019.

A second hypothesis is that the origin can be traced back to the Wuhan lab. This is based purely on speculation that the lab was doing research on the virus itself, or a relative of a virus that somehow escaped into the wild.

Intelligence reports say both hypotheses “remain plausible.” However, anyone with even a little bit of critical thinking will know that it runs counter to the laboratory leak hypothesis after reading the text.

Officials say that while WIV was engaged in genetically manipulating the virus for research, any of that research involved “SARS-CV-2, a closely related species, or a closely related backbone virus.” There is no evidence,” he said. the origin of pandemics. “

The report specifically addresses two purported pieces of evidence promoted by the lab leak camp. One is that in the fall of 2019, several WIV researchers became ill with the novel coronavirus, which, in other words, was circulating in the lab long before it reached the outside community.

This claim has always been rather contrived. Its most enthusiastic proponent, The Wall Street Journal, has confirmed that the disease is “either a COVID-19 disease or a seasonal disease.” (November, when they supposedly fell ill, is flu season, after all.) The journal attributed the findings to an anonymous source.

The information report said the researchers’ symptoms were “consistent with, but not diagnostic of, COVID-19” and “could be caused by a number of illnesses.” Some of the symptoms “did not match COVID-19,” he said. Indeed, “several WIV researchers became mildly ill in the fall of 2019, and they … experienced symptoms consistent with colds and allergies.”

The report says there is no evidence that the WIV had samples of SARS-CoV-2 or its close relatives prior to the outbreak of the pandemic when it began working on SARS-CoV-2. Two viruses known to the institute to study, and which conspiracy theorists claim may have been engineered by SARS-CoV-2, “are not direct ancestors of SARS-CoV-2.” Not close enough to CoV-2.

There are also claims that WIV experienced a biosafety incident at the end of 2019 that prompted its crisis response. Conspiracy theorists claim this must be a leak from a lab. An intelligence report states: No. The WIV hosted a biosafety training course for virus officers in November 2019, but the training “appears to be routine rather than specific incident response.”

It brings us back to the irresponsible conspiracy theories of the press. Newspapers and cable news programs have long equated the lab leak theory with the zoonotic theory in some way, often claiming that both lack evidence.

It’s terribly misleading. There is no evidence of leakage from the lab. In fact, an experienced virologist argued that WIV could produce her SARS-Cov-2 virus in the lab Incredible in sheer fantasy. However, epidemiological and virological evidence for zoonotic diseases is steadily accumulating.

The organization most ashamed of an intelligence report is ProPublica. That article relied largely on former US government China analyst Toy Reed, who claimed to be more fluent in Chinese government jargon than native Chinese speakers, and this The allegations should have frowned upon ProPublica and its affiliate Vanity Fair magazine.

The analyst said his skill allowed him to interpret government documents as referring to certain issues. It was a response to the accident that occurred at WIV in November 2019. It is this episode that intelligence reports now say has nothing to do with the imminent danger. After the article’s publication, several genuine Chinese-language experts claimed that Reid misread the document.

ProPublica also credited and cited an article about a sick WIV researcher.

ProPublica responded to criticism of the work a month later with an editor’s note that largely defended Reid’s interpretation and supported the story. The article should have been retracted. Intelligence reports are now tearing down part of the article’s central claim about the “biocontainment incident,” a lab accident.

ProPublica Editor-in-Chief Steven Engelberg told me in an email on Sunday: [the intelligence report] And we plan to produce several reports over the next week to better understand the findings and methodology. If there is anything new, we will keep ProPublica readers updated. ”

At the time of this writing, ProPublica has not released an update.

The Lab Leakage Cabal smeared scientists and persuaded the public to believe theories that had no factual backing. they should be ashamed