https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...-s-wuhan-lab-virus-claim-20200504-p54pk3.html Australian intelligence agencies have questioned evidence trumpeted by United States officials supposedly linking the coronavirus to a Wuhan laboratory as concerns within the government grow that the push will derail efforts to eliminate dangerous wildlife wet markets. Senior members of the Australian intelligence community told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age a research document shared in political circles under the Five Eyes intelligence arrangement was mostly based on news reports and contained no material from intelligence gathering. Australian intelligence officials have no evidence suggesting the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the likely source of the virus. A 15-page "dossier" has been widely quoted by local and international media about China's alleged cover-up of the virus. Australian intelligence officials have since identified a research report which was based entirely on open source material. The officials said it was likely the reports were the same. United States secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Sunday there is "enormous evidence" the coronavirus outbreak originated in the Chinese laboratory but did not provide any facts to back up his assertion. Mr Pompeo also said he agreed that the virus was not man-made. Multiple senior intelligence sources who spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in recent days have confirmed that Australia has still not been provided with any evidence that strongly suggests the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak. Intelligence agencies have not been able to rule out the Wuhan lab, but the more likely cause of the virus is still the city's Huanan Seafood Market where environmental samples of the virus were found. We've heard all about the impact the coronavirus will have on the national economy, but now figures have been released revealing which local government economies will be hardest hit. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday the Australian government did not have strong evidence linking the Wuhan lab to the virus. "There's nothing that we have that would indicate that was the likely source," Mr Morrison said. Senior members of the Morrison government are concerned the promotion of the theory is hampering efforts by Australia to pursue an independent coronavirus inquiry and its push to permanently end the sale of exotic wildlife in Chinese wet markets. China announced a ban on exotic wildlife meat at the peak of the local outbreak in February but it has not eliminated the sale of animals for medicinal use. Chinese state media reacted furiously to the Wuhan lab Five Eyes claims published by News Corp Australia on Saturday, accusing it of perpetuating a US campaign led by Steve Bannon. In a series of comments last week, Mr Bannon, a former executive chairman of far-right website Breitbart and advisor to President Donald Trump, said China had to be held accountable for a "biological Chernobyl" and accused the Wuhan lab of premeditated murder. Describing Mr Bannon as the "living fossil of the cold war," the Communist mouthpiece, People's Daily said the Trump administration was engaging in "unprecedented propaganda warfare" while trying to impede global efforts in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, said media allegations could further exacerbate rising political tensions. "Some Australian media and political elites have lost their independent judgment of the country's overall interests and have adopted a US-led approach to smearing China over COVID-19," he told Beijing's Global Times. There was also widespread concern within the government about Victorian Liberal senator Sarah Henderson's comments in News Corp papers on Monday that called for all virus research by foreign scientists in Australian laboratories to stop until a safety and national security review was done. Talking points distributed by the Prime Minister's office on Monday morning reminded Coalition MPs that the CSIRO undertakes due diligence before entering into research partnerships. Senator Henderson was commenting on reports that the CSIRO's bio-containment facility in Geelong has been undertaking research jointly funded by the Australian and Chinese governments. CSIRO released a statement confirming it had no current joint research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and said it undertook all research in accordance with strict biosecurity and legislative requirements, which took security concerns into account. Liberal MP Dave Sharma, who has been vocal in his calls for the global review, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he was not aware of any security concerns with CSIRO's research. "Scientific research cooperation and collaboration on zoonotic diseases with scientists from China and elsewhere is valuable, and important to help us better understand the nature of these diseases," he said. Eryk Bagshaw is an economics correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based at Parliament House in Canberra
Does Australian intelligence work for Australians or the Chinese these days? Other parts of your government, the media, and industry giants have clearly gone over to supporting the chinese before they would protect the interests of either the Australians or Americans so no one there should be quick to take Australian intelligence reports at face value without questioning them. As we know, the Americans have learned a hard lesson in that area too. The intelligence agencies that you think are filled with patriots are not necessarily working to protect American interests and are working their own agenda. It's a sad day when you realize that but there are costs to not realizing it too. You have forces in your government and society that made you China's bitch and want to keep you there. Resist that. The Brits did not want to be Brussel's bitch so went through a similar awakening. And the MAGA movement in the U.S was an awakening too whereby people realized that we had given our country away to China, the UN, and all sorts of bullshit forces. This is a time when the Brits, the Australians, and the Americans should be working more closely together. Not figuring out why we should be blaming each other and trying to act good so that the Chinese will not be pissed at us. Frig them. China has the world flat on its ass and everyone is afraid to piss them off. That is stupid, trance-state stuff.
Well it's great two or more Western countries disagree, it will mean the inquiry into this should become more intense.
Americans: Seem to think that poverty and failure are morally suspect. Canadians: Seem to believe that wealth and success are morally suspect. Brits: Seem to believe that wealth, poverty, success, and failure are inherited. Aussies: Seem to think that none of this matters after several beers.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...eory-that-divides-u-s-spies?srnd=premium-asia Bloomberg › Trump Pushes Virus-From-China-Lab Theory That Divides U.S. Spies John Lauerman May 05, 2020 To hear U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo tell it, the evidence is clear: The novel coronavirus that has killed more than a quarter million people worldwide likely escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory that studies some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens. But inside the halls of the U.S. intelligence community, the evidence is less definitive, while intelligence agencies around the world are also casting doubt on that theory. A majority of the 17 agencies that provide and analyze intelligence for the U.S. government believe the pandemic started after the virus was leaked from the Wuhan lab, according to a person familiar with the matter. The agencies, the person said, point to circumstantial evidence that includes “open source” information, meaning publicly available research, including from scientists at the lab, as well as information from other researchers studying the origin of the virus. Others familiar with the intelligence, however, describe more pronounced divisions among and within the agencies, which often look at the same set of facts but come to different interpretations. Two people familiar with the intelligence said the case for any possible origin is largely circumstantial since the U.S. has very little information from the ground to back up the lab-escape theory or any other. U.S. Spies See No Human Role in Making or Modifying Coronavirus What is clear is that the devastation of the outbreak caught Trump off guard. He had planned on campaigning on the strength of the U.S. economy and said virus cases would quickly fall to zero. Now, with almost 70,000 Americans dead from the virus, he’s increasingly trying to shift more of the blame toward China. The Wuhan lab at the center of the debate is known for doing research on bats, a leading carrier of coronaviruses like this one, which adds to the case for this particular pathogen, Sars-Cov-2, to have escaped from there, the person said. The U.S. government cites open-source reports that the Wuhan lab wasn’t adhering to strict safety protocols while studying animals and dangerous viruses. And Chinese officials have continued to obfuscate when the U.S. and other countries have asked to investigate the outbreak and initial response, the person said. Last week’s assessment from the intelligence community ruled out the possibility the virus was man-made. The same report also offered a signal the intelligence community is not aligned on the lab-escape theory, remaining silent on the question of whether the virus escaped from the lab, the “wet market,” or somewhere else. Another possibility is that the virus got its start in one of China’s “wet markets” -- sometimes loosely regulated open-air markets where animals are sold for food. There is a wet market in Wuhan, not far from the lab, and the data provided by the Chinese shows clusters of cases between the market and laboratory. Three European officials with knowledge of the discussions within their governments cast doubt on any narrative suggesting the virus was leaked from the lab, though they said it remains possible researchers in the facility were examining the coronavirus. ‘Five Eyes’ In addition, an assessment shared within the “Five Eyes” intelligence network -- the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada -- found it was “highly unlikely” the outbreak began as an accident in the laboratory, two Western officials told CNN on Monday. That’s despite a 15-page dossier of Five Eyes intelligence that concludes China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence about the pandemic, obtained by Australia’s Saturday Telegraph newspaper. Even if the virus was studied in the lab there is nothing to suggest that happened before the outbreak began, one of the people familiar with the matter said; scientists in China may have simply been looking at it once it emerged. Barring access to the lab and Chinese cooperation, it would be difficult for U.S. intelligence to reach a definitive conclusion, another said. Where Are We in Quest for Coronavirus Drugs, Vaccine?: QuickTake Trump and Pompeo, however, have offered little of this nuance in their descriptions of the origin, with Pompeo citing “enormous evidence“ that backs up the lab-escape theory and Trump promising a full report that will definitively point to a lab escape as the origin. “I think it will be very conclusive,” Trump said Sunday in an interview with Fox News. “I think they made -- personally, I think they made a horrible mistake and they didn’t want to admit it.” That’s despite the U.S. continuing to call for increased access to Chinese data about the virus, emphasizing the uncertainty around the outbreak. Trump echoed that call again Tuesday as he left the White House for a trip to Arizona, saying the U.S. wanted China to be more transparent. “We want to find out what happened,” Trump said. As Trump Blames China, Beijing Directs Fury at His Top Diplomat The potentially competing messages underscore a campaign to vilify China over its handling of the outbreak, with Trump also saying Beijing took steps to cover up the true nature of the virus that allowed it to spread around the world. The pandemic has destroyed Trump’s main argument for re-election -- a booming U.S. economy -- as government-imposed social distancing measures resulted in the loss of more than 30 million jobs. Americans are losing confidence in Trump’s handling of the outbreak, a poll released Tuesday by Monmouth University shows. About 51% say he’s done a bad job, compared to 42% who think he’s done a good job, the survey showed. That’s a swing of six percentage points since March, when 45% said he’d done a bad job, according to the university. But both the president and his top diplomat have focused less on well-documented missteps and evasions, and instead are highlighting the largely unproven theory of the virus’s escape from the Wuhan lab. Americans’ Views The decision could be rooted in polling data the president’s team has been examining as they seek to rehabilitate his standing before November’s election. In an Economist/YouGov survey from last week, 45% of Americans believe the coronavirus was created in a laboratory -- including two-thirds of Republican voters. Last week’s assessment from the intelligence community ruled out that possibility, but many people may have their minds made up. The same report also offered a signal the intelligence community is not aligned on the lab-escape theory, remaining silent on the question of whether the virus originated at the lab, the “wet market,” or somewhere else. The intelligence community’s determination that the virus was not man-made likely originated from scientific study of the virus’s genetic material, which also could provide clues to how the outbreak began. Viruses constantly incur mutations in their genetic material -- some big, some small and most with little consequence to the pathogen’s transmissibility or virulence. However, these mutations tell a story to geneticists, who can use them just as naturalists use tags to track the migrations of animals in the wild. Spotting copies of the same version of the virus can help disease trackers trace the virus back to its origins, and forward to other destinations on the globe. In March, a group of top geneticists looked closely at the coronavirus to see if they could determine whether it had come from a natural source, such as an animal, or had either escaped or been deliberately released from a laboratory. In work published in Nature Medicine, the group focused on variations in key portions of the virus, such as one called the receptor binding domain, a portion of the “spike” protein that plays a critical role in cell entry. While coronaviruses are known not to change as quickly as some other viruses, the receptor binding domain is its most variable portion, and six of its key regions are critical for determining which host it’s best suited to infect, human or otherwise. The virus that causes Covid-19, Sars-CoV-2, is unlikely to have been deliberately developed in a lab because it binds so efficiently to human cells that it was almost certainly an adaptive process, rather than one designed by researchers, according to the geneticists. Pangolins, Bats In addition to bats, coronaviruses have also been found in pangolins, the armored mammals that live in Asia, and the six key viral sequences in some of those strains are very similar to those seen in the Sars-CoV-2, the researchers said. That suggests, they said, that its spike protein -- the prybar giving the virus entry to cells -- is “the result of natural selection,” rather than lab experiments. “It’s hard to say something is definitely not” from a laboratory, said David Matthews, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Bristol who wasn’t part of the team that wrote the Nature Medicine paper. “But it’s highly unlikely.” The more definitive proclamations from Trump and Pompeo have prompted calls from international organizations for the U.S. to produce whatever intelligence or scientific evidence they have. ‘Speculative’ Theories Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s emergencies program, said Tuesday that information that the lab was the origin would be “a very important piece of public health information for future control” and that the organization viewed the determination by U.S. officials as “speculative” until more support was offered. “If that data and evidence is available, then it will be for the United States government to decide whether and when it can be shared, but it is difficult for the WHO to operate in an information vacuum in that regard,” Ryan said at a news conference. At a hearing in Washington on Tuesday, Democrats raised concern about whether Trump’s nominee to serve as the director of national intelligence, Representative John Ratcliffe, would be an independent voice. Ratcliffe promised that if he’s confirmed “the intelligence community will be laser-focused on getting all of the answers that we can regarding” how and why the virus spread. But Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who aligns with Democrats, said Trump may be pushing intelligence agencies to back a theory that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab. “The question should be, ‘Where did the virus come from?’” King said. “Not, ‘Don’t you think it came from a lab?’” Chinese state media has also attacked the claims by U.S. officials, with Global Times editor Hu Xijin tweeting that the U.S. government was “putting on a show” and calling for Pompeo to produce his evidence. “By demanding to investigate Wuhan lab, they are trying to create continuous controversy and focus, to fool the American public,” he wrote. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a Fox News interview Tuesday that the U.S. would share information “at the appropriate time” while offering the caveat that “we continue to investigate these matters.” Azar said that Pompeo may have access to intelligence about the laboratory not available to Fauci, and accused Chinese officials of impeding the investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. “Let me be clear: China can resolve this, China can be transparent and collaborative,” Azar said. — With assistance by Chris Strohm, and Steven T. Dennis