Michael Shellenberger’s Public today released a blockbuster story, “First Person Sickened By COVID-19 Was Chinese Scientist Who Oversaw “Gain Of Function” Research That Created Virus,” which generously credits Racket. The story cites three government officials in naming scientist Ben Hu, who was in charge of “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as the “patient zero” of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The secrets of both the pandemic’s origin and the reason for America’s at-best-sluggish investigation of same have become the mother of all political footballs, and today’s news is likely to be just the first in a series of loud surprises.
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Numerous federal agencies appear to have designed their probes of Covid-19’s origins so as to discount the possibility of lab origin in advance.
We were told, for instance, that despite longstanding interest in the Wuhan Institute as a potential security concern, at least one intelligence agency overruled a majority of its in-house investigators to produce a report on the pandemic’s origin discounting the lab-leak hypothesis.
Two years ago I wrote on LessWrong that my likelihood for the lab leak hypothesis 99% hypothesis. Given that updating on evidence is important I think I'm warranted to update to 99.9%.
I was wrong when I expected that the truth comes out sooner because I underrate the extent to which the intelligence community will try to mislead the public. In retrospect, that seems like a stupid mistake. Nevertheless, we seem now at the point where the public evidence will force more organizations to change their assessments.
We might also come into the phase where the press will start to focus on how the lab leak theory was suppressed.
Some people are invested emotionally, politically, and career-ally in said denial. I am curious how many of them will have the humility to admit they were wrong. Sadly, this has become my only metric for the quality of public servants: Can they admit it when they are wrong? Do they offer to change, or do they just blame others for their failures? I assume none of them have this capacity until I see it. The "lab leak" story will offer an opportunity for us to observe a large number of public servants either admit their mistakes ... or not.