The WIV did not do any work on Coronaviruses under BSL4. They did gain-of-function experiments under BSL2 and BSL3.
What are some of the real-world consequences to this?
It seems that Fauci and Collins already saw the writing on the wall when the Republicans got the majority in Congress and decided to end their careers. That means they can't be fired for it.
After misleading the public in the Iraqi WMD case, there was some accounting in the media and an attempt to improve structures to avoid getting lied to by authorities. It's possible that our media institutions aren't completely lost and will do some accounting of why they failed to inform us.
only one would involve investigators missing something?
Investigators always miss something and we are likely going to find more information in the future.
That doesn't change the fact that we have overwhelming evidence.
If you look at the article in Public, it makes the case: We know that the people at the WIV put a Furin cleavage side via gain-of-function modification into a Coronaviruses and we know that they did their research without the safety precautions that you would need and we know that one of the first patients was one of the people working with Coronaviruses at the WIV.
That's already a quite good argument and I can see why it alone isn't enough for 99.9% confidence but we are not limited to it.
I think the framing of focusing on public servants is one about obscuring responsibility for people on forums like this who went along with the disinformation campaign to suppress the lab leak theory.
That depends on whether users value privacy and might be scared about a device that has deep access or whether users have no problem with that.
When Apple spends its marketing dollars on speaking about how it should be scary when a device has access they might convince customers.
The word "disappointing" suggests that the action taken to suppress widespread concern (like overruling the intelligence analysts) are bad. Why wouldn't you want to blame those who are responsible for the disappointing state of affairs?
Don't confuse the headline with the resolution criteria.
The resolution criteria is:
This question will resolve as Yes if, between June 1, 2021 to January 1, 2030, 4 credible media sources report that non-human extra-terrestrial technology has been discovered in the solar system (within Neptune's orbit). This may pertain to current claims of UFOs/UAP, events between June 1, 2021 and January 1, 2030, or discoveries of archaelogical evidence (defunct or non-operational technology, found on earth or in the solar system).
The fine print is:
for this question, credible media sources will include:
The Associated Press
The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Washington Post
The Los Angeles Times
Time Magazine
The Economist
The Times of London
The Financial Times
Le Monde
or Die ZeitAdditionally, A report from a branch of the federal government that claims that aliens are the most likely explanation of a reported observation will count as a source
I don't think that credence is well thought of that way. Attempts to change my mind might change my credence even if they don't change it to me thinking that a natural origin would be the most likely.
My own beliefs don't rest on a single piece. I don't think that anyone should hold credence that is as high as mine just because they read this article.
Is that's the CIA position they could have just changed the official CIA position and say "We uncovered new evidence and now believe that the lab leak theory is more likely" there would have been no reason to tell a story about how they overruled their own analysts to hide the lab leak theory. The story as it stands damages the reputation of those agencies and I think "The CIA does what's good for the CIA" is a good heuristic to think about their actions.