"Pentagon contractor's report on COVID origin fatally flawed" Topic

link

A shocking report suggesting that the coronavirus was "release[d from] the Wuhan Institute of Virology" in China is now circulating in U.S. military and intelligence circles and on Capitol Hill. But there's a critical flaw in the report, a Daily Beast analysis reveals: Some of its most seemingly persuasive evidence is false—provably false.

Multiple congressional committees have obtained and are scrutinizing the 30-page report, produced by the Multi-Agency Collaboration Environment (MACE), a part of Sierra Nevada, a major Department of Defense contractor. The report claims to rely on social media postings, commercial satellite imagery, and cellphone location data to draw the conclusion that some sort of "hazardous event" occurred at the Wuhan virology lab in October 2019—an event that allowed COVID-19 to escape. It's a theory that has gained currency on the political right and in the upper tiers of the Trump administration.

But the report's claim centers around missing location data for up to seven phones — and in many cases, less than that. It's too small a sample size to prove much of anything, especially when the same devices showed similar absences in the spring of 2019. The MACE document claims a November 2019 conference was canceled because of some calamity; in fact, there are selfies from the event.

What's more, imagery collected by DigitalGlobe's Maxar Technologies satellites and provided to The Daily Beast reveals a simpler, less exotic reason for why analysts believed "roadblocks" went into place around the lab after the supposed accident: road construction. The Maxar images also show typical workdays, with normal traffic patterns around the lab, after the supposedly cataclysmic event.

Cheers,
Martin from Canada

Daily Beast analysis

Yeah they are a proven source of data.

Totally not bias at all as well.

Martin, can you spell "double-standard"? "Hypocrisy "?

I am not a real fan of Daily Beast but I do not see a factual error.

Report by Sierra Navada corp says things that are incongruent with satellite images seen by experts hired by DailyBeast, such as the establishment of roadblocks around a biolab(with the assumption that this was to stem the outbreak, but sat imagery for the period shows construction. Similarly, the report mentions unusual traffic patterns in the region for the first week of October, but forgets that the first week of October has a significant holiday, Golden Week.

Stuff of that nature in the article.

Agreed. I do not see what factual error the Daily Beast has committed. Whether left or right, the facts seem accurate.

Seems like this report is more like the infamous dodgy dossier designed to shift blame away from the horrible US response to the virus to the Chinese response in a manner to the Blame Canada song from the South Park movie:

We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before someone thinks of blaming us!

Could China have acted better in the early days of the pandemic? Yes, I doubt anybody seriously think otherwise, and a political system that rewards hitting benchmarks and hide failure is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the early days of the response.

But even if for the sake of the argument China had been as wildly irresponsible as the sinophones on Murdoch owned news and have been, that does not excuse the very poor US federal response with regard to shutting down vital government functions in the guise of reducing waste, trashed the 2016 pandemic playbook and replaced it with nothing, removed the pandemic response team from the National Security Council, eliminated the 30milion dollar a year Complex Crises Fund that allowed the Secretary of State to send experts to developing crises to head them off before they become big problems… I could go on, but Buisness insider has a good write-up here: link

Not the most trustworthy source in the world ( link ), is historically very biased with hidden agendas, and the evidence is incompatible with the mountain of data showing the how the virus originated.

Not worth our time.

mountain of data

The Daily Beast is biased but "mountain of data"?

The MACE report is at best a smallish molehill as that is merely some pretty weak inferences and two flat out false statements from a third party contractor currying favor.

Fair question given the media bias and CCP political and economic influence and threats to help mask/hide/confuse/etc

TMP link

It should be noted that while it is indisputable that the PRC totally botched their response to CV-19, whether wet market or lab accident (bio-weapon has been thoroughly debunked for all but Infowars level tin foil hatters), that is totally irrelevant to the expectation that a government response should be competent.

New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan and South Korea did very well. The US, UK, Brazil and Russia, not so much.

Yep, US botched it totally. estimates of 2 million dead and we've lost less than 90,000. Totally botched.

I think Jackson is on to something. All of the experts and science said 1+ million KIA. Evidently the response, as poor as you may think, was good enough. That's what the numbers appear to be anyhow. Probably still too early to tell.

Maybe those fat, dumb and happy Americans aren't so unhealthy and stupid after-all and their immune systems, as weak as they may be, are kicking COVID ass. Maybe science underestimated the Americans?

Hopefully, the next time the politicians don't take the advice of the "experts" and put infected people in nursing homes, listen to the WHO and treat China as guilty liars until they prove they are innocent and telling the truth.

I'm not justifying 90,000 dead is OK as 1 is too many but it should have been a lot worse according to the science, experts, and models.

Wolfhag

Yep, US botched it totally. estimates of 2 million dead and we've lost less than 90,000. Totally botched.

4% of the world population, 30% of the deaths. Botched.

Yes but you refuse to see that.

Oh and the number is not 90K it is way less due to inflating the total.