Buster Posey is NOT a first-ballot HOFer

This is an expansion, editing and reframing of my post of three days ago about the retirement of Buster Posey and whether he would make the Hall of Fame, and if so, sooner than Yadier Molina.

The expansion and reframing is necessitated by big Giants homerism from a few MLB Trade Rumors commenters, most notably "AndyHighRoller," as well as some Twinkies homerism tagging along for the case of Joe Mauer, and other things.

So, let's dive in.

On Wednesday, Posey announced he was retiring from the San Francisco Giants, leaving a $22M team option year that likely would have been picked up on the table, and a possible ticket to Cooperstown.

As MLB Trade Rumors noted, a year ago, Posey looked more beat. He also has had many injuries in his career, so it's not a total stunner to see him moving on, and leaving on a relatively high note.

And now, to the discussion in the headline of this post. Has Posey "punched his ticket" to Cooperstown, and more so, is he a first-ballot Hall of Famer, vis a vis Giants homers?

Is Posey's 44.9 WAR enough to make Cooperstown? Possibly, but almost surely not on the first ballot.

As I said in the previous post, there's good reasons why he wont' make it on the first ballot, assuming he's a BBWAA selection any time in his 10-year period. I said he'll be lucky to do it in five years.

Ted Simmons is the last catcher to go in, and he was a veterans committee choice with 50.3 career WAR. He fell off the BBWAA ballot after a single year. You read that right.

Posey is 14th on catchers' JAWS ranking. He does have one 7-WAR season, a benchmark for backstops and an MVP for that season.

OK, let's look at recent BBWAA inductees. We're talking Gary Carter and Mike Piazza, first. I'll get to one other one in a minute.

To put it bluntly? The BBWAA of the last, oh, 25 years has hated catchers. Carter, with 70.1 WAR and second to Johnny Bench on the JAWS list, needed SIX ballots to get in. Pizza Man, fifth on JAWS, needed four. Yes, you read those right. Carlton Fisk, fourth on catchers' WAR, needed "only" two. Maybe Carter and Piazza got backlash from NYC voters just like Munson. Who knows, but that's my one guess. Yogi Berra also didn't get in on the first try. It took Roy Campanella seven votes (including two weird 1960s "runoffs") in five seasons before he got in. (Campy was twice at the edge of 7 WAR in a 154-game season. He's at 42 WAR if you, like B-Ref, include his Negro Leagues. I don't, but the the issue of "the Negro Leagues are now the Major Leagues" is a whole matter on its own. On the issue of including WAR, for players who started in the Negro Leagues but then eventually joined the MLB, given that the Negro Leagues weren't MLB, I'd rather make a reasonable extrapolation backward off MLB time.)

Think that's bad? It was worse yet before that.

Bill Dickey needed 11 tries, 8 if you throw out those runoffs. Mickey Cochrane needed seven/six.

An offense-first, but not bad defensively catcher, Posey will almost certainly be compared and contrasted to defense-first, pitch-framing and intangibles Molina, who will be back in 2022 with the St. Louis Cardinals. Molina, meanwhile sits at 42.1 and is unlikely to pass Posey next year. He might not do it in two years, even.

And, as for his Cooperstown chances? Seven years by writers' vote, if that early, even though people at places like Red Satan have touted his pitch framing and other intangibles. 

Giants homers? I'm a Cards fan, but this is how you do it without being a homer.

It's true that pitch-framing is an intangible. But, Yadi, like Posey and like Munson, does have a 7-WAR season on the books. (Simmons does not, and that may have hurt him.) Posey is also above the HOF average for catchers on WAR/162 games, reflecting his relatively short career. He ranks roughly the same as Munson, ahead of HOFers like Fisk and Berra, and roughly even with Carter. His JAWS7 is roughly the same as the first two. On the WAR/162, he's well ahead of Yadi.

Both Posey and Molina could be helped by being one-team players, though, as well as having had plenty of postseason success.

Ivan Rodriguez, though not a one-team player, but pretty much a two-team player, and with no 7-WAR seasons, but with four 6-WAR ones, but some say with an (ahem) asterisk, is the only catcher besides Bench to be a first-ballot entry in the last 50 years, or ever. He may be good news for Molina, as he's the only catcher to outrank him in dWAR.

MLB Trade Rumors has Yankees fans touting Jorge Posada. His odds? Think not. Even with Molina on WAR, though a bit ahead on JAWS7 and WAR/162. Never broke 6 WAR and not renowned defensively.

Joe Mauer? Too many games at 1B/DH with too little power. (I don't have a paid B-Ref account, but my guesstimates, from when he started the move, are 41 WAR behind the plate and 14 elsewhere. Note also his "runs from positional scarcity" going negative from 2014 on.) Yes, he had concussions that led to him leaving the backstop. And? Posey had concussions, too, and that broken leg. Simmons had a pretty bad broken leg in what was looking to be his best season ever. Molina had that foul tip that bounced just wrong to bounce behind his cup and whack him in the nads. Mauer, due to the amount of games at 1B/DH, would need a minimum of 60 WAR. (And, yeah, there's full-time 1B entries in the Hall below that, but? They don't belong there.)

Basically, we have two issues.

One is BBWAA voters and the likelihood of a player's entry.

The other is the average of fans' thoughts.

The Giant homer, and others like him, are ignorant of the BBWAA, and present their homerism as the average of fan thought. They're wrong on both.

My five years on Buster, and seven on Yadi? That's my guesstimates. I think the BBWAA has probably gotten a bit smarter with, and since, Rodriguez's induction. But, I'm allowing for that. I first wrote that in my previous post because I forgot about how long Carter and Piazza took.

My estimates as to how long they should take also reflect in part what I think about both of them, based on the idea that Fisk and Carter should have both gone in on their first year of eligibility, and that Piazza probably should have. So, yes, I think Posey and Molina are that far behind them.

Sidebar, for fans who visit both? I think Fangraphs is way wrong a lot of time, either too high or too low, on dWAR for players at defense-heavy positions. Posey is NOT a 57.6 WAR guy. Even more so, Yadi is not a 55.6 WAR guy. I also don't like that, unlike B-Ref, it doesn't list oWAR and dWAR separately. (Sometimes, it screws the pooch the other way. Ozzie Smith has 10 fewer WAR at Fangraphs, for example.)

St. Louis Cardinals 2021 postmortem

With Mike Shildt being fired over not kissing's Mo's ass and a hitting coach dispute?

Yeah, bats struggled before the 17-game win streak, but the real issue?

Including Alex Reyes's tank running out of gas even before the wild-card game?

Pitching.

And, this is on Mo, for next year and years ahead. 

So, looking back at the 2021 roster and looking ahead?

Adam Wainwright struck gold last year. But, not likely to happen again at 40.

Jon Lester remains a retread; let us hope he's not coming back.

Which leads to this laugher on Twitter 10 days ago when discussing Shildt's presser:

Pitchers added in 2021:
Garcia
McFarland
Lester
Happ
LeBlanc

Mo added pitching. And all contributed heavily to the Cardinals' significantly better final third of the season. Even Happ treaded water for us.

— Danrar - Get Vaccinated (@dan_rar) October 18, 2021

To which I responded:

You mentioned ... Jon Lester ...
ERA+? 89. FIP? 5.40 WHIP? 1.424 Negative WAR. All of that just for the Cardinals portion of his 2021 season.
You can thank me later.https://t.co/aT4MRsV93u

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 18, 2021

What else can you say? That this guy kisses Mo's ass, too? Seriously, Lester's tank has been empty since 2019 and half-empty since 2018. Maybe it's good that Godfather Manfred outlawed one-batter pitching, or Lester would be a total LOOGY for another three years.

Miles Mikolas Will it be another year of injury and struggle?

Ditto for Jack Flaherty, who partially bounced back from a semi-bad 2020.

Can Kwang Hyun Kim handle 200 innings? 

Can Dakota Hudson be fully recovered from Tommy John surgery? Does the end of 2021 offer hope? What about Jordan Hicks?

Giovanny Gallegos had better sabermetric peripherals out of the pen than Reyes. Will he start next year in the closer's role? Can he do it.

Carlos Martinez, magic Twitter or not, starter or reliever, is clearly who he is now, per old football coach Dennis Green. Mo picked up his $500K buyout; he's likely gone.

With money for Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, the Cards are NOT chasing high-dollar pitching free agents. That said, Martinez' club option won't be picked up, per the above. Andrew Miller's not coming back, either. Nor is Matt Carpenter, not without a big cut. A mid-range FA starter, or closer, could be in the works. Robbie Ray might be a relatively cheap lefty starter. Don't expect anything more, fans. As in, no Max Scherzer. But, moving on from Carp, Miller and Carlos frees up $42M, per Cot's Contracts. Some of it is going to be earmarked for people like Flaherty, but still, a Robbie Ray level pitcher is doable.

Will Mo do it?

That's if, per Bernie Miklasz's old pun, Mo gets DeWitt to put a crowbar in DeWallet. And, right now, per MLB Trade Rumors linking to an interview Mo did with Derrick Goold at the Post-Dispatch, he MIGHT spend on a Matz-level starter, and even that would be a shock. So, deal with it, all of us "junior GMs."

Within the division? The Cubs will still be rebuilding, and ditto the Pirates. But, the Brew Crew will likely remain the favorites for the division title, and the team shouldn't count on another Reds collapse. Third place, at initial glance, is a reasonable possibility.

Texas Progressives look at US House history and more

The Republicans may not hold the same degree of advantage in the House in the Newt and post-Newt era as Democrats did from the Depression to Newt, but they do have an advantage. A new book by a Larry Sabato staffer, excerpted here, explains why. For Democrats, among other things, it means moving beyond ConservaDems and Rahmbo strategies. It also looks at how Poppy Bush's DOJ and flunkies including people now on the Supreme Court, enabled race-based redistricting, which looked like it was great for Black Democrats at the time but was an overall ding for the party — and by extension, for both some Black Democrats and even more for the nation.

The Biden 2020 campaign's Texas allies, such as Wendy Davis, who filed a lawsuit against the city of San Marcos et al last summer has now expanded that suit after it's been shown on recording that the city's deputy police chief and a ranking corporal, among others, heard about a Biden campaign bus' call for help after being repeatedly buzzed by Trump Train drivers, with at least one collision involved, and laughing at the dispatch calls while refusing to provide an escort or accept an escort handoff from the city of New Braunfels.

Wingnut legiscritter Matt Kruse seems to be on a mix of fishing trip and intimidation with his "investigation" of school district textbooks re the state's new law banning critical race theory in schools, which of course recently and infamously led Southlake to talk about "alternatives to the Holocaust."

Off the Kuff takes note of the second lawsuit filed over redistricting, filed by the National Redistricting Action Fund to challenge the Congressional map on behalf of Voto Latino.

SocraticGadfly discusses several climate change related issues in the news, including a realistic long-term look at nuclear power as part of a post-fossil fuel mix.

DosCentavos tells us about a protest at the local Dem HQ, and the outcome locally and in DC.

The Texas Signal asks if the new Congressional and legislative maps can be "out-organized" by Democrats. 

Grits for Breakfast notes that violent crime was actually down last year.

Texas Monthly celebrates a 1981 slasher movie set in Austin that was a shiming example of our state's contribution to the horror genre.  

Mean Green Cougar Red analyzes the latest conference-hopping moves among the AAC, C-USA, and the Sun Belt.

As with Jade Helm, there are wingnut Texans guzzling the Strangeabbott Kool-Aid on Operation Lone Star. 

Dan Patrick and Tim Dunn et al got their redistricting wish, not only squeezing Dems but getting wingnut but non-wingut squared GOP state Sen. Kel Seliger to retire.

Fake Indians in Texas? The Observer investigates.

Buster Posey beating Yadier Molina to Cooperstown, if either belong

In a semi-stunner, Buster Posey is reportedly going to retire from the San Francisco Giants, leaving a $22M team option year that likely would have been picked up on the table, and a possible ticket to Cooperstown.

As MLB Trade Rumors notes, a year ago, Posey looked more beat. He also has had many injuries in his career, so it's not a total stunner to see him moving on, and leaving on a relatively high note.

And now, to the discussion in the headline of this post. Has Posey "punched his ticket"?

An offense-first, but not bad defensively catcher, Posey will be touted for the Hall of Fame, and will almost certainly be compared and contrasted to defense-first, pitch-framing and intangibles Yadier Molina, who will be back in 2022 with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Is Posey's 44.9 WAR enough to make Cooperstown? Possibly, but almost surely not on the first ballot.

Ted Simmons is the last catcher to go in, and he was a veterans committee choice with 50.3 career WAR.

Posey is 14th on catchers' JAWS ranking. He does have one 7-WAR season, a benchmark for backstops and an MVP for that season. In that, he compares to Thurman Munson, the best catcher currently not in the Hall, revenge-fucked by NYC writers for the BBWAA, and weirdly, continually, overlooked by the veterans committee in various incarnations. (Oh, anybody who claims it's not a big injustice that Munson's not in? Wrong.)

Molina, meanwhile sits at 42.1 and is unlikely to pass Posey next year. He might not do it in two years, even.

It's true that pitch-framing is an intangible. (Or, theoretically. Fangraphs rates this, and it's probably even more subjective than other defensive ratings, and I trust Fangraphs less on defense than B-Ref.  And, if FRM is framing there, then this guy is wrong about how close Buster and Yadi are; also, Fangraphs says that framing is not part of its version of dWAR anyway.) But, Yadi, like Posey and like Munson, does have a 7-WAR season on the books. (Simmons does not, and that may have hurt him.) Posey is also above the HOF average for catchers on WAR/162 games, reflecting his relatively short career. He ranks roughly the same as Munson, ahead of HOFers like Carlton Fisk and Yogi Berra, and roughly even with Gary Carter. His JAWS7 is roughly the same as the first two. On the WAR/162, he's well ahead of Yadi.

My prediction? He'll get in, by writers' vote, but will need at least five years.

Contra Giants homers on MLBTR? Carter needed six ballots. Mike Piazza needed four. (Given comments at MLBTR and elsewhere, I now have a new post addressing the first-ballot issue for Posey in particular vs catchers in general.)

Yadi? Seven years minimum if writers do put him in. I last tackled his case four years ago. It hasn't gotten any worse in my eyes, but it hasn't gotten significantly better, either.

Both could be helped by being one-team players, though, as well as having had plenty of postseason success.

MLB Trade Rumors has Yankees fans touting Jorge Posada. His odds? Think not. Even with Molina on WAR, though a bit ahead on JAWS7 and WAR/162. Never broke 6 WAR and not renowned defensively.

Joe Mauer? Too many games at 1B/DH with too little power.

Updating Chris Stedman, because

 Material at top taken from a LONG blog post about Chris Stedman's "Faitheist" book, his marketing of it, and even more of himself, and how he was likely full of crap and marketing crap way back then, and still is today.

 

If you’re not familiar with that name, it appears to have been something  largely developed by Chris Stedman, now the recently published author of a book by that name, which is what this blog post is all about.

First, some personal identification by me.

Regular readers of this blog, or at least the part of it that deals with religion, philosophy and metaphysics, know that I normally don’t have a lot of use for the New Atheist, or Gnu Atheist, “movement.” I've written about my issues with Gnus on many occasions, most recently here. I consider them too confrontational, for one thing. I consider them too … fundamentalist, to be wry, secondly. Third, unlike them, I have no desire to “evangelize” the religious, let alone conduct an intellectual browbeating quasi-jihad.

A brief 2017 update from the original: Stedman is no longer doing the secularist chaplaincy work at Harvard, per his Twitter. To complete the rebranding cycle, this fall, he'll be ....

TEACHING AT AUGSBURG!

So, OK, he won't be a Buddhist in two years. He'll be an ELCA Lutheran.

And now, the new. Looking at this 20 months after my last comment at my original post? First, I'm wondering if Chris' dad was an abuser, and that's why he's largely written out of Chris' story. Would explain a LOT on Chris' psychology.

 

Second, I looked up Chris' new book that came out last year. Teaching at Augsburg, and thus, even within the liberal wing of Lutheranism and Minnesota nice, almost certainly NOT an atheist, per what I ventured above. The "about" on his own website also doesn't mention the Big A. He doesn't identify as such on the bio for his new book at Amazon, which sounds like Minnesota nice dreck about how to be nice on the Internet, mixed with a steaming pile of Jungian psychology-related bullshit, which sounds just about right for Stedman.

 

Even if he DID call himself an atheist, I would not consider him one. Since atheism is not a "faith" or a "religion," it's an oxymoron at minimum to for himself to peddle himself as an "interfaith activist" if he does, elsewhere, call himself an atheist. 

In addition, that gets back to atheist critiques at the time he wrote "Faitheist" and earlier — he softpedals what atheism is. But, for him? It's also surely all about the "brand."

That said, a full decade ago, Stedman was peddling misleading claims about the parallels between interfaith movements and atheism.

As for me? If you asked me to participate in a "humanist movement" meeting with religious as well as secular humanists involved? I'd be there. But not an interfaith movement. And, this in turn means that Stedman probably needs to read some Gilbert Ryle. Ditto for Jesse Galef and others he name-dropped. If they're conflating "interfaith" and "humanism," they made a big-assed category mistake. And that is another reason not to want to play ball on their field. 

And, as Stedman either knows and ignores, or else doesn't know and is not trustable intellectually, names do mean something. Per ordinary language analysis, it is a "game" as to what name we use, because it does frame what the conversations will be about.

Third, he has a podcast (but of course) listed by Mashable (but of course) at No. 18 on its best new podcasts list. Surely some branding going on there, too. Next, we will find out that Chris is either "trans" (without the suffixed adjective, but surely "-gender" not "-sexual") or else that he's straight.

Fourth, for laughs, read the reviews at Goodreads, especially the one-star ones. As I told a reviewer that is identified as "Augsburg University," I doubt the atheism part.

All in all? A tribute to the Peter Principle, maybe. And, if somebody accuses me of envy, I'll freely cop to that. I'll still insist that, at the same time, the diagnosis is true.

Update, Sept. 5, 2022: But of course Stedman had a puff piece interview over her mysticism claims with the late Barbara Ehrenreich, with both interview and her claims discussed in my eventual takedown obit.

Banned by Green dissidents

Even if they're not going to tell me, I'm going to announce it.

I have been banned, or shadowbanned by not actually being banned but by having no privileges, from an email list-serve run by dissident Greens, headed by the chairperson of the former Georgia Green Party, it being former due to deaccreditation by the national Green Party earlier this year.

I know I didn't violate the letter of the law of email group privacy and I feel comfortable I did not violate the spirit. I never mentioned names of any other person there, and in talking about discussions there, did not venture beyond items that had been discussed in conjunction with the deaccreditation process, which was related to the dissidents' defense of the former GA Greens' 2020 state platform.

I discussed that platform here, and the national party's Accreditation Committee and National Committee's discussion of the process (or lack thereof) on how that platform came to be, here.

I also repeatedly discussed the twosiderism involved.

As for me discussing the dissidents being willing to accept as allies a variety of wingnuts, all the way up to Tucker Carlson? Discussion of, and acceptance of, these people as acceptable allies, or allies of convenience, has happened on Twitter and public Facebook accounts, if not by the same people as on the list, then other people of like minds. (And, I've given my disagreement on that issue here.)

The only thing I mentioned for public discussion with a name attached was that the email group was associated with the Dialogue not Expulsion Caucus. The existence of such a caucus was publicly known; organizing members should have assumed that others would assume the existence of an affiliated or associated email group.

Now, post-deaccreditation, it is possible the group was simply dissolved. The gender-critical radical feminist faction in DnE, as soon as deaccreditation became official, had pushed for a more activist stance, even to the point of recruiting others of like mind to form alternative state parties, a la William Pounds and his cult of Jesse Ventura libertarian Greens. It may be that the group was dissolved within the past month. (I said at the time I wasn't going down that road, then had a follow-up.)

Anyway, I hadn't seen email in the last month coming to me, so I sent one outbound, and was informed a few hours later that it was in moderation. A week later, it remains there.

So, I've either been banned, or else the group was dissolved. If the latter, it was never put  to a formal vote, therefore I assume the former.

And, in a world of increasing twosiderism, to riff on old Iranian philosopher friend and an old proverb: "In the land of twosiderism, non-twosiders are king."

Or, per Milton's Satan? "Better to reign in a land of (sensible non-twosiderism) than be a peon in twosider alleged heaven."

My beyond twosiderism eventually reached the point where I said both the Georgia GP AND the national Lavender Caucus should be expelled. But, that didn't happen, and this is one more reason I'm not a Green. I said so at the GaGP's ejection, but really felt that way since last fall, when I decided not to vote for Howie Hawkins for prez after he decided to smoke some Xi Jinping Thought cock. I'll still consider individual candidates on a race-by-race basis in 2022 — if Texas Greens have anybody running for anything with the new ballot access restrictions. If not? With ConservaDems sure to get nominated in state lege races, and likely a ConservaDem for Congress against Burgess, I'll not vote, as I did in 2020, in all likelihood.

Coronavirus, week 82B: COVID, Delta and Vietnam and elsewhere

To the degree that some countries like Vietnam DID "crush" earlier waves of COVID (I remain somewhat dubious that they did), it may have hindered them when Delta arrived. Counterpunch explains. (I remain somewhat dubious here, including wondering why China's Sinopharm et al didn't have at least a halfway decent number of its vaxxes sold/given to Vietnam. Or maybe it did and it's THAT bad a vax, relatively speaking.) The reality is that Vietnam is a much more rural and "undeveloped" country than the West, including Vietnam apologists, either know or admit outside a couple of big cities. Think 1980s China, if that. The story behind the story is that, to the degree Counterpunch's Jeff St. Clair and Josh Frank try to impose any degree of unified editorial strategy, it is one that, while not as kneejerk anti-American on the stage of world affairs as the alleged outside the box steno types, nonetheless can tout the non-Western world at times to try to give the U.S. a black eye.

Strangeabbott and Kenny Boy Paxton, along with other wingnut govs and state AGs, are suing the Biden Administration over its vaccine mandate. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and other wingnuts have filed another such suit. They'll almost certainly lose, in part given that the Supreme Court just rejected a broad-based religious exemption request at the state level versus a Maine vaccine mandate for health care workers. Plus, Kemp's claims 70 percent of the unvaxxed being ready to quit their jobs? By the paucity of people United Airlines fired, that's bullshit right there. Ditto for the 9 in 10 claiming they fear severe workforce reductions.

That said, re the larger issue of religious exemption requests? TNR shows that constitutional law on the issue is vague and arbitrary, but, as is no surprise to anybody who knows Ward's Cove, tilts strongly to White mainline Protestants.

Contra Disqus-commenting COVID obstructionist John Nutt, whom I finally blocked a couple of weeks ago, the evidence is in: the shot is better, more than five times better, than disease-created immunity, period and end of story.

Southwest's pilots lost their request for an injunction against Biden's vax mandate. Boo-hoo. (Sadly, Southworst, unlike United, is NOT firing disobedient employees, tho United's plan is on hold per a ruling by another judge.) On a non-COVID note, a pilot said "Let's go Brandon" on his PA greeting. SWAPA needs to disavow this pilot immediately to avoid a further loss of credibility. On the matter of credibility, SWAPA's head claimed it was NOT a sickout last month, though it looked that way here. Rather, he blamed the company's crew scheduling software program, saying it was glitchy, per the second link in this paragraph.

That said, vaccine mandates do work. Most of Tyson's people got the shot after the company posted a requirement. It's in no way connected to the federal mandate. 

Vaccine mandates work, part 2. This doesn't include the 8,500 or so of NYPD seeking religious exemptions, but as of Monday afternoon, less than 1 percent of NY's "finest" were on unpaid leave. As for those requesting exemptions? The city says that if they haven't made past previous requests, like leave for holidays, they're not likely to get this.

Zeynep Tufekci notes antivaxxers are now playing on antidiscrimination language. That's not her main point, though. The increased polarization on the issue is.

What will COVID do this winter? Meander, or maybe flare up again? Experts are divided.

Your Local Epidemiologist has the Cliff notes from the FDA scientific advisory committee meeting on COVID vaccines for 5 to 11 year olds. 

The Monthly fellates Strangeabbott as a hands-off COVID genyus before going antivaxxer. Reality? Several larger states, and the one state actually larger in population, have COVID death rates lower than Texas'.

Unnamed US intell: Lab leak at WIV likely

Financial Times reports that an unnamed US intelligence agency is fingering a Wuhan Institute of Virology lab leak as the likely source of SARS-Cov-2, aka COVID. Nut graf:

According to the report, analysts at the unnamed agency believe the dangerous nature of the science being carried out at the Wuhan lab and the lack of safety precautions make it most likely that it is the source of the pandemic. ... 

The report said: “Although the [intelligence community] has no indications that WIV research involved Sars-Cov-2 [the virus that causes Covid-19] or a close progenitor virus, these analysts note that it is plausible that researchers may have unwittingly exposed themselves to the virus without sequencing it during experiments or sampling activities, possibly resulting in asymptomatic or mild infection.”

Well, I've been open to that consideration. So have some other liberals and leftists not on the #BlueAnon tribe.

That doesn't mean such a virus was deliberately engineered, either via gain of function research that was done on other viruses at WIV, let alone for nefarious purposes.

And, per the story, there will of course be no further cooperation from Beijing. 

Which means we need to stop cooperating on research with it. A number of people have cited the low biosecurity levels at WIV.

And, even if the gain of function research that NIH admitted to (and BlueAnon still claims it didn't) wasn't related to COVID, between this and French warnings about the lab, again, we need to stop cooperating.

That's even if this is a deliberate leak for larger national security reasons — the leak by the unnamed agency, that is.