Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "How the Lab Leak Got Cred" with Elizabeth Finkel

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"How the Lab Leak Got Cred" with Elizabeth Finkel · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get A Humans, welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas, and the Dangerous Idea that
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we frequently come back to on this show, the Dangerous Idea that sits atop all other
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dangerous ideas, or perhaps underneath, depending on your visualization of the metaphor.
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Really the purpose of this show is to talk about the way that we talk about dangerous
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ideas, to have conversations about the way we have conversations about things.
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And today's guest is an expert in that. She's a science journalist, the co-founder and
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former editor-in-chief of Cosmos Magazine. She's a regular contributor to Science Magazine,
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the American publication, and she was trained as a molecular biologist. She's written a
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book about how science works by kind of taking a few case studies of big issues in science
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and breaking down the controversies behind them, and then settling on what she regards
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as the sensible balance of probabilities about what the truth is.
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Now one of the areas that she covers in her book is an entire chapter devoted to COVID,
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and the lab leak theory. This is the chapter with which she opens the book. And I thought
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it would be interesting since I'm so ambivalent about this. I both think it's highly suspicious
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that the virus came from the same city that had one of the leading labs that was researching
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these viruses. And I also think it's perfectly plausible that it would be zoonotic in origin.
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So I've heard quite a few arguments for the lab leak hypothesis. And I wanted to speak
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to a knowledgeable science journalist who has done her work on looking at the evidence
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against the lab leak and the evidence for the wet market in the context of how we arrive
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at our conclusions about major events of global importance. What happens when the public's
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understanding of a global event is hijacked by online pseudo experts who find little nuggets
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of information and then misrepresent them or take them out of context. And how scientists
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should express uncertainty when everyone is suspicious and distrustful of scientific
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institutions, specifically whether or not Anthony Fauci was the victim of a crazed
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conspiracy or if there is something fishy in the official origins of COVID-19. I hope
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you enjoy this as we wrestle not just with the wet market and gain a function research
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and Chinese secrecy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s disinformation and the principle of Occam's
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razor but the bigger issue of how to do good science in a post-truth era, enjoy the one
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the only Elizabeth Finkel.
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We might as well just go straight to the point which is like how you feeling at the moment
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about science in the public domain in an era of RFK and measles and God only knows.
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It's really unbelievable. The secretive health and human services is America's most notorious
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vaccine denier that every tenet of the way we create knowledge has just been thrown
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out. It's all well. It's all well-earned. The double speak. The executive orders, the
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January Executive Order, let's in the name of freedom of speech, no more fact-checking
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for any government agencies. There's this great saying. If you mix science with politics,
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you get politics. And Anthony Fauci got completely demonized and one of the reasons for demonizing
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him was to say that he had used his influence as then the head of the NIA ID National Institute
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of Allergy and Infectious Disease to determine a major grant.
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Were these the Wuhan? Was this the Wuhan grant?
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So let me backtrack a second if I may. So his institution was found funding research at Wuhan,
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I think, for the grand sum of something like $100,000 a year. Now given that after the first
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SARS outbreak in 2002, the whole world was terrified of another outbreak. They had seen how,
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you know, deadly a coronavirus could be and how quickly it could spread across the world.
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So they set up research to monitor what was going on in China to monitor bad viruses, for instance.
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And if you're the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, well, you wanted,
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you would want to be part of this Sentinel network. And to that aim, they were funding a small
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amount of money to the Wuhan Institute of Allergy, which was doing this monitoring of bad viruses.
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Now we're going to the caves, checking to see what's cooking in there or rather bringing the
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viruses back to the lab and checking to see what these bad viruses were capable of because we know
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the first SARS came from a bad virus in these caves in Yunnan province.
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How did this all get turned on its head and turned Anthony Fauci into, you know, a demon?
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You want to hear this story? Yeah. Okay. So this is a real Australia-America connection.
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So Eddie Holmes at the University of Sydney has long-standing collaborations with a researcher
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in China. Zhang, I think, was his name and they're doing pretty innocent stuff that they're
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interested in viruses, both of them. And Eddie's an expert on analyzing the family tree of viruses.
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Zhang is an expert too and he's going out there and collecting all these weird viruses in China
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from insects, plants, whatever. And then they analyze them together because that's what
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notice scientists like to do. They like to figure out the family histories of viruses, the most
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populous living or non-living thing on the planet. And then Eddie's collaborative gets
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asked to analyze the identity of this new virus that is causing this unexplained pneumonia
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in Wuhan in late December. And, you know, 2019, just a clarify. 2019. Yeah, 2019. We're talking
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about the beginning pandemic. Yeah. So in early January, he works all night, 24 hours nonstop
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and he finally reads the code of the virus. And he shares it with Eddie and they start analyzing it.
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And Eddie says, look, you've got to release this to a global database. The whole world has to
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know what this is so that people can start developing rat tests and, you know, develop vaccines,
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whatever, you know, knowledge is power. Francis Bacon. Zhang is reluctant to do it because just this
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morning, he's had an official order from the Chinese government saying you can't release anything
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without official government permission. And, you know, these the wheels of bureaucracy move
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slowly in China. Eddie Holmes gets on the phone to him and says, Zhang, you have to release this.
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Zhang says, give me a minute or two to think about it. Calls him back and says, okay,
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let's release it. And they do. And then the virus code is available for the whole world to start
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analyzing. Paul Zhang, you know, there are consequences for what he's done. His lab gets shut down
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and then he's punished. But he's also acknowledged as, you know, one of the scientists of the year
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for what he's done by China or just by it. No, I think, maybe by time magazine, maybe
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some one of those outside China outside China. Yes, outside for everybody who knows what they're
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talking about and a sinner for the Chinese Communist Party. Unfortunately, yes, yeah. So now all
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the scientists are looking at the code and they're comparing it to the first virus which broke out
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in Guangdong in 2002. And the codes are about 85% similar. But they zero in on the business end of
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the code, which is the part of the virus that attaches to your lung cells. It's called the
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receptor binding domain. And they're astonished to see that there are just two little changes
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on this, you know, the torpedo end of the virus that looked like they could explain why this
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second form of SARS is spreading so much more quickly. And this rumor starts going around the
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chat sites. Do you think this could have been genetically engineered? So Christian Anderson at
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the Scripps Institute, he's asked to have a close the look. What is Scripps? It's a research institute
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in Lahoya, San Diego. And he gets in touch with Eddie Holmes because the two of them work together
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there in network. And they both end up freaking each other out basically that there are these,
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just these two little tweaks and that could have been created in a lab because it looks like they
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just, you know, with pinpoint precision went into the business and the torpedo end of that virus.
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Christian Anderson gets in touch with Anthony Fauci tells him if he's concerned.
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Anthony Fauci says, okay, let's have a conference call tomorrow as fast as we can and get 12 other
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experts in on this call. And let's see what everybody thinks. So they have this conference call
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and Christian Anderson, you know, and a PowerPoint shows the two little bits that have been tweaked.
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And the other 12 experts are just not convinced. One of the changes is only a single letter change in
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the code to the so-called, um, fur and cleavage site. And if people are familiar with online
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conspiracies and Brett Weinstein and people like that, the fur and cleavage site will be very familiar.
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It is a staple of COVID conspiracy thinking, the fur and cleavage site. It's a, it's just,
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it's what looks like a snip. They think it's a, they think it's evidence of genetic modification.
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It looks like a, well, they thought at the time that it's like, you know, when you have,
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a, you know, cardboard cutouts and you have dotted lines. Yeah. Or a piece of toilet paper being ripped.
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For instance, it just shows you where to cut. And the virus before it enters the human cell needs
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to have this sniped open before it can expose the machinery it uses to melt with your lung cell.
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And look at this. There's one of these little dotted lines showing the enzyme where to snip
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and just help, help the virus along. So it, it looked like, wow, this could be a reason why this
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second virus's second SARS is spreading so well. And then the other site was this receptor binding
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domain that also had been tweaked. And, you know, maybe this explains why it's, you know, 100 times
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better at binding to your lung cells. So, you know, Eddie Holmes and Christian Anderson and a
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couple of other colleagues who'd been looking at all this, they're going to this meeting. They're
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fairly freaked out. But they're 12 colleagues, you know, say, you know, cooler horses. We're not
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convinced. This fear and cleavage site is just one single letter of the code has been changed.
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It's so much more likely that happened through natural mutation. And even if you were going to
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genetically engineer it, it's a very weird way to genetically engineer it. If you were going to do
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this, you would use the standard sort of format for doing it. And it doesn't look like that.
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What if you didn't want to get caught? If you didn't want to get caught, you mean if you were
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doing it as a bio weapon or something. We, isn't that what the conspiracy theorists who think
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that it was genetically created? So there's, there's all different, you know, you wouldn't want to
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leave a smoking gun to make it to, you wouldn't want to do it the most obvious way if you were the
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Chinese Communist Party trying to unleash it for whatever reason. And your population. Well, none of
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that theory makes sense. I mean, I think the theory that the majority of non lunatics think of when
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they think of the lab leak theory is that they were doing research into, you know, gain of function
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or something like this. They weren't adding in, they weren't snipping bits in and genetically
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modifying it, but they were heedlessly researching it and then accidentally. That's right. So I think
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if we go with, with the most plausible theory, which is that in the course of doing experiments,
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which they were doing, test of function rather than gain of function, you know, is this new?
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They were doing gain of function. It comes under the rubric of gain of function. But it's a very,
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it's a semantic trap that word because gain of function refers to any kind of genetic test you're
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doing to figure out, well, what is, you know, we found it, these new code on this virus in the
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bat cave. What is it capable of? So just by testing its function, that comes under the rubric
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of gain of function. You still need to get. They are amplifying its function. Like with they
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are amplifying its capacity to be infectious to win it. I don't believe so. No, I don't think this
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that they certainly weren't doing it intentionally. Okay. That's a thing that gets done. No.
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I think most of what comes under gain of function is you're trying to figure out with this virus,
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a new virus, let's say the bird flu virus, which part of this virus is responsible for its
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real deadliness? Because if we know, then we know what to look for. And the way you sometimes
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test what is the deadly part of that virus is you chop it up into bits and put it on a different
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virus that we know can't replicate. It's a fairly benign virus. Just see, you know, is this the
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component that allows it to get into lung cells? So this is my understanding of what people who
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are critical of gain of function research depicted as is being in order to study without waiting
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for decades, the infectious properties of a virus will enhance its infectiousness so that we can
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see the way that it propagates in a lab in a short period of time. And that'll give us a better
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understanding of how to prevent it spread in the future. But the problem is if you then let it
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out, it's more infectious than it would have been originally. But yeah, I don't know how that works.
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Or if that's true. Yes. So there was such an experiment trying to figure out what was the
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dangerous? What was the business end of bird flu? Which is an extremely scary virus, very deadly
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to birds, but also in the rare occasions where it gets into humans, very deadly to humans.
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So that's been the big fear for years that bird flu could mutate and start spreading human to human.
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And so was it in 2010, I'm not sure of the date, they were doing experiments
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intentionally mutating bird flu to see what it would need to be able to spread from mammal to
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mammal. And they did those experiments with ferrets. And those were scary experiments because
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they found it didn't take that much to tweak the bird flu virus to get it to start spreading
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between ferrets. No, go seriously. Yes. We have this to look forward to at some point in our future.
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No, no, no, but this created a huge alarm and a huge level of regulation. It really put
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gain of function on the map. So since that time, there have been incredibly strict regulations
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around any kind of research like this, NIH funded research. But of course, that doesn't cover
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what road players might do. So in a way, I think it terrified people as to what you could do
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with the so-called gain of function research by rogue elements. And that is what people feared
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had happened with SARS-CoV-2. That this was the result of this sort of gain of function research.
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So absolutely a legitimate concern. We'd seen the precedent with bird flu. This was being done in
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China. We know the Chinese military has its labs. The Chinese are very secretive. All possible.
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And this is, I think, yeah, it was one of the hypotheses on the table. But I think Christian Andersen
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and Eddie Holmes were thinking that it wasn't that so much as could more benign experiments
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have gone awry and created SARS-CoV-2. So yes, this is what this meeting was for. The
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meeting of 12 scientists with Eddie Holmes and Christian Andersen and Anthony Fauci.
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What are we looking at here? Anyway, at the end of this meeting, the feeling was
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we're not convinced that what you're seeing has the hallmarks of being made in a lab.
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But go away, do some more research and write up your findings because the rumor mills are hot on
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social media. We need to, you know, see what you come up with. You guys are experts.
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Well, the very next day Eddie Holmes gets an email from one of his colleagues at the University of Hong Kong.
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And it is, his colleague has sent him the code of a coronavirus that had been swobbed from,
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I've lost the name of these animals. They're like antedists. They're...
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Oh, the pangolin? No, the pangolins. Yes, pangolins, the most trafficked animal in the world.
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And these pangolins had been confiscated and they were sneezing and they were sick.
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And when they swobbed viruses from them, they had a coronavirus. And this coronavirus
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had exactly one of those mutations that they had found in the new SARS-CoV-2 in the receptor
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binding domain. So that was like a day later. So they take that little tweak off the table and
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said, no, nature made this. And that just leaves the furan cleavage site. So Christian Anderson
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was still not convinced. Okay, didn't look like this could have been made in a lab because if you
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were going to make a furan cleavage site, you would use the standard genetic engineering tools to
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do it. But what if it had been made through, not through genetic engineering, but just through
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the culturing of the virus in cells? And you know, you can evolve new things in cells in culture.
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So it could in a way be natural, but through, through the culture in a lab.
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Sped up by humans. That's right. That's right. That's right. And maybe, maybe intentionally,
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you know, trying to select for something that would give the virus an edge in the test tube,
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exactly. Even if it wasn't malicious, even if it wasn't malicious, I think that that meant
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that is how I understand the gain of function claim at its strongest. Yes. I think so. I agree
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with you. So I think that was at the back of Christian Anderson's mind, well, what if, you know,
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just culturing the virus in a lab, they were trying to see, can we make it more effective?
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Maybe it had a reason this way. So Christian Anderson wasn't willing to let go of his theory
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that it might have been made in a lab. And then he starts doing his literature search,
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and he discovers an interesting thing. The furan cleavage site seems to be good if you're an animal.
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So lots of, if you're a virus living in an animal, it seems to give you an advantage.
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So lots of coronaviruses, not closely related to SARS-CoV-2, but, you know, cousins
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do evolve furan cleavage sites. The virus that causes the common cold, the common cold. Well,
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one of the cold viruses will have a furan cleavage site.
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And he discovers an interesting thing when he looks at the literature. Well, it's good for a virus
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living in an animal. It helps it spread. If you are a virus being cultured in cells in a dish,
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they don't like it. They spit it out. So that led him to believe this is not a likely
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origin of the furan cleavage site. So, right, if the virus was being stoked by humans
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in a petri dish to become more infectious, it would find another way to do it
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than a furan cleavage site. Yes. Because that wouldn't be successful in the lab.
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Correct. Is that right? Because that's what the evidence had shown, that when you culture them
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in a dish, they tend to spit it out. So, none of this is 100% definitive,
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but I'm trying to explain if we go back how this conspiracy against Fauci came about.
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So, Eddie Holmes, Christian Anderson and a few more of their colleagues, they write up a paper,
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or rather a letter to nature medicine. And it's very early days. They get this letter out,
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I think, as in draft form, you know, by February of 2020, it's published by March.
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And basically, they say it's called the proximal origins of COVID-19.
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And they go through the whole process, which we've just been talking about, how they had originally
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thought, you know, well, that it might have been made in a lab based on these two signatures,
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but then the extra evidence that has come to hand and why they no longer believe this to be the case,
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they say, it's not proof. But, you know, on the balance of probabilities, we think this is more likely
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to be a natural virus. And this is March of 2020. proximal origins becomes one of the most
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sighted publications in all of COVID. And not for the reasons that Christian Anderson or Eddie
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Holmes would have wanted, because people look at this paper and they say, ah, now we know that they
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went into this conference call with Anthony Fauci. Shit's scared that, oh no, it looks like this
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virus has been tweaked in a lab. Then they come out of that conference and they say, no,
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the preponderance of evidence is it's come from nature. Eddie Fauci must have twisted their arm.
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Anthony Fauci. Yeah. Why did he do it? Well, because his institute funded Wuhan for the
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princely sum of $100,000 a year. And why did Christian Anderson go along with it? Because he was
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beholden to the National Institute of Allogene infectious disease for a grant.
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I got to this because I said that, um, whereas the conspiracists were climbing at the time,
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whoa, you know, people like Fauci are interfering with science. What do we have now? Are you worried
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about the interference with science now? Are you conspiracists? Where are you now?
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I mean, just before we leave the question of COVID, the way of doing science, I think, is
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salient here because you have a very scientific mind and therefore you really want to be able to
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falsify every claim. And the people who aren't crazy who are still suspicious about Wuhan, I feel like
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let me give you an analogy. My son just lost his tooth is tooth. I mean, he's eight, so he's
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losing his teeth. And I had a conversation with him the other day about the tooth fairy because I
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put money under his pillow. And if he was a good like scientist, I don't see any reason why
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on the basis of verifiable evidence, he wouldn't believe that the tooth fairy is real.
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But there's a whole bunch of other things that he brings to the table when he starts thinking about
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it and asking about it, which are not part of the evidential sphere. There are his intuitions about
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the way that I look at him when he asks me if the tooth fairy is real. There is knowledge of
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the existence of other fairies that aren't the tooth fairy. He's bringing a lot to the table that
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aren't just scientific facts. And I think the person who believes in that the lab lake theory is
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plausible. It's someone who takes into account the paranoia of the Chinese Communist Party,
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the hyper secrecy in China. The fact that this thing emerged right in the same city as a lab,
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as one of the most sophisticated labs in the world that was researching precisely this kind of
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stuff. The fact that there are all kinds of other explanations for the countervailing
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arguments, like the people who first got it were all around the market, but that's not really a
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knockdown argument because that could have just been a super spreader event from something that
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had leaked from the lab anyway. How does one know at what point a strict evidentiary falsification
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suffices and at what point you're allowed to also smell a rat?
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Nolias in Verba, right? That's the scientific credo. Do you know what it means? No.
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I love this. I only discovered this after the book, but it's the motto of the British Royal Society
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from 1662. And it really, if what it means is, take nobody's word for it. Nolias in Verba.
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And if your listeners take one thing away from this podcast, it's this, you know, science,
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this is the power of the scientific revolution that Newton fermented, you know,
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picked up by people like Karl Popper. Take nobody's word for it. Actually, I worry about that
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message because I actually think it also contributes to pseudoscience. I think RFK would be happy
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with take nobody's word for it. Don't listen to those wonky experts with all of their, you know,
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so-called claims. Do your own research. Go online and like watch YouTube videos of influences
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talking about Ivermectin. You know, like this is what's interesting about your book is there is
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a tension between appeals to authority and doing your own research and the scientific method
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and common sense, like it's not a simple thing to figure out, like take nobody's word for it.
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I want to, there are areas of my life where I just want to take people's word for it.
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Okay. I don't want to have to do my own research on vaccines.
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No, okay. I see what you're saying. Hold this thought that the power of the scientific
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revolution of the 1600s was Nolias in Verba that we don't take authorities word for it. We don't
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take daycouts word for it because it comes up with these lovely flowery theories. We go with
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Newton because he's got the maths that he can test and he can prove it. Yeah, you know,
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Mercury's Albert and the coming of Hallease Comet. Well, his maths really works and from that time on
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we're taking nobody's word for it, we want to prove it. So this is the power of the science we're
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living today, the scientific revolution. And when you do want to take somebody's word for it,
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like, you know, during COVID when NCIRS, the National Center on Immunization and Research and Safety,
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when they come up with something that says, you know, the COVID vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine is,
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you know, over 90% effective and its side effects are, well, you know, really quite acceptable. One
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in a hundred thousand young men are likely to get myocarditis, but you know, we're alert for it.
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We can pick it up quickly and we can treat it by contrast. If COVID is prevalent and you're a
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young man, your chances of getting myocarditis are 20 times higher. So before the NCIRS or, you know,
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Health Department come up with something that is advised, it has been through a battle, subterranean
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battle. So I do trust what they say. I've always got my bullshit detectors out, but I will trust
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them more than I will trust anything that comes out of America's CDC at the moment.
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It's not about authority, it's about understanding the process that is underlying and there.
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So you're essentially outsourcing your mistrust of everybody to another institution in whom you
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place your trust. So in a strange way, you're trusting that the skepticism has been active
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and vibrant. I know that I've lived science my whole life, you know, as a working scientist having my,
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you know, whatever paper I write, ton to pieces through peer, it's brutal. Science is brutal.
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So I understand the process, I understand it's not never black and white, it's always within degrees
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of certainty and caveats and I, I deeply believe there is no better method, certainly not going to
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amaha influence the website. Let's go back to COVID. Absolutely. It could have been created in a lab
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or it could have come through the wildlife trade. Now we know that the first SARS, nobody argues
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that it came from the wildlife trade because it emerged from a wildlife market in Guangdong
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through infected civets. It's quite incontrovertible because we got the civets and we saw, we got the
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body, right? And we found that they had an early form of SARS, the form that was prevalent in the
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earliest cases before it had mutated and gone around the world. So nobody disputes that.
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Unfortunately, with SARS COV-2, the Chinese shut down the market very sensibly on the first of
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January because they knew the first case had come from a vendor at the Huanan seafood market
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out of the first. And did they also shut down the lab or scrub the lab or something? No.
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So the Chinese shut down the market and the animals that had been traded there, the wild animals
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had been traded illegally and all those vendors vanished, the wild animals vanished, a few weeks later,
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a national order was given to shut down all the wildlife farms that were providing the civets
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and the raccoon dogs and the hedgehogs. They called them wildlife farms but they were just
34:57
poaching them from the wild. So the bodies disappeared and it's a real conundrum that they have not
35:05
been able to find those animals to test them. So we couldn't get the animal and we couldn't prove it
35:14
in the second time around. So what do we do? We've got all the speculation
35:21
and Eddie Holmes and Christian Anderson's paper comes out in March and they say we think the
35:28
preponderance of evidence is natural but by May of 2020 you've got other scientists, very credible
35:40
scientists saying you know we're not convinced you know we really need to give the laboratory origin
35:49
better do some better research on it and one of the scientists who felt this way very strongly
35:58
was Michael Wariby and he was he's a great fan of cow popper. He truly believes that your role
36:09
as scientist is to disprove theories. So what does he do? So I think in January 2021 some time later
36:21
WHO had done this trip to Wuhan and they'd come back with this report that says look you know we really
36:31
think it's most likely that it came through the wildlife trade and there's great outcry
36:40
against the WHO report because they say look you weren't even allowed into the labs how can you
36:47
rule out the laboratory origin and one of the ring leaders is this guy Michael Wariby. He
36:54
organizes this letter to science magazine that says we really have to investigate the lab like
37:00
origin and and then what did he do? He goes into his basement because he's shut down it's
37:07
it's the middle of COVID. Where is he incidentally? I think he's Arizona okay
37:15
in the States somewhere that's all right somewhere in the States and he starts doing uh so his
37:25
starting position is look the first 50 cases they managed to trace a third of them had some
37:36
connection to the Wuhan seafood market but that leaves two thirds who didn't
37:43
well um they worked all over uh Wuhan so that doesn't help anybody but what if we looked at where
37:55
they lived that might provide some evidence so he goes onto his computer and he manages to find
38:04
the first 150 cases he goes into all the uh records from Chinese hospitals and
38:13
everything that was available on Chinese media in those first weeks of 2000 and he manages
38:24
you know with great perseverance to find the home addresses of the first 150 cases
38:34
now the first 150 cases are the most informative why you know drop a drop of blue dye into a glass
38:45
of water in those first seconds you can see where that drop is after five minutes it's just a wash
38:53
of blue so that first drop is the most informative that's first 150 cases where did they live these are
39:02
the most informative Wuhan is a city about the size of Melbourne but 12 million people are very
39:11
densely packed cities dozens of shopping malls dozens of markets other wildlife markets
39:18
what are the addresses of the first 150 cases I ask you Josh well I've read your book so I know that
39:26
they're in a ring around the market with increasing density towards the market yes to which I put
39:32
that to someone who is more skeptical of the official narrative than me who said yes so it could
39:42
have been a super spreader event there I don't think anyone's denying that it's also apparently
39:48
more densely the houses are more densely populated around there so there would be a natural
39:52
distribution effect in that part of Wuhan because it's more dense there could be a
40:00
detection bias in the sense that where did this super spreader come from if you want to say this
40:06
super spreader came from the lab yeah that would be the claim right yeah why isn't it where this
40:11
super spreader lived why isn't it his family well he might live near the market okay but you've
40:18
got I mean I'm not saying it's a little bit for it I think I just think it's not a knockdown
40:23
argument that it can't have come from a lab like the other point is that it could be a detection bias
40:30
where the people who are reporting themselves like maybe there maybe there's some other reason why
40:36
more people around the market were reporting maybe there's a good health clinic there or something
40:40
I mean we don't know out of all of the we don't know who was dying of this thing without
40:46
going on to an official ledger an official Chinese government so the first 150 cases as I understand
40:55
that all been sent to a particular hospital to do the COVID tests
41:02
and they hadn't been you know sent there on the basis of where they worked
41:09
or where they lived yeah I mean it's certainly the strongest
41:13
hey support those who are not I know it gets that origin it's I mean not a hundred percent proof I
41:19
mean you can concoct some weird situation but really where did that super spreader come from
41:27
he just happened to be shopping at the market but why is that weird why wouldn't you why
41:31
if you were a lab worker who was why wouldn't you go to a market up sure you could but why wouldn't
41:37
you have spread it amongst your laboratory colleagues well you might have as well but you might
41:42
just not pick up the that signal in the noise I mean I think that it depends on how far out you
41:51
want to zoom where your gut says you're gonna land on this I think so I think because you're looking
41:58
at the first 150 cases yeah but before I think I think there's some kind of like cognitive or
42:06
epistemological thing that people are not uncomfortable with when you bring to the situation a
42:13
purely scientific approach which purely looks at evidence which of course is perfectly sensible
42:19
and when you're dealing with an adversary who has the capacity to erase evidence and
42:23
manufacture evidence because it means that you have to suspend your skeptical or rational thinking
42:30
or you're some sort of Occam's razor because you have to extinguish the possibility that you're
42:37
being hoodwinked because you can't deal with anything but evidence and if the Chinese don't let
42:41
the second team in which they didn't and if they wipe the market clean which they did and if they're
42:46
constantly paranoid about like all of that behavior might say that they thought that it was the
42:52
market and maybe they did maybe they didn't know that it was a lab leak yet but it could all it's
42:56
also consistent with the hypothesis that they were trying to cover their tracks so I sort of like
43:01
I do understand you know that you quote disparagingly David Leonhardt at the New York Times in defending
43:06
the New York Times's publication of a lab leak op-ed in saying like Occam's razor is the you know
43:13
is the simplest explanation is the best here was a city with a one-of-a-kind lab that dealt in
43:19
exactly these viruses and the virus got out there like everything else is kind of window dressing
43:27
but why is that logically wrong just because it's great it's great it's great because it's great
43:37
for conjecture but there's just no evidence for it you know you can just answer to everything
43:45
well the Chinese have covered it up the Chinese you know that in fact you could say the Wuhan
43:51
Institute of Erology they were all sick they all had covered but the Chinese just covered it up
44:00
you can say it I mean I can't I can't answer it back but you know these Wuhan institutes of
44:07
Erology and there are several they're all in you know different regions of Wuhan you know we're
44:13
not getting the first 150 cases you know emerging from there and that's not you know there's more
44:23
evidence you know so it's not just one line of evidence to me that the clustering around the
44:29
market is incredibly powerful and you know if you read the book you know the father of epidemiology
44:35
John Snow traced the source of cholera in in Victorian London to a single pump
44:45
that way because by using this same methodology yeah looking at where the cases were all clustered
44:52
yeah and you find the origin so it's textbook epidemiology and and and just the fact that
45:00
Michael Wariby went into this wanting to disprove the market origin theory his goal was to get the
45:10
best evidence he could to get the best evidence the unvanished evidence from China the first hospital
45:17
records you know everything he could find I don't know how he did it but he managed to get the
45:24
addresses of the first 150 cases we have the I don't know how he did it bit is what people will latch
45:30
on to because the data I mean I even I just with a normal sort of skeptical journalist I am
45:39
have a question mark over my head about well he's published a quality of data he's relying on
45:44
he's published it in science so you know I could go and ask him yeah how did I mean I interviewed him
45:49
he told me at the time he just you know he's Google translate to get on to all the Chinese media if
45:55
there are things that he couldn't anticipate like I mean why weren't other people at the lab
46:01
infected like it is possible they just went home and died and that there are different patterns of
46:07
like I'm not saying it just doesn't feel like it's land dunked to me there might be differing
46:12
healthcare they're like they might just be differing quality of healthcare they might not get picked
46:16
up there must have been heaps of people who had it who didn't know what they had right there
46:19
must have been loads of people who were just dying of a mysterious chest infection and who never
46:25
sought yeah medical care yeah yeah yeah better than that we're getting pretty good at just sort of
46:32
um you know doing these x-rays ground glass opacity yeah yeah I mean I've been I've been a
46:41
sure a number of times no no you're absolutely right that if a poor person starts coughing and
46:46
feeling sick they're gonna go down the street to the guy with the herbal that's true and most of
46:51
the cases were unsympomatic we know that that's why it's so deadly yeah you have sleepers people
46:57
going around infected yeah infecting people but you know with no which is why you know two-thirds
47:05
of those first cases they couldn't track down to anywhere hmm they couldn't track them
47:13
down to anywhere because presumably they are being spread by people and they were by no symptoms and
47:19
and that was why Mark Michael Wariby wanted to look at the addresses of where the people lived
47:24
would he find something that zeroed him to elaborate or something else anything other than the
47:32
market hmm so the only only um pointer we have is to the market and that comes from the
47:41
the first people to be infected a third of them of the first 50 cases either worked at the market
47:49
market had parented the market had a relative and there was still a lot of people who got it who
47:55
when know we need the market yes but that's later on you know when the thing has sort of spread
48:02
and the information isn't as rich anymore sure you know then it's just spread right right
48:09
so but there's more information so the other thing is that early on in the pandemic there were two
48:16
strains of the virus and one of them took over and just became fully dominant both those strains were
48:25
present at the market so that is another piece of evidence if you want to say it was a super
48:32
spreader who came from the lab and did he shopping at the market that day and spread it to everybody
48:39
else but nobody else where he lived in his neighborhood or in his lab or anything like that
48:46
uh this you know we know that at the beginning people either had one strain or at the or the other
48:57
so why would there be two zoonotic strains contemporaneous way well it fits more with the zoonotic
49:06
hypothesis because you couldn't imagine a better way to evolve a virus than in the wildlife trade
49:13
you know that well i could imagine a lab they they pack these virus they pack these wild animals on
49:19
trucks your hedgehogs your civets your raccoon dogs your snakes whatever you know cheek by gel
49:27
and their cages on these trucks you know a day or two traveling they're sneezing you know the
49:34
virus gets to sample every kind of every possible respiratory ecosystem whoa you know this is good
49:41
you know and what a great way to evolve a virus that is adapted to multiple species which by the
49:48
way is exactly what COVID-19 was you know dogs and cats and yeah I'm so unclear about how you
49:57
would get to because my thinking about COVID was like well if you shuffle a deck of cards
50:03
enough times then after you shuffle at a hundred million times you're going to get all
50:07
jokers you know or you're going to get a shuffle at all straight and that's what you've got
50:11
with COVID you've got this well no I'm not a bazillion we're all constantly mutating and we just
50:18
sometimes land on this unfortunate outcome where there's something that is deadly and infectious
50:24
in humans how does that happen twice at the same time in the same place well let's imagine we do
50:32
have a sick raccoon dog and you know it's you know billion viruses each time
50:42
replicating an edit sneezes and each time it sneezes you know it's a different deck of cards
50:51
whoa this one hits Josh Zep oh you know I think I like Josh Zep one of them takes holding Josh Zep
51:01
you know another raccoon dog has a different you know a different infection also has a
51:08
a billion different types of viruses hopeful viruses and spits out another different combination
51:16
so you know most of them probably won't like Josh Zep but maybe that hasn't happened for
51:24
since 2002 but it happens twice in the same week I don't know if it happened in the same week
51:31
could have been going on for a long time you know this has been going on for years in the market
51:39
well but COVID hadn't been going on for years no no but it's you know slowly evolving and oh
51:44
I see what you're saying just like what I'm saying is there are two strains of a deadly infectious
51:49
human disease that have not emerged since 2002 and they both hit the same market at the same time
51:56
that to me suggests well that would go in favor of the lab lake hop off this is more than the
52:04
market how would that go be in favor of the market well I I guess I'm sort of straining at my
52:10
you know knowledge here but right it doesn't seem implausible to me if you're a raccoon dog
52:15
and you're already you've got a form of the virus that's adapted to you you know it's come from
52:22
a bat you know it's gone through various different animals now I'm the raccoon dog
52:28
every time the virus replicates it mutates right so it's already done the legwork it's already
52:37
done the legwork every every every time it sneezes each each droplet of virus oh I see
52:47
we'll have a different operation of the yeah I see okay okay um and you say raccoon dog because
52:53
one point that you make in the book which I hadn't realized is that we don't longer think it was
52:57
from a pangolin no no we never thought it was from a pangolin I did oh sorry I mean in 2020
53:04
everyone was talking about you know I'd never heard of what the fuck a pangolin was before
53:07
and everyone was talking about pangolin yes yeah yeah because the um the virus itself from the
53:14
pangolin most of it was pretty different from SARS-CoV-2 but it was just that mutation in the
53:21
receptor binding domain that was the same as the one right and so do we know what animal it most
53:27
likely came from well we have not got an animal I mean species sorry yeah we don't have a species
53:39
from the market that we can take the raccoon dog and take a biopsy from it here's what we do have
53:48
the you know they have the map of the market and where all the different animals were that were
53:56
being sold you had the domestic animals but then you had areas in the north western corner
54:02
that had the wild animals most of them being traded illegally and we know that because
54:09
Eddie Holmes had been there several years before he'd taken photographs and seen those animals one
54:16
anyway um this information came from the Chinese CDC they withheld it for a year or more maybe two
54:24
years until it finally appeared on a database Florence Debar was looking through this database and
54:33
accidentally found it and what she found was that the swabs in that northwest corner of the market
54:42
where they had the raccoon dogs and the civets that was where they had the highest levels of SARS-CoV-2
54:51
and they also had DNA from the animals now you know circumstantial evidence if you had a swab you know
55:04
you you swabbed the cages where the animals were wow in the single swab that I picked up with this
55:11
little bit of cotton wool I've got both SARS-CoV-2 and I've got a raccoon dog DNA that's highly suspect
55:22
that the raccoon dog was infected with SARS-CoV-2 but it's not proof got it so it's probably a raccoon
55:29
dog or well we know that well one of the things that was in a hut next to the raccoon dog yes yeah
55:36
we know that a raccoon dog was there we've got its DNA we know that SARS-CoV-2 was there like a
55:42
mystery detective mystery isn't it but do we know that that SARS-CoV-2 was inside in the kitchen
55:48
infecting the raccoon dog I mean we know SARS-CoV-2 travels in the air you it could have come from
55:55
another animal it could have come from a human who sneezed it out so it's not proof yeah
56:01
um I want to let you go but I want to wrap by talking about the purpose of the book and science
56:07
more broadly how I mean I find myself in pessimistic moments at the moment about the future of
56:13
our reasonableness rationality and science what do you hope the book achieves for your grandson
56:20
yeah well you know I first discovered you when you were talking with Jonathan Rouch
56:31
great man great man and uh you know he seems optimistic that the pendulum will swing back
56:41
um I hope that the Trump administration fails fast that uh people will see that
56:52
when you ignore science there are consequences when you take away the ease of being vaccinated when
57:05
you suggest that in Florida children do not need to get vaccinated when we go to school when you
57:12
start uh spreading a lack of confidence in vaccines you see the consequences
57:21
I mean the just the absurdness of it I mean it's absurdism isn't it um the recommendations of
57:31
um RFK junior now uh well I think he he put out a report just last week it's very hard to keep up
57:41
but things like um yeah let's you know increase nutrition for children you know who could argue with
57:48
that yeah but Trump's funding cuts have taken away uh also programs nutrition and vaccines not
57:58
nutrition or vaccines like why is it a why is it neither or like you know what just the primacy of
58:06
it's it seems strange to be like you don't need vaccines because we all need to eat better
58:12
can't we all need to eat better and also need vaccines like yeah I don't get it
58:17
and you know the internal inconsistencies in consistencies so oh fluoride is associated with
58:25
you know all the ailments of the 21st century really but fluoride is also responsible for
58:32
the fact that we're not all wearing dentures at this age so both those things seem to be in his
58:40
report so I hope like I lived in America for six years and I believed Americans were very smart
58:48
and I hope they wake up all right me too Elizabeth me too thank you for your time it's
58:55
lovely to talk to you thank you John