Lab Leak Groundhog Day: COVID Origins in 2026 with Worobey, Andersen, and Holmes

Hello and welcome to the

special episode of decoding the gurus with the Cardinal of Amsterdam for

just me, Cristana, the psychologist, status-matrition of sorts over there, Matthew

Brown and we are joined today by three returning guests from moving the field

of verology. So for long-term listeners they may remember that three years ago

now we did a special episode on the Laavd Lake or Covid origins in general and

we had on that episode Eddie Holmes, Michael Warberry and Christian Anderson. They all

agreed to come back despite the dysphoric experience they had three years ago

for a second round in 2026 and we're recording this during the ongoing

hearings and kind of scrutiny over Anthony Fauci in America and a kind of

renewed weave of Laavd Lake discourse which feels like it will never end and

anybody who hasn't listened I strongly recommend they go back and look at the

original episode because we go into quite a deep dive around the evidence of

the stance in 2023 and the discussion is actually freemd of drawing a

Lina Chanema Ridley's claims about topics and questions that were all just

won't answer. So there is a lot of information in that episode and some of it

may be recovered here but I would encourage people to go back and listen and to

introduce the guests briefly so Michael Warberry is a professor and head of

ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona has studied a

range of things including origin evolution and spread of viruses not just

COVID but HIV, influenza and on a number of key papers related to the spread of

the virus around the wet market and you know Eddie Holmes is the NHMRC

Leadership Fellow and professor of Rolj at University of Sydney where research

focuses again on a range of topics but including pathogen discovery viral

diversity and evolution has done a lot of work in China on emerging viruses

there and obviously on SARS-CoV-2 so there's hisdium in a lot of relevant

research prior to the pandemic during the pandemic and has also offered a

recent review of the state of the evidence around it and lastly Christian D.

Anderson professor at Scripps Research with appointments apparently across

translational medicine immunology and microbiology, integrative structural

and computational biology and the translational research institute where you

direct infectious disease genomics. No it may sound like I'm reading these from

it's here to watch the profiles but yes so again Christian is on a whole range

of papers and has studied viruses beyond COVID-2 including Ebola, Zika viruses

and so on and notably is the lead offer on the much discussed proximal

origin paper a short paper but one that is probably likely to come up in this

discussion and forever to be discussed if the discourse is I think to go by so

welcome again gentlemen and thanks for agreeing to come back. Thanks

for having us on. Good to be here and that was all broadly correct there was no

misadfrication. I forgot to mention now I'm the original leaker that's the

claim that I'm not likely for most other people so that's right I did not

include that we may be speaking to the culprits behind the origin of the

virus that will become clear as the discussion goes on but back in 2023 we were

asking you to summarize you know a whole range of diverse evidence and and had

various questions so maybe a good one to start with is just is 2026 we still

remember the pandemic but it's been a while so how does the research around the

origins outside of public discourse and media land how has it evolved in the

past couple of years and where does it stand? No I can maybe stop I mean I think

you know all the last few years we have learned a few new things about the

origin of the pandemic and it's only strengthened prior analyses which is

that this came out of the Hunan Sea food market and we have narrowed it down to

which part of the market maybe even down to which stall it might have been but if

you just take a little zoom out right is that if you think about Sunosis why

would you expect to find these and the answer is that you would find them you

would expect to find them associated with wildlife trade we have seen this in

the past we know the huge risk and indeed this is the single most important

evidence that we have I think is exactly that right is that we know that

the early cases link to that market and we know that the way in which this

was discovered was hospitals realizing that there were these pneumonia cases

linked to the Hunan Sea food market and that's where we start the journey

we'll I will say further what we also know is that if you look at the early

cases in 2019's and December 2019 right and retroactively looking at those is

that those cluster around a very close to the market itself and in fact no

other location in Wuhan show a similar clustering of early cases if we then

zoom into the market what we find is that within the market itself when we look

at positivity of the virus itself on samples that were taken from the market

from things like the floor, cages, you know, what gloves, whatever else was

swapped within the market is the there's clustering of that positivity right

in the in the part of the market in which we now know they were selling animals

themselves and in fact if we sort of zoom in on that there is part of that that

part of the market to where we have really high clustering and within that

there are five samples that were sample from a single stall there and when we

there now look inside those samples what we find is evidence not just of the

virus itself but we also find evidence of susceptible animals for example like

raccoon dogs this is exactly what you would expect it does not prove that

you know infected animals carry the virus to the market but if that's your

strongest hypothesis this is exactly what you would expect you would find

samples in which you find the evidence of the virus and the evidence of the

virus itself answers up to when animals and that's exactly what we have found

and that new is new evidence since we talked to you guys last time is that

that new part there and so in that sense is that we have extreme streams sort of

details of what we think happened here and those are part of this is extremely

well-supported given the evidence here yeah and I'll just add when we spoke

last time the state of the discussion about whether animals like raccoon dogs

and civets that had been found to have SARS-related viruses in the original

fogee SARS outbreaks were at the market at the end of 2019 was that there had

been this joint China WHO study into the origins and there was a pretty strong

assertion that essentially nothing to see here move along these these animals

weren't there and so as Christian said last time we had already discovered

multiple lines of evidence including the geographic clustering cent centering of

early cases who were not people who worked at the market the ones who never

the less were early cases still if you take this sort of center point it's

kind of smack dab on the market there are two early lineages that are separated

by a couple of mutations substitutions both of those have now been found at the

market and the sort of key thing is that the assertions in that WHO report are

now obviously incorrect and that comes actually from China CDC data that

samples that had been collected in January of 2020 so as soon as the market

closed down pretty much hundreds of swabs were taken from all across the market

and then it took two plus years of like a lot of us thinking boy sure seems

like if there were animals being sold at that market that they would be

evidence of those animals would be in these samples and sure enough they were

and their location actually sort of fit in with a lot of the orthogonal

evidence about which stalls were known to be selling these animals and so forth

yeah see if he's this has been what Mike and Christian talked about is the

Wuhan bit and the market bit if you zoom out a bit further from that there's been

ongoing work in China and some countries looking at the diversity of viruses in

bats that are the closest to SARS-CoV-2 I don't know where the

but now viruses from Lauer have been published I mean last talk I can't quite

recall so basically it's been about something's ongoing I'm involved so I'll

discuss in a second and what they basically I think have shown is that first of

all off the group of bats that are have the viruses closest are these runoff

list bats these horses you bats right I'm gonna know that but there's a bit of a

biogiographic split in that the SARS-1 like viruses so 2002 10 and 3 out

of break they are from like north the Yunnan go promised to try to go northwards

and the SARS-2 like viruses are from Yunnan going southwards particularly

southern Yunnan and then into Lauer Cambodia via Nant Island that area okay and

that's where somebody's runoff list species live so there's quite a

narrow focus on maybe the bat ancestor actually is not even from China maybe

it's from a slightly country boring China to the same nice biogiography on that

so it's quite a lot worth the closest virus that's published to SARS-CoV-2

from Lauer okay and it's about three or three and a half percent different from

SARS-CoV-2 lots of recombination that's gone on in that genome just to

give you a hint about stuff that's coming I'm involved with some big

products in China we've sequenced 11,000 bats I think six and a thousand of

those are runoff list bats from mainly from Yunnan and there are more viruses

that are related to SARS-CoV-2 going to come okay from southern Yunnan I can't

tell you at the moment any more detail about what they will you have to wait

for that but it's worth it'll be worth the wait I can tell you that much but again

they're pointing to an origin right the south Yunnan and the border area of Lauer

Myanmar that kind of region has come the hotspot for the biodiversity as

right and my strong suspicion is that there'll be other animals in there as

well in that natural ecosystem that may be infected for example we've now got

and more pangolin viruses you may well recall that some people claim that

that pangolin virus was faked okay by some clever piece of engineering but I

was involved in we now have multiple lineages of pangolin viruses

circulating in a variety of countries and the fact is multiple lineages tells me

that they're probably not just picked up in the world larger they may actually

naturally in pangolins as they're exposed to bats okay so I reckon it's

probably ecosystem of these viruses in bats of animals bit south of China that

maybe if we can get into these places we could really find out what you know

the diversity of these viruses and how they've gotten to wildlife check and

how those animals then get trafficked into Wuhan and that to me is what's

going on that to me is what process is driven this pandemic so it's more coming

okay yeah so before we leave the science I guess I got another double

barrel question for all of you so we've got this whole arc of time for 2020

right at the very beginning then 23 when we spoke and now and maybe or three of

you could just briefly recapitulate where your opinion stood about the relative

weight of evidence for the two explanations at those three times including now

and secondly just to check because I've done my own naive survey of the

literature too and saw what you guys have described which is a gradually

increasing corpus of evidence supporting Zoonosis but I thought I'd check with

you guys maybe something's come up which maybe has supported the alternative

explanation maybe it has you can tell me so I'd like to go

you've got the most fun arc so let's start with you

probably the one that sort of swings the most certainly in the beginning

right which is which is a typical trait and of course as all know this that I

came from the from from the direction of saying like well that's one hell of a

coincidence the one is to roll a G with the kind of work that they were doing

and then we have an outbreak in Wuhan I mean what are the chances seriously

now turns out that when you think a little bit more about the question I just

set what are the chances seriously is that it's not that unlikely right I mean

Wuhan is a pretty big city it's more than 11 million people they have wildlife

trade in fact if you're looking at Central China it's the capital while

life trade if we're looking at SARS-1 and back in time is that we've you know

wanting to roll a G for example we're looking for farms and which they found

evidence of SARS-CoV-1 and that was found outside Wuhan and in fact only found

outside Wuhan in Hubei province it wasn't found in for example Guangdong

province none of those farms tested positive for the virus it was at the

restaurants and the wildlife markets so to that first question where I saw

well that seems like a while coincidence is actually not that a while

coincidence but of course like still you know you got to look into that and I'll

say during 2020 first be for example initially a thought lap leak right then

sort of like actually that doesn't make sense at the time of publishing

Proximal Origin for example like nope that really does not make sense but of

course during 2020 there were you know as part of the discourse there was

sort of spikes of saying like oh actually now we have found these things and one

of the first examples of that is actually right after we published Proximal

Origin all of a sudden there's these rumors that there have been cables

discovered from the Wuhan Institute of Aralogy that very much pointed to a

laugh leak and unsafe practices and all these different things and I remember

we saw that and I was like oh wait a minute because actually could that be

and maybe we were wrong in our conclusions now turned out that those cables

were nothing which we also did say and it's like well probably this is

nothing but obviously we should take it seriously turns out that those cables

just show the kind of work that goes on in DSL fall app and the kind of

regulation that they do so that really was nothing to it laid on a thing in

2021 the diffuse proposal for example comes out with all of a sudden now is a

new is a new evidence point in which they're describing in unfunded grants

but describing work around SARS-1 like coronavirus is including fearing

cleavit sites I actually mentioned in that proposal and I think that

proposal certainly had all of a stump for a minute and said like well let's

just wait a minute here let's just take a closer look at what's going on let's

make sure that you know whatever we have said in the past is that actually

still hold up and I think most of us at that time at least just paused for

a moment and said like look we obviously need to take this seriously it can't just

dismiss that out of hand but I will say that you know of course we did look into

it realize that actually that still doesn't make any sense you still have to be

able to explain the evidence we do have including the early cases and all the

different things that we're looking at right and the matter of fact is that the

lab leak just explains that really poorly but since then and especially as we

you know started investigating what ended up in the war be it all paper

Mike's paper there as well as the Picard all paper is that it became very clear

that actually this is not just coincidences right it clearly is the market in

which this came from and I will say ever since then it's just been clear like

no obviously this is natural in origin right and there has been nothing on the

on the intelligent side on the lab leak side the more they look the more they

don't find and in fact the stuff that they do find just shows it like look guys

there really is nothing right the Wuhan Institute of Aralogy just did not

had that virus prior to the pandemic which in fact there's also the

conclusions from the intelligence communities and so since those papers and

since that is that there just been no questioning I think on any of our minds

because it just it's just it's not make sense given the evidence

if I can just follow up on that point about them not having the virus

so one of the other thing that happened again I can't remember if we I don't

you discuss this I don't even remember the timeline but when the happened in 2023

was a bunch of sequences got dumped on Gen Bank from the Wuhan group the

Zheng Li and Xi group okay and incredibly I was at one of the authors and one of

these on these sequences and I couldn't for the life from me remember what

this was and then of course I was getting my name was being

banged around as being as hiding stuff but then we're actually looked into it

it's the complete counterfactual to what they wanted so the story is actually

very instructive the story was that in March or so 2018

my former at a former postdoc called Jay Kier and he went to work in in Wuhan

in the Lavagin and Xi and he was doing more evolutionary kind of molecular

epithetial cancer that's right and he in 2018 his student ping you he's one of

the people that's being claimed to be one of the first three three cases and a

guy called Ben who in a very other author including myself and

Zheng Li Xi wrote this paper about the evolution of SARS-like viruses in

bats particularly they kind of follow geography across China okay and since

2018 okay and the paper eventually was rejected by three

journalists because they wanted complete genomes rather than just

we'd have fragment the kind of polymerase they wanted to complete genomes

so it got pulled the paper got withdrawn because then

Zheng Li Xi wanted to get full genomes right now what's really interesting if

you actually look at this paper and the date this is 2018 says before the

pandemic they have a tree of the viruses they're working on

and there's no SARS-CoV-2 in there right now there was no reason to hide anything

this is before the pandemic RATG 13 is there the one that we they've always said

is the closest had a different name then that's there there is lineage four

viruses they and they mentioned this one sent actually got the paper here there's

one sentence and it says finally lineage four comprised

nine far more divergent SARS-CoV-2 viruses stumbled in you now and that's it

that's the entire discussion right now all the viruses are SARS-1 like

because they were the ones that caused the prior outbreak

they were the ones that they had isolated and they were the ones they were

working on not some random freaky back virus lineage

that was completely underscribed okay so A in that paper

bulk the viruses SARS-1 they're the ones they would have worked on

if they'd had engineered a virus it'd have been a SARS-1 like virus one

because that would have given them you know the the heavy hitting science

not a random divergent back virus and two SARS-2 like virus isn't there

is simply not in that paper and there was no reason to hide it if it had been

there game over but it's not there so where is it okay so you're saying they were

hiding it before the pandemic to do some crazy you know bio weaponry it's

just idiotic right now I've sent this paper's own published but I've sent it to

various people who need to see it like the intelligence agents they've got it

the bridge I've got it and to me this shows that you know again where where the

emails where the cables where is the data they've got the SARS-2 like virus

in that lab six and a half years of investigation of a lab by intelligence

agency so I've recovered absolutely nothing and this is this paper's a

little time capsule on what they had and what they were working on and it's

not there because it's never been there that's the reason why they had one one key point there is

that because the sequences have been submitted at the time oh yeah yeah yeah

embargo right and then he just forgot about it yeah no so I have and I've got emails from the

author saying what's happened so what happened was when they submitted the paper when they were

trying to get it published in 2018 they sent the sequences to NCBI and GenBank and you're

given various embargo I think possibilities they put four years on okay and then they

literally forgot because it's and then four years later the sequences appear and they all

thought what the hell is this and I forgot about it the first author the senior author Jay he

forgot about it all right and suddenly they hit on GenBank because they just put a four-year time

limit on that's simply all it was right you know and all these things normally it's cock up over

conspiracy this was simply a cock up it's actually quite quite amusing but then of course then it

was spam into you know they're hiding these data they're hiding these but it's a complete opposite

it was simply the paper was not was not published I forgot about it everyone forgot about it

and there it is pretty fun I wish I hadn't forgotten about it because that actually tells us

I can say it's a window what they were doing and they were doing a lot of things they certainly

did not have SARS-CoV-2 in that lab. Michael we don't want to miss you sorry

yeah yeah so my sort of trajectory I want to actually hit on three things that are still

they're important to my thinking and they're still really underappreciated I think in part

because they're not fancy scientific things some of them so until the summer of 2021 I wasn't

thinking a huge amount about origins but I was thinking that a like a lot of people including

John Stewart I thought oh it does seem a little bit weird that this pandemic seems to start in

the city with the lab that studies these viruses and at any point I could have actually

thought this one through and then dug did some digging and eventually when I thought about it and

dig did some digging it took me like three hours to find that if you look at any of like the top 10

largest cities in China you know in three hours I think I found seven of them had a lab or multiple

labs but after the fact if it had started in Beijing well there's three labs that were studying

that you could point to in in Beijing one of them even collaborated with Peter Da Shaq and

eco health alliance I don't know I think there may have even been a Tony Fauci tie in there another

city was doing actual culturing of viruses from pangolins and so this is a really important point

that I think the intelligence community hasn't quite grasped this yet most scientists who haven't

thought about it few much I think maybe don't grasp it either but one of the things that Joel

Worthyam and Jonathan Pika and I showed was that if you took a virus with the transmission ability

of early SARS-CoV-2 and you dropped it into a rural place in China it had virtually no chance of

taking hold and becoming established 99 times out of a hundred it would even if it got into that

first person it's not going to go anywhere you needed it to get into someone in a city for there

to be still less than 50 percent chance per person that you seed it in a city but at least you know

a appreciable chance of starting a chain of transmission and so this is a really key point that

if this virus was going to be noticed it was probably going to be noticed because it got to a city

and started transmitting and that means that you really need to just think about the places that

it's most likely to emerge are the biggest cities in China and if you look at the biggest cities in

China pretty much all of them have a lab that you could point to after that it happened from wildlife

and say it came from that lab case closed you know so I still cringe whenever I hear John

Stewart talk on Stephen Colbert like the damage done just with that one little attempt to get a

laugh is still going on at the same time it's a pretty natural thing to you know if you don't

spend a lot of time thinking of it it makes sense to come at it that way I came at it that way

so understanding that was one of the things that took me from thinking it's still unlikely to have

been a lab leak but certainly I was amongst the scientists who was like I think it's possible we

still don't know two other things that we didn't know first of all whether the early association of

people with this virus getting sick from the virus working at the Juan on seafood market

was actually a real pattern or whether it was some sort of ascertainment bias and I was told by a

colleague you know no no don't pay any attention to the early cases being linked to that market

China does surveillance on markets all the time to make sure they find people who are getting sick

from the next SARS virus that turns out to be utterly untrue complete bullshit no one was looking

at the market no one was looking at the market until multiple people had shown up at a couple of

hospitals near the market with something that looked like SARS and so some physicians who had

worked on the original SARS were like wow this kind of seems like maybe some new virus that's

jumped in the first cases weren't even linked to the market they were just like a family who all

had lesions in their lung that looked to the doctor at like SARS once they realized that there was

maybe something new then they noticed okay the next four five people who came into the hospital who

had that when we asked a few questions it turned out they all worked at one work site in the city

of 11 million people and so that to me was an important you know before I did the work to put that

all together and understand okay that's how it came to be linked to the market I was still thinking

could maybe it's ascertainment bias and and then the other thing is down to a couple of Chinese

scientists in Wuhan who had been interested in ticks that they could collect from wildlife at markets

and look at viruses in collaboration with some some colleagues at the University of Oxford but

this was like the craziest thing after the WHO China joint study comes out and basically says the

animals they these animals weren't here and you still have people saying you know China's the

totalitarian regime that like no information that would point to a lab leak whatever have been

let out well turns out these guys published a paper that came out in 2021 saying oh yeah no actually

by the way we've been to the four and only four markets in the city that had sustained

sales of wildlife including raccoon dogs civets and on and on and on and every month we talked to

the guys selling them we count up how many raccoon dogs and civets we see how many they sold last

month and we have data going back for years and years and so there's that and then the key thing

that again is not like a sophisticated scientific analysis but it's crucially important

and in my thinking this was a major turning point until they publish that paper and we realize from

first-hand accounts that there really are only four places in the city that are selling that kind

of wildlife I still thought hey it's possible that any place you throw a dart on the map of

Wuhan you're gonna land next you know maybe they're selling raccoon dogs in every little corner store

and anywhere it starts you're gonna be able much like the it's sort of like the reverse of the

John Stewart fallacy that I didn't know until that paper came out that any place you point to

is not close to somewhere that was selling these animals and not only is the Huanan market

one of only four places but it was the biggest location selling the sort of wildlife and if

the intelligence community could grasp just that point I think they would have a very different

sort of set of conclusions. Can I might kind of say that it's a community they're not interested in

in the natural origin whatsoever what they want to do is prove the lab league that is the their

entire focus all their evidence gathering is can we prove is a lab league they are not interested

in proving that origin that's all and that's why it's so why I'm gonna say because I mean that's

what I was trying to do really early on too right and it's actually really easy to prove a lab league

like historically you look at lab leagues being able to prove that they've been very easy right

because like whilst we're in the virus and that's what they're looking that's what they're working

with in the lab there you go and I think like they could have been so many opportunities to prove it

right any evidence of SARS-CoV-2 prior to the pandemic would do it right but all emails you know

all thesis papers whatever you might have is that that is one opportunity every single time and we

have thousands and thousands of thousands of these documents and none of them have it right for

the simple reason that the one is to neurology didn't have SARS-CoV-2 prior to the pandemic and I

do want to add that the intelligence community people are well-meaning and a lot of them like super

nice people yeah but they just fall into the same cognitive traps that I fell into until I thought

a bit deeper about it and then you know it turns out that even really sharp people who are analysts

at different icy elements if you don't have like real deep expertise in some of the

analyses that are done then you know there aren't that many people who like really

spent their 30-40 years of their career understanding the intricacies of how to root a phylogenetic tree

and so forth and so I always like to use the analogy of it's not that it's like

insane that we're like so much smarter than every that than other people it's just like when I go

to the dentist I'm very happy that my dentist has expertise in knowing where to find the nerve and

put anesthesia before he does a root canal and you know the intelligence community might want to weigh

in on the best way to do a root canal and they would give it a good shot but I wouldn't want them

being the final word on that either I don't know that's because I've seen that happen quite a few

that seems pretty easy to me the next time you have a root canal I'll be there and I'll show you

that I can do that just because I do think this is really important right because the intelligence

community of course has an extremely important role to play here because we can't you know gather

intelligence right we can't get access to emails and to all these different things that you know

are not in the public domain we don't have access to any of that and only the intelligence

community can really do that and that is a super critical role right because had this been a

lab leak it would be in there no question so from that perspective is that I think that that is a

really crucial role for them to play but let's not mistake that for them then being the authority

of the science of trying to understand how this emerged because that's where scientific expertise

and long-term experience studying exactly these kinds of questions are super critical and the

answer is just that the intelligence communities were pretty obvious reasons just don't have that

expertise at the level required to do these types of studies right and I think it's where this

point is that like both have a pace to part right where there's the science being done and intelligence

gathering being done you guys have kind of answered something that I was going to read but I'll

I'll still put it to you anyway because there might be more that you want to say but given what

you've outlined right with the increasing growth across multiple lines of scientific evidence that

point to natural origin right and that's the impression that Matt and I have both gotten from

you know amateur reading of the literature and that in various surveys seems to reflect the

consensus position of the majority of professional virologists as well yeah there is quite an obvious

divergence one from like you've talked about the intelligence communities they aren't universally

are you're in that the evidence supports lab lake but there's more of a split than certainly there is

in the scientific evidence and absolutely in in media and discourse and public conversation

the scientific consensus has not really filtered down right if anything it's possibly the opposite

that it's become received wisdom that the lab lake was completely dismissed and no the evidence

is increasingly growing to show that it was likely and was unfairly dismissed and I'm wondering

in the popular presentation with a lot of you guys and Christian for example you're presented as

having like a public position which is very categorically denying but then in private say no I see

this is likely now that someone sits at odds with the fact that the slack messages that are referenced

even which are taken as illustrating this they are saying in mid 2020 putting 70 30 right and this

is before many of these lines of evidence that we've discussed and Eddie you're 90 10 right so

there is a day in your private informal discussions where you know you're assigning quite informal

percentages that to me is still very clearly not you know you saying oh it's 50 50 no idea

but why do you think apart from the reasons that you've discussed right there is this divergence

because when it comes to the intelligence community I take all the points you're saying but I would

also imagine that intelligence communities also have access to scientists and they have access

to you know people that can summarize the evidence for them it's not a no interest to misrepresent

what the consensus on the issue is unless of course you know might be saying different in America

in the current political environment but in general that isn't what they want to do so why do you

guys think there's such a divergence between the scientific perspective and the kind of political

intelligence and media discourse around the topic yeah I mean I think I mean there's several

things that play here right I think like all of us start this lably journey with what are the

chances again the one is to neurology and then you have an outbreak it's just some people then move

on from there right and saying like okay let's just answer that question like what are the chances

but maybe let's also look at what does the evidence actually tell us and does that even make sense

and then we all get on a journey right and that differ from person to person but a lot of what you

see with the lably discourse is that it never gets away from that one single thing never any level

of evidence get dismissed out of hand right saying it's not perfect it's biased it's ascertainment

biases all these different things despite the fact that we well know that actually it isn't

and I think like I think that's the main thing and I and again I get it because that's where I

started to in early 2020 it's just for some of us now being in 2026 again we have sort of moved on

from there because we have actually studied the question itself and I think when you're looking at

what's happening is that people just can't move on from that one single fact and I don't say it is a

very human thing right but then of course on top of that is the you know immense amount of misinformation

and disinformation I mean we're at the stage at which many people honestly believe that the virus

was made in America by Tony Fauci and Ralph Barrick sent to China to be unleashed on the world such

that they could make money from the vaccines that were then going to create it and Eddie and

myself and others covered that up not then going to be created they already had been created

now already had been created yes it can't describe it other than saying that this is insane

right like that believing that that is actually true which I honestly I think many will do

generally believe that is insane to me and the question is how do we get from like oh it could

have been elaborately to there's this major cabal of all of our all big virology and big farmer

and big everything I honestly still don't quite understand that bit other than saying like that

whole discourse is completely disconnected from facts evident science and and it's sort of just

irrational view it just immediately goes to like elites china all these different things and the

latest one Chris and I heard was that Ian Lipkin who's when the author of the

prologue paper was in fact working for the CIA and the CIA transplant into our

CIA plants on our paper I think you're just being a plant as well because I was like not only

took it curiously but was actually the person that suggested that a group of us

sent something the science that became this this very influential letter that kind of

made the lably idea a hot topic and wall mainstream so yeah so you you're a potential origin in

that conspiracy you were planted to increase the prominence of lab lake I just like it's

sometimes hard to follow the idea the idea is so that let's see I could make what seemed like I was

credible because I had been at the forefront of saying hey dude let's let's take this seriously

and Christian and Eddie are maybe jumping to conclusions too quickly I think the idea was that

once I then published papers actually after having just done 16 hours of work every day for

three years Michael I have a question specifically for you on that so in that case I imagine that

didn't you know the weeps of this course that have surrounded this topic and the degree to which

lab lake has become politicized but also you know like a squeaky toy for the media in general that

whenever you were a prominent figure initially calling for more attention to be paid to you know

the possibility of a lab lake that that would have led to you know perhaps the lab lake community

and so on having a you know I would imagine a positive perspective on you and then when you're

leader as you described you know earlier going through the evidence and finding actually you know my

initial suspicions or concerns they're they're not as reasonable as they first appear the more I

looked into that and then becoming a offer on influential papers which are arguing for the market

as the initial outbreak source let me think and say not arguing for that hypothesis and we're not

proponents of a hypothesis but just following the data and the data is what's arguing for yes

well but in a more likely scenario yes but I don't think that caveat will make much

difference to you being painted as a villain in that case and so I'm kind of wondering during

or just in your experience how is that being or has it been like that that you are a figure that

is villainized nor have you been forgotten the boy tour because it seems like you have a trajectory

that is likely to result in you getting attention for for good or for else so I'm just curious

how that experience has been it depends on sort of what community you're looking at so in terms of

people who are still on Twitter I think they will easily fall into the thing you know I was a plant

and I was disingenuous the whole time and some part of some big plot certainly lots of people I

mean I'm part of the cabal of powerful scientists that supposedly now don't let other people even

countenance the idea of a lab leak which if you're a scientist the idea that you would publish a paper

an opinion piece saying we think that the lab leak hypothesis is very unlikely and then other

scientists whose job it is to quite a figure out what the truth is and then tell people about it

that's literally their job would be like okay Christian and Ed and we'll set this so you know

maybe to some extent for junior colleagues fair enough there might be some element of that but like

we like nothing more than telling other people that they've got it wrong in the scientific literature

and we try to figure it out when we've been wrong before other people take that opportunity to do

that but then in other sort of communities like in some in some ways with like congressional

committees I think that my trajectory has very much been taken as a mark of credibility that I

used to come down much more favorably on lab leak stuff and if the data as I looked at it more

and more had supported that rather than the other idea I think a lot of people understand that

what I would be saying that the data said and I'm not in a I haven't suffered nearly the

the level of being cast as the villain as particularly Christian and Eddie in part because I wasn't

on this proximal origins paper that just happened you know the big mistake was writing something

that whatever 20,000 people cited well well it's good for your H index anyway um well look

Eddie's fortunate to live in God's own country Australia but what about you Christian how's the

personal experience I guess of dealing with the the whirlwind yeah I think I probably also said

this last time right is that it's not great right I mean the sucks when I think back at the pandemic

is first of all most of my work was not focused on the origin of the pandemic right most of my work

was focused on other aspects of the pandemic including establishing genomic sequencing establishing

testing you know advising on lots of different committees and doing science and in all of this

and of course the origin question was it was a key component of that too but it was by no means

the biggest but when I look back at that whole journey is that it's you know it's great work

I'm proud of that work I'm in fact I'm very proud of that work I'm very proud of the

teams that we got together to really investigate these questions which you know the more think about

it the more realize that it is actually a really important question it is certainly one of the

questions that when a major pandemic like this happens you do want to answer the questions or how

did that all happen and that's actually what this research does and it does that with a really diverse

group of international researchers we started this just to fall of us right in fact I just started

with Eddie and I talking about this and then pretty quickly including Bob and Andrew on this as

well and then Ian Lipkin will later but I think like from that whole journey is that as I look back

on that and said you know would I do it again and not the answer is that absolutely I would do it

again there's no question about that because it is good science I think we have built some tremendous

collaborations as part of this and the science is holding up the fact that this has become politicized

it sucks it really does right and there's not much I can do about that and seeing my name splashed

all over you know social media but also most specifically in in normal media basically furthering

this idea that Tony Fauci instructed international scientists to to have a preferred narrative

all those aspects are false right Dr. Fauci did not have a preferred narrative

and he did not instruct you say anything it's just that's where the science led us and again one

thing is to see that on social media but another is to see that in the normal media as well is is

deeply disappointing and I think with what is happening today where you know we heard about Dr.

Fauci's diary for example which which you know it's not actually a diary but it is personal notes

which is splashed all over the internet and you hear article after article after article

talking about what Dr. Fauci did and did not say and I think I find that deeply problematic because

the real story is the fact that why are Dr. Fauci's personal notes all of a sudden all over the

internet so we can read them why are our personal private communications splashed all over the

internet so everybody can read them why did Dr. Fauci have to plead the fifth in front of Congress

with questions on which she certainly could answer those no problem yet he still had to to take the

fifth is that that's the real story right the story there is that why is all of this happening

and I don't see those articles I see the article saying then Christians said this then it he said

that then Dr. Fauci said this then he didn't say that then he was falling over himself and it's

like that does not matter at least not to me right I think the bigger discourse there I think is

is really the key which is that clearly scientists are being targeted here over something which is

grounded in in conspiracy theories right and that's pretty scary I mean he's he's he's facing

you know criminal charges as I was helped in contemporary congress earlier today right is that

this is no joke and I think that's that's you know so when I look at that and look at my own role in

that and saying what did I do during this whole period is that while I tried to do the best science

of pros and cons that do and I think we did do very good science did I make some mistakes along the

way of course it did right have I grown as a result of of that whole experience of course I have

right because none of us are perfect and none of us can say well if we went back and did it all

again would you do everything exactly the way which you did it and there are a few things that I

would probably change but by and large is just like yes that is the way should have done it

because I truly do believe that it's the best way we could have done well I mean you guys are

if I're all just rather than sociologists or psychologists that the sad answer is that when

when a highly salient and slightly traumatic event occurs there's natural human reaction to want to

find someone to blame so you see the finger going around sometimes it's China sometimes it's it's

faulty sometimes it's you guys sometimes it's something else but that psychological need to

find the villains and it's very psychologically dissatisfying yeah unsatisfying that it's a

natural origin same happened in my opinion might remember very well exactly the same thing it was

who could be blamed for this outbreak my agreement is a completely natural thing and this case it's

also you've got you know you've got the relationship between the US and China that's playing over

this and China comes across to many people as the easy natural enemy right and anyone who works in

China must be the same you know enemy status and that is extremely what's racist for a start

unfortunate thing that's kind of driven so much of this and Covid origins has now just been used

as a political football and they really irritate things how it's being used for individual people

to on their particular agendas right so it's being used as anti-gainer function by people who

anti-gainer function anyway it's being used by people to grift to make money to sell books and to

keep in social media and it's used by politicians having a go at Fauci which is more about

libertarian view about how governments intervene in public health and about Covid origins

and it's been used as an anti-China vehicle as well so that's what's become it and that's why part

of reason why you know the conspiracy theories have grown so high because it's used for these other

reasons too right yeah the bizarre thing is for folks who do want to blame China I don't think blame

is the best way to think about this but I do think it's important to do a post-mortem and understand

how this happened and there's actually a real case to be made that the things that China

said it was doing to limit the possibility of a repeat of the original SARS from wildlife

into people in cities were not done now we saw with h5n1 in cattle that it's not just China

who is not keen to share data early and be transparent let alone do the kind of testing of large

agricultural food chains for viruses that we have the technology to pick up without waiting until

it's six months into a new outbreak and that's the really annoying thing because as Christian said

it is important to figure out how these things happen is that when's the last time you heard

the US politician or a major news outlet talk about here's what I want to do to limit the chance

that a future pandemic jumps from wildlife into people but we've heard a lot about you know stopping

gain a function work that we've heard a lot about lab safety and fair enough we should always be

trying to make this kind of work as safe as possible and find remits to what we should do and what

we shouldn't do but there's literally just been nothing for six years constructive done by the

people who are either making money or gaining influence with the lab leak discussion to make the

world safer from this and it's going to happen again this way I mean this is the key thing right yeah

like in a wildlife you know unregulated wildlife trade is going to cause this to happen again I mean

I think like one key thing here right is that I think like we have always been interested in this

question because we're interested in understanding the audience in the pandemic that's it right there's

no other reasons for us to look at this but a lot of this has been co-opted as both Mike and you

I mentioned right for other reasons blaming somebody or finding a way in which to like explain

this offering or whatever but I think this idea that like the lab leak is very specifically tied

to this idea of of blaming China is a red herring because if you want to you know blame China for

the pandemic let's talk about the unregulated wildlife trade right this is a 50 plus billion dollar

industry poverty of alleviation industry by Xi Jinping himself and this wasn't supposed to happen

post South covid-1 right this was supposed to be like with surveillance and with regulations that

this was not supposed to happen again and it did and so in terms of like blaming if that's your

purpose again that's not my purpose my purpose is to understand the origin of the pandemic is that it

does not matter if it's one of the other right so I think like it's completely misconstrued this

idea that China is covering up and hiding the evidence because it's a lab leak and they don't want

to be blamed for it it's just does not hold up because it does not matter what we're talking about

one of the other and I think it's a really key thing right because I think a lot of that gets sucked

into like the lab leak is somehow synonymous with exactly that and of course it isn't well Mike I know

you have a hard-earned and Christian and Eddie will be able to stick around a bit but just in

finishing off Michael is there anything that you wanted to mention or that you didn't get a chance

to bring up before you depart there's only things we might ask you but yeah I'm happy with what

we covered glad to be here with Christian and Eddie reminiscing about some of the stuff that we've

done and appreciate the attention from you guys to the topic yeah and for people interested I mean

the can go read your papers right as you said that's where you lay out the evidence and arguments

right so a lot of it again is super simple stuff like just you know from cell phone data how many

people were visiting this market compared to like shopping malls and it turns out there's a lot

more people visiting shopping malls and so again it's just you know odd that it would be a wildlife

market of of all places where this pattern starts unless that's where it starts and I just said

that I would say I would really highly encourage people to actually read the papers if you do care

about this particular question right and suddenly if you care about blaming you know the cover

up on Proximate Origin I mean start by reading the paper like what was actually said in that paper

would be a really good starting point I think all right thanks guys thanks Mike thanks Michael

right so actually Eddie and Christian that the maximum chin of proximal origins brings me the

point I wanted to read which so on the one hand Christian like you talked about you know the

somewhat unprecedented coverage over personal messages emails slack right there the level

of which this has occurred around this topic is probably unprecedented but we have seen

in all our occasions right for example with the climate scientists or around 9-11 similarly

this kind of focus on what was said in emails what were people discussing in private and

and so on so to me that pattern is quite familiar that the madnawe have seen it in all our conspiracy

communities where there's a kind of quote mining thing where people instead of focusing on

the science or the overall like strength of evidence in the literature they look for a statement

where scientists have said something in an email and use that to say well that means you can't

trust any of the scientific evidence right be it around evolution climate change or whatever

the case might be and in your case then you are living in the long tradition of people

who people don't read the papers and instead focus on discussions or informal comments in slack

or around the papers and I read proximal origins it's a very short paper I'm not a specialist

in that right but when when I read the discussion section which has this paragraph which I

I'm still for my sins copy and paste in on twitter where there is the assessment given by you guys

saying based on the current evidence and our evaluation of it we find this to be the intentional

creation and and allow to be like not plausible and and then there's an immediate paragraph after

it says however you know we're in the early days of the pandemic as more evidence emerges the

probabilities can be revised according to additional thing you give some suggestions for the relevant

evidence right and this is presented as if it was a batting dine and kind of pivoting any future

research but what we've just talked about with all of you including Michael is that people

did go on to continue investigating to continue looking at evidence so to me it reflects this thing

if the proximal origin paper was even what they said right it was completely

feisty ordered you all to do it and it was like a completely politicized document it didn't represent

the facts right so you just disregard proximal origins the entire literature is still there all of

this evidence that we discussed but it often becomes these totemic figures or papers that stand

then for like if they can get proximal origins retracted or under my net that that will you know

basically make the whole gengitar fall dine and it's the same to me when people are talking about

evolution or climate change or these kind of things that maybe some scientists in a message

said something too strongly or in the paper even overstated because you said in the stack messages

you know maybe we were too categorical about this or we might have stated that too strongly

in the basis of new evidence that you were looking at but that's normal I know I'm not posing the

question here but I'm kind of raising the point that you guys you know you're scientists but you're

allowing to have personal opinions and discussions and to me looking at the evidence it doesn't seem

that you know all these things that are pointed are smoking guns are ultimately you guys discussing

possibilities which all the people say you're never willing to entertain and then when it comes out you

do entertain that you're presented that huh see they did entertain that but they didn't do it in public

but then your papers say you know we're interested in the possibility so I don't know it's just

let's say let's say in the stack messages with some new piece of data come along we said right not

discussing it must be wrong next but no not discussing must be wrong if we did that we'd been done for

not discussing it at all right so whatever whatever we do we'd have been home right for either

refuse to discuss it or discussing as we did and as you're a scientist you evaluate data that comes

along right and you change your view of hypothesis given the data and that's all that we're doing

in politics I think you can't do that I mean you're you're hung out to drive you change your opinion

right that's a kind of like polemic of politics you can't say you know you see so many

discourse on politicians that are a tap because they've changed their view in science you're meant

to change your view given the data and that's all we're doing that we say we're going to do in

proxamorogens and yet we do right and whatever we'd have done we did we'd have been hung out

drive but you're right if proxamorogens has taken on this I don't know got a mythical power

that somehow as opposed to all of science in history stopped anyone else talking about it and then

if we managed to retract proxamorogens certainly that would be the whole edifice of natural origin

collapsing and both of those views are absolute nonsense right so it's it's a bizarre it's a bizarre

situation let's just say for a moment that if that was the purpose was to shut down the lab leak

right then we did a really poor yeah we were really careful

if you if you recall you sent it to nature nature one of the reasons why I got the netch

retro from nature initially is because we raised the possibility of a lab leak at all and the

review was said you know you're mudding the waters by discussing the lab possible lab origin

right yeah I think like I mean it comes back to my point about reading the paper right because

you know a lot of what you hear is that you will hear that our paper we call you know anybody

believing in a lab leak conspiracy theorists it was used to label everybody believes in a you know

as conspiracy theorists we didn't even consider a lab leak we didn't talk about BSL to you know

all these different things and the thing is that all of like first of all we don't talk about

conspiracy theories a conspiracy theorists in in the paper because it's not relevant to the

discussion that we have in the paper right it frames the possible scenarios in which we should

think about the origin of the pandemic including a lab leak which is our scenario three ultimately we

end up concluding that in our opinion we did not find it plausible that it came from lab but we

stated as our opinion right and then as you said Chris is that we then followed it up with however

new data yeah yeah yeah and we talk about what some of that new data might be and in fact some of

the data we talk about we have gotten since and only further strengthened the natural origin scenarios

we talk so I think it's it's that right and then this whole like saying one thing in private versus

saying one thing in public is that you hear a lot about that these days and it doesn't really matter

what the discourse is about is that it's always about like somebody saying something in private

and something says saying something in public Fauci be hearing this all the time and A it's just

not true right is that if you look at the consistency of like what's said in private versus what's

said in public is that they are very consistent but also because like of course I have private

conversations I don't like you know every single brain fart I ever have I don't go on Twitter and

like oh my god like that was this right is it nobody does that well Elon Musk that maybe

actually normal person does not do that right and I think what's also really important is that like

as part of my career I've always loved to play the devil's advocate whether it's about my own

conclusions or it's somebody else's conclusions you can trust I'll be in there and I'll challenge

those conclusions even if I ultimately agree with them but it was like let us just narrow in here

and of course during 2020 in particular again we had limited evidence early on but then more

again these rumors were coming up about everything and of course every single time that happens

of course we have to question our own conclusions if you didn't then you're very poor scientists

so of course we did but also really importantly when all of a sudden I say like oh but wait a minute

I actually believe this anymore and then maybe we should think about these because all these

different things and then I realize well of the list of like eight things I might have mentioned

three of them might have been wrong I it might actually just not have been correct what I was saying

it's not that it was actually like that it was I was just me being wrong in that moment

but also importantly is that it's not like one day I say like oh let's just when then we go

70 30 you know natural versus lappley and then two days later probably and back to you know

what 70 30 what I'm talking about like it's 99 one but it's not like I think go into the slack

channel and saying like hey hey guys by the way I'm actually back to 99 one right because this is

not how private communication works right but of course you can read the whole thing instead of just

one single thing set in a single point in time and you can understand how people might change their

minds over time or how they might learn new things how they might get more confidence in conclusions

how they might question earlier conclusions and so on and so forth and I think this is my

channels exactly that yeah right and but it's this like belief that like oh if you set 70 30 back

in June of 2020 then clearly today you still don't believe your own conclusions it's ludicrous

chances are that a day later two hours later 10 minutes later I realized it's like oh I was

actually wrong about that but it's not like again it's like oh for the record let me just

this slack channel like it's is is completely absurd because it's not the slack things not a lab

notebook right it's us chatting in this very intense atmosphere and it was like a kind of

in a pressure release for us right as well because we all remember what it was like in in 2020

it was it was a difficult time for everyone right and I think that just gave us

that was some sort of therapy just writing these things out on this slack channel it's not meant to be

just this discussion of that origins you know in a kind of precise way it's it's us chatting

in this kind of release mechanism right and and people I mean I can say all they're doing they

just quote mine and I think what's now I think you've seen also it's the same with the Tony Faggy

stuff because there's nothing in there because there's not one place where he says our Faggy told

us let's change our mind all this sort of thing because they're not there they're now saying well

maybe there's an extra slack channel we haven't seen or maybe Faggy's got some other diaries that

we don't know I mean this is just in this is classic conspiracy thinking right and so you know

I mean the new thing is they have his phone right to yeah they go with all the things we have

and found it's got to be in the phone it's got to be somewhere and now they want Ralph barracks

Ralph barracks lab notebooks because that must be hidden there you know and it's just going to go on

and on and on it's and it's it's it's it's irrefutable right it's not science because there's

a keeps saying it must be hidden somewhere it's must be hidden somewhere and you can never I mean

you know what can you do the goal posted a shifting there on wheels right there's shifting

continuously to satisfy this this frenzy of getting the ideas validated but six and a half years

there's absolutely nothing right and they focus on our bad language and quite frankly it's

pretty bad I'm glad my mother's not reading them because if I'm sorry them because

focusing on the bar language because there's nothing else to focus on because there's no smoking

gun there's nowhere we're discussing how how we trick them didn't they how it was great it's not

there right so then they try and paint as is he's kind of ladish louts who are just you know just

talking nonsense because there's bats all they've got so why not if you can't prove your conspiracy

just try just try and trash our reputations because that helps as well but there are I mean one of

the things that people should note if they went and read it because I think you're right that like

a lot almost what you'll see quoted is like four or five lines right and and you will see a document

down which is thousands of messages or hundred or five lines are not in time order Chris as well

right oh no no not at all and and often like a company by Rand Paul said atorial right

right and that is cited as well and genuinely that makes a difference because the thing is that

it's it's kind of like there's a transfer of information which most normal people for legitimate

reasons are not going to read even the conspiracy minded there aren't that many of them that spend

their time reading that it's it's really articles taken from that and they will take sections out but

when you when you read the messages including from you guys like you talked about you know it is an

invasion of of privacy but if you set that aside you don't see a cabal of the roll just

who are operating to create like a fake consensus you see you guys referring to other people as

bastards and saying like you know those guys are with they doing that I don't know you know like

and and considering the possibilities and and you two right here who are friends who are scientists

arguing back and forth about you know I think isn't that a bit odd and you are saying no what's

odd like what do you mean I see this all the time here and there and to me reading as someone

not in science in the way that you guys are but you know in academia and writing papers and debating

ideas with people and I'm working on quantitative data it's the same kind of thing like people

put ideas people respond and so on and it feels genuinely a bit or well in that you guys are being

like reactivated the colds and I'm presented as like having these nefarious agenda while the

political bodies that are doing it and that like our hauling farchi up to give testimony after

he's retired or then you know the White House has a a website which is specifically about COVID

and says the truth in in big letters yeah and and you have half k junior somebody that's promoted

you know anti-vaccine advocacy or rhetoric for for decades just just like a very politicized

administration and one that is absolutely hostile to science in reducing funding and so on

but it's it's somehow in the discourse and like you said Christian this includes the kind of

liberal media that the scientists tend to be the ones that are getting you know the majority

of media attention or or presented that they did something wrong by having opinions by discussing

things and that kind of stuff and like I was watching the discourse around this and I went back

and looked at my old Twitter friends around you know previous times like the time we had you guys

or just other times when something has come out and the thing that struck me is it doesn't

really matter the evidence like the strength of the evidence or the degree to which whatever is in

the material it just gets fed into the same narrative and repeated and this will not be the end of it

like you know it's six years no I but from what I know with alert conspiracy communities and so on

maybe when the Trump administration is gone some of the energy will disappear but

this same kind of thing will happen every time there is some release or some journalist publishes

a new article about it and it it does feel like for me that I'm living it going to they in terms

of like you know looking at gurus talking about it but you guys are scientists who want to be doing

science but it just seems like from my perspective that you're kind of caught in your field becoming

relevant which seems like the greatest curse that this might have personally even though you know

the work that you guys have done is important and useful so yeah I do think it's also it's an

and very American disease right I've got a thing I'm not I mean Matt mentioned living Australia and

it's just not the focus this isn't here there was a bit a few years ago we're in particular journalists

on sky and writing for some some newspapers were were discussing it and there's a couple of you

know rogue senators that discuss it but it's not it's not on the agenda right and I do I do not

suffer like Christian and Bob Garrow though I mean it's a completely different narrative and it's

it's not it's just not in the press here at all it really isn't that yeah yeah most countries

is like that yet the US is going for this cathartic experience right but Eddie don't you think there's a

great irony there because correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that compared to a lot

of other comparable countries like Australia the United States had a large number of excess deaths

from COVID yeah it can be largely attributed to them not taking vaccines using stuff like Iver

Mechten instead and not having not having or not following the sort of public health type restrictions

that were done elsewhere yeah so it's just ironic that it was a traumatic event on a social level

yes you can understand the impulse to point the finger at someone to blame it but if there's anyone

to blame for unnecessary deaths then it's pretty clear to me who should be blamed well I think the

problem is that so public health itself involves almost by definition some sort of government

programs that are going to help the populace right and in many in some parts of the US the word

government is a is a swear word right and anything that kind of pertains to government intervention

be it mask wearing or vaccines it's hating this is well this is why she's in the in the fire and

lying at the moment okay and that's it and whereas you look at the country did well they're

often Asian countries where government is not viewed in that way government people kind of like

trust the government's very and very completely different narratives so yeah but I do think this

is very much an American issue other countries got a little bit going a bit in France but in the UK

but nothing like what's going on in the US like Germany and the Netherlands like I mean they're

definitely you know other countries in which this this is part of the discourse too I mean

the science is being on trial though I mean effectively you being hawed in front of congress yeah

no it's it's clearly weaponized in the US would agree in which we don't see in other countries right

but but but and I think like you know going to the blame part of this again right is that it's not

actually in the beginning might have been about blaming China or whatever but it's that's not what

it is anymore like you don't hear China mentioned with with Fauci stuff right you hear about

the virus was created in the US sent to China or whatever but the blame is to blame science and

scientists for this much more so than China for example and I think that's a that's a general

thing like again the climate scientists are extremely familiar with that dynamic and of

course we are seeing that again right surging you know climate science denialism that we're seeing

across many countries certainly the US and I'll say early on when all of this sort of really kicked

off rate is that first I didn't quite understand what was happening because I was sort of looking at

this and it was like but that doesn't make sense like why would you think that there would be a

conspiracy involving the highest level of government and then Eddie Holmes and myself I mean it

just makes sense right and initially I was sort of like I just need to explain it better and if I

can explain it better than then people will understand it of course there was hopelessly naive on my

part right that's not actually what's going on here and I would say talking at the time to

several climate scientists that had found themselves in this very situation you know decades prior

was very helpful because they're basically like welcome to the club and that was really helpful

right because it's sort of all of a sudden I understood the dynamics of what was really going on

but of course what we're seeing now is is is is completely supercharged right it's it's across the

board it's much more violent in the sense that they are literally talking about jiggling

somebody like Dr. Fauci who has spent his career dedicated to public health that's scary right

when you have show trials like the ones that we just showed directed at him and other scientists

is it is scary yeah the broader picture as you say is sort of not so much like a geopolitical

China thing but actually more connected to that groundswell of anti-institutional sentiment

it's probably the great sort of tectonic political change over the last couple of decades

and science is seen as part of the establishment rightly or wrongly I mean I think like I mean there's

the sort of sad thing about this is that you know I do think that we need to scrutinize the role

of science during the pandemic right I think that's important to scrutinize all of it

yeah public health science how science was you know made into decision making so and so for that

I think all of these things are really key right because other lessons that we could learn

as part of that of course there but that's not what is happening right right now is is not to go in

and saying like how could we have done that better it is literally like on one side that it wasn't

a problem at all COVID was completely blown out of proportions of what was the problem to scientists

created their deadliest bioweapon ever in the lab and it's the same people saying both things

and that's of course science is caught in the middle of that right and in the meantime

people like Eddie and myself are trying to continue to do that science to try and figure out how did

all of this really happen because again we have nailed it down to a very high degree of certainty

to be that market and the animals in that market but we don't know the upstream of all of this

right we don't know which animal from where how did they get in there how were the co-house what about

all the markets what about the transmission chain upstream of that there's a lot of things that

still need to be figured out which is really key for the question of like their legal wildlife trade

is a liability here and this is going to happen again so how can we prevent that better from

happening in future and that that requires much more understanding of the upstream effects but

of course there's no way to actually touch on the new that well there's a piece of the puzzle

Christine released this something you reased earlier about the kind of eagerness to attach things

to like Fauci personally right and how that's become like a a mean focus of the current discourse

and that is one thing that like on this podcast we see a lot that like scientific issues in general

ampli-dical issues but but scientific issues this certainly happens with they have a tendency to

become personified like whoever any figure there's hundreds if not thousands of Tony Fauci's all

over to the different countries right working in public health but why is his name known when

you know the minister in in Norway or or Denmark isn't right and you have that need and that like

talked about the people tend to want to find like a person right culprit but also that is often

high science is imagined to operate and a lot of the gurus that we see paint that picture that it

is these individual geniuses working and that they make you know leap forwards or they have a theory

a brilliant theory and that is like the thing which becomes the dogma you're not allowed the

question anybody working in science knows that that is not the case right of course there are

people of brilliant theories and so on but like it is very much more a collaborative endeavor with

thousands of people disagreeing institutions like during the pandemic like you talked about

there's lots of things you can talk about but there's so many different countries and institutions

that had different policies and ideas and recommendations right and there was consistency across

like the general public health bodies about you know the broad picture the benefits of social

distancing and so on and that is no take in as like something that is highly questionable

but in doing that I think one of the issues is that scientists like the evidence we talked about

the start of the podcast it doesn't really cut through that much I would say very very few people

are aware of the current strength of evidence for Zoonotic they would at best see it at 50-50

more likely lean the other way so what that means is that you do need scientists who are willing to

come and be scientific communicators or public figures argue the case for what they did and point out

that they're being targeted but in so doing you're essentially making yourself likely to become

a figure that is targeted that that features and conspiracies and so on and I don't know like from

my perspective the only thing I can say is that I am God that there are scientists still willing

to do it in the environment that is currently there right because it's not with our cost and it's

not with our risk but it really does need because of the way discourse works that there are people

who are good communicators and willing to appear and argue back and try and get their positions

under the weight of the scientific evidence into the discourse and maybe the climate change

thing is a slight cause for optimism in that like while there is a lot of denialism it generally

is not that the denialism has moved from dismissing all the science right maybe that's

me being optimistic but it feels like there's been a shift to a recognition that maybe the science

says that but we should still you know like ignore it for whatever reason but they're not denying

the science says that whereas with like the COVID we're still very much at the at the stage that a lot

of the science is just not acknowledged or or recognized so yeah in a way I'm commanding you guys

for being willing to talk to us or other people much bigger than us and to risk the kind of cost

that comes with that but I think that is unfortunately what you need to counter some of this stuff

because otherwise you just have signboards of Randball and and farchie pleading the fifth which

is a completely understandable thing to do but it's very easy to spin as well why would he

plead the fifth is you know got nothing to hide yeah I've had emails and phone calls

from people after he played the fifth saying I must be covering up then okay and that was

been the number one common narrative that I think about your point Chris about you know what

what I'm concerned about now is whether what were the young people want to go into his profession

in theology given what's happened to us and particularly in the US like Christian right I mean

you would you would definitely think twice right he really would I prepared to deal with this sort of

backlash you know like looking at me and saying like yeah I want to I want to do what Christian does

we'll be a little insane right let alone saying like looking at somebody like farchie and saying like

yeah I want to do that yeah in all honesty I don't like people in the right mind would not say that

right and that is bad right that is that is truly really bad because this work is of course

important like Dr. Fauci and the role he played and you know his his leadership at Naird over the

years as it comes to many different pandemics HIV being one of the main ones right and of course

COVID-19 2 is incredibly important work and I think public service in general is incredibly

important working but now you're looking at that and saying like is that my future while I could end

up being a target and facing a federal government that is going to charge me for trying to do good

signs or doing good work that I think is pretty scary I mean the HIV program literally saved millions

of lives literally yeah it was a great special health interventions ever now it's this man's good

and a man who's done this is 85 right is is you know potentially facing jr's it's literally

unbelievable to be saying these literally unbelievable I mean it's not potentially he is yeah

yeah it's just I mean how it's incredible that we were at this point I can barely begin to understand

how this has happened man who's who's done more you know let me incredible work saving lives in

undeveloped countries for eight you know amazing funding coming through him and it was a

DW Bush that put this through working with numerous presidents on a public consign he got

really well with you know phenomenal right and Ebola I mean to all these outbreaks influenza his legacy

for helping population and for and for folding public health is is unsurpassed in the last you know

56 years and there he is for doing his job doing his job literally doing his job

following the science he is now facing jail it is how we have got to this point in history is

unbelievable I do hope you know in years to come come scholars will look at this and they will

see what black day this is right yeah for for everyone involved you know it's just

absolute disgrace insult you know globally and the other thing Eddie I would say is like and this

this got to me particularly I mean did everything that you said about the persecution of

scientists and and kind of like the vilification for for doing public health right it's a terrible

president to say and a bad atmosphere but personally one of the things that got to me the most

of like this and Martin I've been talking with Phil Merkel and about this is that online of course

you had the Republican mega community fallen line behind this because this is part of the prevalent

narrative there's a lot of anti-vaccine rhetoric on that side for five k junior you'll be in the

public health figuring and so on but what I find incredibly annoying was that people presented it like

by talking about the lab lake or criticizing Fauci they you're doing something

brief and potentially costly when it when in fact it is no absolutely the dominant thing right and

in alternative and mainstream media so if you come out arguing you know that the evidence does not

strongly align with lab lake that is the thing that is actually socially costly for most people

in media and discourse right maybe not CNN but even even there I think you know in general

you know you see world figures like John Stewart and Trevor nor whoever right like they can to

follow it just in terms of the discourse we have and maybe they don't buy everything rampol

as saying but they're often like swept along with it with the notion that the evidence is like

constantly shifting it somewhere 50-50 so the thing that I find this is full is how much people

print as if they're there these brief truth tellers who are taking the huge cost and the cost is

attention support Elon Musk retweeting you you know and maybe Trump adding you under some

commission or whatever the case might be as opposed to the scientists have been hauled up

in front of committees and presented as if they are people purely motivated by greed and

the question I had for you given the situation that you've described maybe this will be optimistic

or pessimistic but you know you guys are still primarily doing science working on research and you

had you know labs or are working with researchers and post-docs or students and so on so given what

you discussed do you see any change amongst the students the younger scholars or you know young

researchers who are coming up or is it still within the discipline that you have a lot of energy

you have like the field becoming relevant in a lot of ways that it wasn't or at least was not

publicly perceived because of the pandemic so what is the impact on your research teams and the

next generation of researchers cause for optimism cause for pessimism I don't actually know if like

the effective fields this effect as in like of people are like I'm a new biology but the matter

of the fact is that if that was the case I probably wouldn't notice it just because I only get

people that are interested in that and there are still people that are interested in that right but

what I do see visibly is the shift in just wanting to be an academic scientist of be a public servant

right where in the past people were certainly looking at careers of places like the NIH at careers

of universities and research institutions and seeing that as the career trajectory that

bait has changed dramatically in recent years both as you're talking to graduate students and

and post-docs where they just can't see that future ahead of them anymore so they are looking

to industry right they're saying like where can I go work for an AI company where can I go work for

a farming company where can I go work for these things and you know in general that's obviously

fine right because people need to have a diversity of interests but what is very visible in this

is that a lot of people just don't see that path the academic path anymore as a viable strategy for

for future career right and that is very very very very visible on my side I would say and that's

again graduate students and post-docs and the same is true for for people that might have considered

careers and in public health departments careers of the NIH for example I don't think I've heard

anybody wanting to go that path recently yeah I totally agree that it's palpable you can you can

feel it absolutely the other thing in that context was when I back in the 80s when I was sort of

graduate student we used to joke about once you did your PhD the next degree you got was called

that the BTA being to America right because that was like you know you have to prove yourself

you had to prove yourself are the Beatles had to go to the US in 1964 otherwise they're never been

great right so you got to go to the US to prove yourself right you need that number one in the US

that's gone that degree is gone right a because US science is being destiny B you can't get a

visa to get in the first place now right so it's that there's been this a massive shift in the

kind of geographic distribution of science is being done and yeah as Christian says I think

academic science what I see is is it is it decay it's a decay and pathways are being you know closed

off and people looking more industry as a career so they get skills for PhD but they don't become

academics and frankly you can blame at the moment right so you know they're definitely definitely

in that that last part I think it's because you know I love this country I mean I've lived in

America for quite a while right since since 2009 and I'm an American Danish American citizen

and I think science is and has been extremely rewarding right and the academic society the

academic community you heard in the United States and just science in general is awesome right I mean

it has been it's been arrived and I think like there's definitely still parts of that right I don't

I don't think that the whole like everything has just been disamated right but I do think that we

are we we add at a juncture in which that that is actively happening and of course it's not that

you know when when young scientists today look at the future careers and saying like I don't

I don't see myself doing academic science is that it's not something that is you know day one

everything is running 100% day two it all fell apart right it's something that takes a generation

and we are going to see that and I think we are already seeing you know a lot of that happening

already but of course if that coast does not get reversed then it will only get get worse with time

and I think that's a tremendous loss because the the matter of the fact is that the US scientific

community is that that just is nothing that can replace it that really isn't it's not like one

the European Union can step up and say well you should come here and then you do the same here

the European Union has has as you know defy that science for for decades now right and just have

not been to the to the point that it's been in the United States and I hope and I think it can be

reversed right but it's not just something that will magically happen unless people actually start

and scientists actively start working to ensure that's going on I think this is a good message to

leave on maybe not quite as pessimistic as Eddie's but you know we can change

course I flew all night in from Singapore I'm pretty tired so the past maybe a

night is a bit grumpy at the moment don't this let's not that no I mean obviously things have

trended in a very bad direction with regard to public understanding of science and that the public

sponsoring good science in recent years especially in the United States but we can be hopeful that

this is can be turned around what about something good something there must be stuff you guys are

working on that is exciting you know important new developments you've really explained very well

I think why it's so important to get to the bottom of the causes and antecedents of viral outbreaks

like SARS-CoV-1 what other stuff are you working on that you might want to share?

I'm to give you a minute to think about it and just add a post script the maths point I would

invite our audience to note the general infusiasm and level of excitement when discussing the

scientific evidence and research at the beginning of the conversation versus talking about

median politics and discourse and you know the constraints that scientists are facing

currently from the administration because to me I think it's clear that like you guys are

much more eager and interested in the science than the politics but you know that's what you're

trying to do so that's question is a good one to end on to ask you about the science or research

you know you're gonna go first Christian or should I ever go?

you go so I guess the stuff that I like the most is the stuff that's the kind of most useless

right and so that's looking at good content rich

I do the kind of you know the virus origin stuff is a one's area but I quite like looking

about how the heart of an evolutionary biologist how big changes in the evolution of hosts right

to go in from say being inverted to a vertebrate often unicellator to be multicellar how that

changed what viruses were around and how they worked okay and so one thing we've been doing is

looking at host species that are kind of marked big transitions in evolution big innovations right

so for example we're looking at the most basal chordates okay first in the notes of chordines

like tunicats like c squirts okay or the first you the first animal which may will be a cone jelly

or a sponge and seeing what viruses they have and how that changed to what they had before them okay

so for example and where so I'm some I'm still living on Australia we have access lots of wacky

stuff particularly in our oceans right and so I find lots of very weird new wonderful viruses

that look like nothing we've seen before giant genomes crazy things in sponges or tunicats

c squirts we found things like influenza virus in in c squirts so influenza virus turns out to be

not something that's just appeared in birds or jumps to jumps to humans but maybe 550 million years old

you know so it's an old thing so I really like that looking at how relationship between how

how host evolved and how viruses have changed really so that's my big thing I'm still

chewing on this one because I mean because I came across this from from Nomi Orenskiy's

she's a she's a professor at Harvard and what what she said is that I think it's borderline

and I'm quoting her here is that I think it's borderline on ethical to focus on the positive

and really troubling things are happening that hurt people what's ethical is being honest about

problems confronting them clearly and asking what we can realistically do and I think it's not

a positive quote to end on but I think she's she's right on right and I will say like you know

when I get to work every day is that what I'm excited about is of course seeing people in my lab

working on interesting research but interesting is we have to remind ourselves that I work on viruses

to kill people right so so things that are interesting is that like you know figuring out like

oh the origin of these measles outbreak for example I would rather we didn't have measles outbreak

outbreaks and again for my own perspective is that it it is honestly difficult to sort of focus

on like what are the positive things that I can see in the future given everything that's going on

because my main worry is that if we don't get turned around what is happening right now to science

and to the way in which science is funded in the United States I'm selfish this is where I am right

but the way in which science has has been funded and the best science and you have to be very

competitive to that to changing to a system in which this these can basically political decision

is scary and I think you know facing that reality and saying like oh well we should be positive

about X and we should be positive about Y is that I just don't think I can do that but again it

doesn't mean that I can't walk into work in the morning and see students and postdocs and and

staff scientists in my in my lab working on really cool science because that is continuing and

that does give me the energy and saying like well you know this is worth fighting for right because

it's it's important and we have to because I don't know like I used to work at the post office

right you know and I have had many jobs over the over the years but I've been a scientist for a while

and if all of a sudden it's like I shouldn't be a scientist anymore I don't know what I would do

I'm sure we'll figure something out but figuring out like how can I continue to do effective

science giving everything that's going on is honestly pretty difficult and I think that needs to

be a realization right that that's seeing a positive path through that right now with everything

going on Julia is difficult well thanks thanks Christian it's not a you're right it's not a

positive note but I say it is actually a good note to end on and you got me thinking about the

historical times and places where politics has had a very influential role in science and it never

ends well I can still grind off to an uncharacteristically positive note from from me Matt on this which is

if the people listening to this are interested genuinely interested in the topics that we talked about

around COVID origins and around the the kind of discourse we are related to it I would encourage

people to actually go and read the papers now we are often cautioning the people reading

empirical scientific papers there is a foundation that you need there to do that but for example

Eddie's review of the evidence as it currently exists right for the COVID origins is a very

readable paper that you could read with white expertise and you would get a general overview

of the you know the state of evidence as it exists and if you are in a strong pro-lably camp or

whatever the case might be I think it behooves you to do things like not read Matt Redley and

the Lena Chant Twitter threads but go read the proximal origins paper if that's what you really

want me to focus on nine six years later at least read the paper and at least read treatments and

in-depth interviews with people where they are talking about the actual research and as far as

discourse and that kind of thing goes we always give the message that whatever discourse that

you're consuming or forecast that you're consuming you should be looking at it critically and that

includes around lab leak narratives and so on and then lastly if you find science and the support

of science important then as much as we say it is important for scientists to be out there arguing

their case and and kind of standing out for science like you guys do to your grad out it's also

important for the people that support and recognize the importance of science to push back in whatever

way you can just in in terms of like supporting or or countering the rampant conspiracy so all the

answers you gave Eddie and Christian are perfectly well and we shouldn't try to put a pretty

bowl on the situation as it exists but there are still a lot of people out there that

care about science recognize what scientists are doing and are not you know chanting locker-moura

farchi or that kind of thing so yeah maybe they're still still caused for some optimism

one key thing there is that it is the majority I'm pretty sure right I don't think that the

majority is chanting lock up about you you know there is the discourse that's what's going on

in Twitter and our next or whatever these days right and and in conspiratorials circles but

that doesn't mean that that's the majority of people I think most people in a place like

America want to see science continue to succeed because it's good for the economy it's good for

all these different things right I think people want to see good vaccines in the future I think they

want to see develop some new cancer therapies and so on and so forth I think most people want that

and I do think we need to remember that too it is you know easy to forget sometimes

absolutely for somebody like me but but I think really is it is key all right that's what a good

note downed on and we appreciate you guys coming back and talking just again see you in three years

when the next love take free of it let's let's hope that but yeah we'll be happy to speak to you

guys again and maybe it won't always be around the endless discourse we have lovely Godwelly

let's hope so thanks all right thank you both next guys

so