Name: What Started Pushback Against Wuhan "Lab Leak" Theory?
Uploaded: 2021-03-10T02:14:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Started Pushback Against Wuhan "Lab Leak" Theory?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Started Pushback Against Wuhan "Lab Leak" Theory?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-10. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience.
Have any of the people that were initially skeptical or pushing back against
the idea
that it came from this Level 4 lab, are they coming around or are they still
digging their
heels in?
So some are coming around, and so certainly there are people like Matt Ridley,
who's a
member of the House of Lords in the UK, a kind of very well-known science
communicator.
He was firmly on the other side, and now he's started to be more open and
actually has
been quite vocal.
What was his motivation for being on the other side?
I think that it's a really interesting story because in the earliest days of
the pandemic,
there was a concerted effort by a relatively small number of high-profile
scientists, virologists,
who recognized that if the story was that this came from a series of what are
called zoonotic
jumps between animal hosts in the wild, that was going to lead to a kind of a
positive outcome
where we'd say, "Hey, let's be very mindful of our encroachment into wild
spaces, climate
change," all those things that we should be very mindful of.
But they were, I think, probably worried that if this story became dominant of
an accidental
lab leak, I mean, that would have huge implications for all of the research
that people are doing.
And a lot of it is very well-intentioned.
So early last year, there was a process where a series of scientists did two
things.
One, they came out with a letter in the British medical journal, The Lancet,
which we've subsequently
learned was highly manipulated by a small number of people who may have had
vested interests.
Well, there was an academic paper in a journal called Nature Communications,
and both made
the case, "Oh, this isn't a lab leak."
And then there was a concerted effort to label anybody else as a conspiracy
theorist.
And so I kind of spent last year in that uncomfortable space.
I mean, I don't live my life as a conspiracy theorist.
I try to be data-driven in everything that I do, but I really felt that this
was a very
real possibility, and it deserved a full investigation.
And it was only in the beginning of this year, 2021, that that started to turn.
And I know I had, I wrote some things, someone named Nicholson Baker, he had a
great piece
in New York Magazine.
The Wall Street Journal did a great job covering this.
And so the space was starting to open up.
Then they had that really, in my mind, ill-fated press event in Wuhan, where it
was this independent
committee and the Chinese government.
And they said, "Don't investigate lab leak, investigate the frozen food
hypothesis."
And then in every newspaper around the world, the headline was, "The World
Health Organization
says lab leak is not possible, essentially."
And so I immediately sent messages to my friends at the World Health
Organization and saying, "Look,
this is being misreported.
The World Health Organization hasn't said this."
And the position of the WHO must be, "We have to investigate all hypotheses."
And I was very pleased that three days later, so the press event was on a
Tuesday, that Friday,
Tedros Adhanom, who's the Director General, he then said in a press event that
we believe
that every hypothesis needs to be investigated, which implicitly meant the lab
leak hypothesis.
And then our letter came out, which was just last week.
It feels it's been such a whirlwind since then, and that's been picked up in
newspapers all
around the world.
I feel like there is an opening, and I hope that we can continue.
I don't want to prove.
I don't feel like I need to—if it's provable, I'd love to prove it, but it's
not to prove
that right at this point that it is a lab leak or isn't.
But we at least need to have the most thorough, unrestricted, unpoliticized
investigation into
what happened with access to all the lab records, all the samples.
There are tons of scientists in China who were working on these issues.
Very, very few of them have been interviewed.
We don't have access to them.
And frankly, I think a lot of them are afraid that if they speak up, they'll be
imprisoned
or worse.
Yeah.
That is the problem, right?
The people that were initially very vocal and biased towards the idea that it
wasn't
a lab leak, and you said they were highly motivated and they labeled all the
folks a conspiracy theorist.
What was motivating them?
Yeah.
So it's a really tricky point.
And so there's been a lot of controversy around a guy named Peter Daszak.
And Peter is an interesting figure because if you had asked me a year ago, a
year and a
half ago, who are the people who you respect most in the field of virology, he
would be really
at the top of my list.
He was one of the heroes of understanding where the first SARS came from.
He has an organization called EcoHealth Alliance that was really trying to get
ahead of the
curve on understanding these pathogens.
But he also, through EcoHealth Alliance, was a funder of the Wuhan Institute of
Virology,
specifically the gain-of-function research that was being done there.
And I truly believe it wasn't anything nefarious.
The idea was, well, if we want to understand dangerous pathogens, we have to do
it in the
place where those dangerous pathogens are.
Then under the Obama administration, there was a moratorium on this kind of
gain-of-function
research.
And then it was lifted in the Trump administration.
So that's one piece of it.
And so for Peter, I understand that his whole experience of his life has been,
well, this is
where these kinds of outbreaks come from.
But this could be just a very different story.
And for me personally, that's, I think, one of the reasons why I was able to
see this a
little earlier, perhaps, than other people, is that part of a big chunk of my
life has been
in the world of science.
But another big chunk of my life has been in the world of understanding China.
And so I think if you're just in the world of science, you don't understand
China, you
think, well, the Chinese government says that this isn't from a lab leak.
It must not be from a lab leak.
But I know that in the Chinese government, they've totally suppressed the
entire basically history
of Mao and all the millions of people who died under Mao.
When they got their speed trains going, the first train had this terrible crash.
And they just buried the whole train and pretended like it never happened until
there was an outcry
and they had to dig it up.
So I feel like I understood a little bit more about the pathology of the
Chinese government.
But coming back, I think there were people in the kind of more traditional virology
world
who felt like we're going to open up a whole can of worms if we say, "Well,
maybe it was
a zoonotic jump and maybe it was a lab leak."
So this one guy and his influence shaped the way the entire world was
addressing this outbreak?
I wouldn't say it's one guy, but it was, I think, a relatively small number of
people.
Because they certainly, the Lancet letter, and it was all kinds of big luminaries
who signed
it, that really shaped things.
And so definitely if the story in the beginning had been, "Maybe this comes
from a zoonotic
jump.
Maybe it comes from a lab leak.
We need to look at both options."
I think that would have been a much healthier place because there would have
been more pressure
on China.
So it wasn't just one guy, but Peter certainly was very influential.
And then, in spite of this conflict of interest, he actually was selected as a
member of this
World Health Organization Independent Advisory Committee.
So one of the people who went on this mission to China was Peter.
Peter is the chairman of the Lancet, the same British journal that I mentioned.
They have a study group.
He's the chairman of that.
And I'm not saying he's doing anything wrong.
I'm just saying if you have that kind of conflict of interest, you shouldn't be
in those kinds
of roles.
It's always so disturbing to someone like me, who's a non-scientist, who relies
on scientists
to be unbiased and to just look at the data.
When you find out that things are being influenced by very human factors, like
ego and financial
gain and relationships with foreign powers and laboratories that they're
involved with.
And that scares the shit out of me.
Well, you know this better than most anybody, Joe, because you kind of are here
every day
looking into people's psyche and people are people, even scientists.
And everybody in the world has a story that explains what they're doing and why.
And so I'm sure that you could, maybe even should, have Peter on the show and
he'll give
you his story.
But at least from the outside looking in, the way I would see it is, well, he's
invested
his entire life into doing the right thing, trying to protect us from this
terrible threat
of a pathogenic outbreak.
He correctly recognizes that encroachment into wild areas and climate change
are big threats.
Wherever COVID-19 SARS-2 comes from, still those are good things to do.
He has a longstanding relationship with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and a
friendship with
the people who work there.
And so you can see how we, my guess, and I can't speak for him, he's become
kind of a
stakeholder in this story, but we shouldn't, this isn't just about Peter.
I mean, there are lots of very prominent scientists.
I would say there are more prominent scientists who believe that this comes
from a series of
zoonotic jumps through intermediate animal hosts in the wild than there are who
believe
that it's more likely to come from a lab leak.
But what I will say, I get a lot, I'm in touch with lots of people who are
world famous scientists,
scientists who many, many people will know who are privately telling me, well,
we think that
there's a 90% chance that it comes from a lab, but really don't want to speak
up because
we don't want to get pulled into the muck.
You were talking about Trump before.
People remember the Iraq war where there were all kinds of experts who were
saying, oh, they
definitely have nuclear weapons.
And then we invaded the country.
It's like, oh, oops, they don't have it.
So people didn't want it to justify any kind of bad things.
And as scientists, I mean, the problem is the scientists rely on data, and
there wasn't data
because China was covering it up.
And the journalists require scientists to make, to legitimate claims about the
origins.
And so there was this weird thing that's lasted for a year, and our hope is,
and we're starting
to see that our letter has opened up some space where we can have a real honest
conversation about,
you know, let's look deeply into all the possibilities and try to get to the
right answer.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
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