Transcript of AE 1125 - Interview: Lab-Leak or Natural Source? Where did Covid-19 Come From? | with Dr Dan Wilson

G'day, you mob. Pete Smissen here, this is another episode of the Aussie English podcast, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. Or in the case of today's episode, a little bit more about COVID. So, today is part four of a four-part series I'm doing with Dr Dan Wilson.

He is from the United States and has a PhD in molecular biology as well as a YouTube channel, "Debunk the funk" where he debunks the claims of anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers using science. He just talks about what the science has to say about these claims. In today's episode, we talk about the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

We talk about whether or not it came from a natural source versus a lab leak, where it was introduced from a lab into the population, instead of, say, coming directly through animals. We talk about what evidence we need to see to be 100% certain that it was one or the other, a natural origin or a lab leak. And also, why it's been so fuzzy and difficult to come to a definite conclusion on this.

We talk about the origins of SARS COVID-1 that we came to know as SARS in the early 2000s. Also, why China immediately started to cover up everything related to the virus and clamp down on any investigation into its origins and much more. So, I hope you enjoy this episode, guys. If you miss the other episodes, go back and check those out too. Without any further ado, slap the bird and let's get into today's episode.

Anyway, the last thing I know- I'm aware of almost kept you for 2 hours, so I really appreciate it, Dan. The last thing I wanted to ask you about was, are you- Where do you think COVID came from? What does the science tell us currently about whether it was a lab leak or a natural formation of the virus? Where does it- Where do you stand currently on that?

Yeah, I'm pretty strongly of the side that it was a natural zoonotic emergence. And so, I think the easiest way for me to describe this is to describe what a Chinese wet market might be like, at least the kind that- The kind where SARS-CoV-2 was first detected. So, these are open air markets where several different exotic wildlife species are brought live to a market.

So, you know, tons of different mammals, reptiles, amphibians are all brought, sometimes smuggled illegally into the market and sold live. And while they're kept there, you know, they are kept in cages that are stacked on top of each other. So, they're scared, they're, you know, pooping and peeing in the cage and it's falling down to the cage below them, possibly at different species.

And then when a customer orders them, they might even be, you know, slaughtered there in front of the customer. And then multiple times a day after an animal- Many animals have been slaughtered and there animal- There's animal remains, faeces, urine on the ground. They come through with hoses and spray everything down these drains, and while they're doing that, they're aerosolizing stuff from the ground.

All that kind of biological material that's on the ground. So, if these animals are infected with viruses that are capable of infecting humans, that is such a prime opportune environment to allow that to happen. And that's where SARS-CoV-2 was first detected, in people associated with that market. So, if that's not a screaming, blaring red siren as to where SARS-CoV-2 came from, I don't know what is.

To pause you there quickly. So, is it SARS-CoV-1 that was the original SARS from 2003 and 2004? Is that the name of that virus? So, the thing- Yeah, the thing that I found interesting and again, I haven't gone too deep into fact checking all of this, but I've followed--you know Matt Ridley, the author of "Viral"?

I do. I have three of his books on my shelf right here.

Brilliant. So, he in an interview recently with Trigonometry--it's up on YouTube--I think he was saying that he's of the lab leak hypothesis. Right. So, he was saying you would expect to see a similar situation to the original SARS outbreak in 2003 or 2004, where I think they found it in loads of animals almost immediately.

And... Yeah. And that we haven't had that happen with COVID, right. We haven't found it in any animal at any market specifically yet.

Right. So, the big difference- I'm disappointed in Matt Ridley, by the way, that he has gone that route. Because I did like some of his other books. But the reason that SARS-2 situation doesn't look like SARS-1 is because back when SARS-1 emerged, you know, that was the first time a coronavirus had really jumped from- Jumped to humans in association with a wet market.

So, it was circulating for a while, and they were detecting cases of it while the animals were still in the market. And that's how- That's partly how they were able to identify it and identify where it came from so quickly.

Yeah.

But with SARS-CoV-2- Excuse me. The second time around, China knew the risks, essentially. And a big part of the story is that after SARS-1 the wet markets, this wildlife, exotic wildlife industry which by the way it's an $80 billion industry. It's huge.

Yeah.

It's bigger than the American meat- The entire American meat trade.

Jesus.

These wet markets were- Got a lot of scrutiny after SARS-1 outbreaks and they temporarily shut them down, but they opened them back up obviously after SARS-1. So, now, you know- Again, it's an $80 Billion industry. China- There's a lot of interest groups in China that have vested interest in keeping those markets open.

So, the idea of another coronavirus jumping to humans in association with wet markets was not a happy thought for those stakeholders. So, what happened when SARS-CoV-2 was first detected was they immediately shut down the market, which is good for containment purposes. That's what you want to do. You want to, as fast as possible, shut down the market, get rid of the animals, get rid of the source.

So, all the animals in that market were called, they were disposed of and they weren't sampled before they were disposed of. So, for all we know, you know, animals in that market could have come from several different locations across China or even outside of China. And some of them come in illegally, again. So, there might be- Not be any record of certain, you know...

Origins?

...Animal- Certain-. Yeah, animals from certain locations. So, after the market was shut down and all the animals were called. That's probably now all the evidence for an animal origin was gone...

Yeah.

...With that. Because when the market opened back up again, you know, the new animals that come in don't necessarily have SARS-CoV-2.

I think this is part of the hard thing to ever really get at what actually happened is so much information is missing.

And then you have combined with the fact that China is, you know, a sort of communist dictatorship, that either if it was a lab leak, would want to cover that up and would want to control information because it would want to save face and show that 1) to the rest of the world; it wasn't our fault. And 2) to their own people; you're not in danger. We've got this under control.

But that's where I get caught, and I lean towards that lab leak thing, because it seems like lightning has just struck in too many times in the same place. Your kind of like, how is the Wuhan virology lab there in that same city, you know, that works on those exact viruses from bats that are sampled thousands of kilometres away? And then why did they get rid of the air conditioning system straight away and put in a new one in the lab?

Why did they delete a lot of the data? Why did they lock down everyone and say all scientists who publish on this or talk about it, you will be punished? And again, it's difficult because it's like, okay, yes, that could explain it being a lab leak and that they knew. But it could also explain that they just want to control all information and have zero possibility of anything coming back on them.

And it becomes this really difficult situation where you're just like, China, if only you were more open about everything and transparent and we can get to the bottom of it, because if even if it were a lab leak, no one, I don't think is suggesting that you intentionally leaked it from a lab to get into the rest of the world and cause, you know, trillions of dollars' worth of damage.

But we could then work towards "how do we stop that ever happening again?" And if we find out that it's not a lab leak because we can get access to the information and we find out, wow, it's actually from these wet markets. What can we then do to completely prevent that from ever happening?

So, I think China is in a position where it's culturally wanting to save face and is just effectively like, this is not our fault, we've controlled everything, leave us alone. And the rest of the world is like, we want to know exactly where this came from because we can't have this happen again. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that it's important to realise that if it was a lab leak, they would want to lie about it and save face and all that stuff. But the same is true for if it's a wet market origin because, you know, with it being an $80 billion industry and an important cultural part to a lot of Chinese people.

They don't want that to get disturbed. They don't want that to be the problem that sparked SARS-CoV-2. And you can see that in their actions as well, you know, they- It is a problem that they were so secretive in the beginning of the pandemic.

They were not, you know, eager to divulge information regarding the pandemic or try their hardest to find out where it actually came from. It was almost like they were trying as best as they could to squash it really fast and silently so that no one knew about it, but.

Which ironically makes you look guilty. Right? It's one of those things where, like, to the outsider, you look like- If you're trying to kill everything in terms of information and transparency, it's like, well, why would you do that? Unless it was true, you know?

Right. And so, they don't want it to be their fault either way. And...

Yeah.

...You know, even after the beginning of the pandemic, they started saying like, oh, well, there were no- What was the exact claim? They claimed there were no live specific animals at the- At that wet market but, you know, an independent Chinese research lab that was cataloguing, you know, talking to the vendors at the Huanan market for different reasons.

Their research project was- Had nothing to do with SARS-CoV-2, but they were- They kind of made friends with the people who, you know, sold illegal animals and found out exactly what the inventory was and how many there were. They publish their paper in nature. And that showed that, you know, that wasn't true, the statements from Chinese officials. Whether or not they were lying or genuinely didn't know because the animals were illegal; unclear.

But they were really ready to say like, hey, there's no live of these specific animals at this market. Trust us, we totally checked. And they didn't check. They also tried to, you know, blame it on frozen meat being imported from other countries, which didn't make any sense.

That doesn't make much sense at all. So, it's clearly- It clearly came from the market, in my view. I think all the science points to that. And China is, I think, content to at this point not participate in any WHO investigations.

I guess it can't win, right. That's- Its position is, pfft, we have nothing to gain from helping you determine whatever the answer was. We have zero to gain, so go eff yourselves, you know.

Exactly. Especially with all the accusations that it came from the lab. They- I'm sure they were very happy to use that excuse, to say we don't want to do this investigation.

Yeah.

Because you're accusing us of something ridiculous, so we don't want to implicate our wet markets.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think now we're seeing, you know, they did ban wet markets after SARS-CoV-2 emerged, but- I'm not certain, but I believe that they're coming back.

As a sort of final question here, you know, in the spirit of the scientific method. What would you need to see to be convinced that it was a lab leak and not a natural occurrence?

So, you know, I think that- So, it's easy to say what we would need to see to show that it's a zoonotic origin, you know, finding it out in the wild in an animal would be the standard there. Which almost pretty much happened. There were viruses that were extremely, extremely similar to SARS-CoV-2 found in Northern Laos.

That was late last year. But not to get into that. I think if it were to be a lab leak, you know, something like finding- Not sure exactly what it would look like, but finding some sort of documentation or physical evidence in the lab itself...

Yep.

...Or...

I think if you were to get, like...

...Sort of...

...If you were to get a sample, if you had access to the samples that they apparently destroyed, that were collected in the years leading up to COVID, and you found a sample and it's like this thing is 99-point whatever percent COVID-19, and it's in the lab already, right. You would be like, that's pretty much the smoking gun.

Yeah. I think if you were able to find- If you're able to find a SARS-CoV-2 genome in a laboratory sample that was older, then it should be- and it matched really closely to the original Wuhan-1 variant that was first identified. That would be like, you know, as proof as you can get.

But, I don't- I just don't think we're going to- That's kind of the problem with the lab leak theory. It's hard to demonstrate, right? The bar for its evidence is really, really high. You would need to- Because so far, we all- We have so many lines of evidence that point away from it, at this point, you would need like some huge find of the right genome from the right time period in the lab's storage.

And if it had been gain-of-function research, which is effectively where what they're getting these viruses from natural origins in caves, from bats, and then they are manipulating them to try and make them more virulent and dangerous to humans to work out which viruses are more likely to become the next pandemic.

If you were to be able to find research information, that's like, hey, yeah, we found this virus and then we gave it this spike protein, and this is COVID-19 now. You know, and that's just in the data, like in the collection, in the library, in the lab, you would be like, I think we found our source, guys.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, sure, that would be proof. But I think because you brought up gain-of-function, I want to clarify...

Go for it.

...Like, what kind of research that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was actually doing that some people have called gain-of-function. It's not what a lot of people think it is where they're finding wild viruses and manipulating the wild viruses themselves.

What they do is they have a genetic backbone. It's in their literature, they call it WIV1. W-I-V-1. It's just a coronavirus backbone, just a genome.

That they can manipulate?

Yeah. That they will cut and paste pieces out of. So, for example, if they find a wild virus that has a spike protein that is unique compared to what they've seen before. What they do is they, you know, they sample the bat, they sequenced the genome, so they don't grow the virus live in the lab.

They sequence the genome, and they have the letters, and they take the letters that correspond to the spike gene, cut that out of the wild virus genome that they have isolated and paste that into the WIV1 backbone.

So, it's a way for them to really control what is this one specific area of a wild genome in a virus there doing. If we just take that one thing and put it into the very heavily controlled genome backbone we've got, we get to find out what are the ramifications from just that part.

That's the documented- Those are the documented experiments they were doing. Of course, you could say there were stuff- There was stuff off the books that we don't know about. But, you know, that's not a very- It's not a verifiable claim. It's, you know, you can't test it, so I don't like it.

But that's the kind of research they were doing, I call it characterisation research, where they're finding sequences out in the wild and they're characterising them to learn about what's out there.

Gotcha.

I think that's pretty essential research. We should know what's out there. We- It's in our best interest. But of course, you have situations where you do that cut and paste and then now your backbone has a different property because it has a different spike protein, and that is technically a gain-of-function experiment.

But I think it's important to just point out that it's not- Because when people think gain-of-function, they think, oh, we're trying to make this different. We're trying to make this have a different function. Whereas this work- And then, of course, that the implication there is we should ban gain-of-function research. Right? But this work is characterising what's out there...

Yeah.

...And I don't see any other way you can do it other than what they're doing, where you might have a situation where your backbone now does something new and it's technically gain-of-function. So, I don't think it's useful to say, like, this is gain-of-function research and it's bad. I think- I think you, you know, you have to do the work to understand what they're actually doing, and what actually happened in those experiments.

Well, I think, yeah, you've sort of exposed a blind spot for me because, I mean, as much as I've sort of read articles, like, journalistic articles on the Wuhan lab and what they were doing there, it's been through the filter of journalists and stuff that's been written for the layman, as opposed to, as you say, doing the work and getting in there.

And that's one thing that I probably need to- If I really, really wanted to be certain of my position that it is a lab leak origin, I would- I should do the work of actually looking into how is the lab functioning? What was the research that was being done there? What's the evidence that I would need to see? And then also, obviously on the other side, what is the evidence that is there for a natural, you know, hypothesis or origin?

And weigh those up more deeply. But yeah, it is something that you need to do if you want to be really, really staunched in these opinions. Cos it is funny how you can kind of go down a certain rabbit hole and absorb- It's almost like you get these passively through the environment and what you're exposed to, and you keep hearing the stories, and so you're just like, okay, now I feel like that's that thing.

But you need to be able to constantly be taking a step back and checking yourself, right? And that's a very- More difficult thing to kind of conjure and to develop in yourself, but.

Yeah, totally. And especially with when the media, you know, really picked up on it and started doing a lot of stories about lab leak, and as conspiracy theorists pointed out, started treating it more seriously. You know, a lot of conspiracy theorists complained about that. They said, oh, a lab leak was crazy when Trump was president and now Biden's president and all the journalists are warming up to the idea.

Well, I think that's one of the things that muddies the waters. Muddies the waters, right...

It does...

...It does make it so much more difficult. Yeah like, okay, so this thing was forbidden where YouTube was banning videos talking about it a month ago. And now it's the majority in the journalistic world, and the news are now like, oh yeah, it's probably this thing.

And you're like, what am I meant to believe in terms of this? And how, you know, if next time you say something is complete bullshit, I'm going to be like, this is probably- There's probably something there. Or if you say this thing is definitely true, there's probably also something there, right? So, it is difficult.

Yeah, that- That's exactly where I was going. It muddies the water so much. And I don't know the reason that the media made that transition. It was weird to watch. But, you know, I always recommend to people, like, if you're ever feeling like conflicted about a COVID issue.

I like to say that one of the best things to listen to, especially if you like long form podcasts, is a podcast called "This Week in Virology". It's- I don't know if you know about that podcast.

You've mentioned it. I've seen it on your channel.

I have, yeah. It's so- It's- I always like to plug it because they're doing, like, my favourite thing ever, which is scientists making science public.

Yeah.

They basically just have journal clubs where they talk about papers, they go through the data, and they make it public on a podcast. And I think that's so good. It's such a simple idea and it's really effective. I love it, so. And they have several episodes where they discuss lab leak ideas, so. I really like them, for anybody who's feeling conflicted or confused about COVID issues, they bring a lot of clarity.

This was "This Week in Virology"?

Yes, "This Week in Virology", they call themselves TWIV.

Brilliant. All right, well, mate, I've kept you for 2 hours and 15 minutes. I really, really appreciate your time. And I know you got to go to sleep because you've got a young baby. Where can people find out more about you and what you're doing if they want to check out your channel and everything like that?

Yeah. So, I'm on YouTube. My YouTube channel is "Debunk the Funk with Dr Wilson". I'm on Twitter "@Debunk_the_Funk". My Facebook page is "Doc Wilson debunks". And I'm on Instagram as well, I think that's also at "debunk.the.funk". But if you want to get in touch with me, I have my contact information for the accounts that I check regularly in the description of all my videos.

I think one thing to really give you props for is the fact that in I think the majority of your videos, if not all of them, any articles that you talk about or reference when you're trying to support a point that you make, you reference in the description so people can go and see it.

So, it's not just this guy is talking about this thing, and he seems really convincing. I believe him. It's always, go and check if you're uncertain. The science is there, he leaves it there for you to go and check so that you don't just have to take his word for it.

Yeah. All the links to all the papers that I talk about in my videos are always in the description.

Awesome, dude. Well, thank you so much for coming on and I hope to have you back in the future. Hopefully not related to worse events with COVID or anything, but we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully. Hopefully we're getting to out of the woods. But yeah, I enjoyed being here, Pete. Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

My pleasure, mate. Thank you.