443. Uncovering COVID-19’s Origin with Alina Chan

More than four years after the pandemic began, a source for COVID-19 still eludes scientists and public health officials. The mystery has given rise to a slew of hypotheses ranging from natural zoonotic transmission to lab leaks. But to get to the bottom and find the real source of the virus, you have to start with the evidence.

Alina Chan is a scientific advisor at the Broad Institute and the co-author of the book, Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. She and her co-author Matt Ridley follow one evidence thread to the next in order to get closer to the truth.

Alina joins Greg to chat about the two dominant hypotheses on COVID-19’s source, the challenges and methodology of identifying a virus’ origin, and why it’s crucial we find out where COVID-19 came from.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

[GaryVolts]

There are actually indications on the genome of engineering. It was the insertion of the furin cleavage site that originally caught the eye of virologists. They were saying things like they see no way this exact insertion could happen in nature, but it would be easy to do in a lab. That sequence is described in a 2018 proposal from that Wuhan lab, its inserted in the place the proposal says the intend to put it. Additionally, when a virus is manipulated to make it easier to mix and match portions of other virus genomes it leaves tell-tale marks that are used by enzymes to slice and dice the genome. SARS-CoV-2 has these marks. They cut the genome into the number of pieces that they said they would in the aforementioned proposal.

55:16 Greg has it backwards, most of the public understands the virus was a from a lab. It's more people that have skin in the virology game that don't want to believe that a horrible accident of science killed millions of people and that their public health heroes lied to them.

[janiceperkins]

Ok, I have had a few questions for a that I can't get answered:
First, how it adapted so quickly started spreading person to person, now I'm convinced it was done in a lab.
The second is, What other easily transmitted diseases, involes an "Asymmetric"
Infections???
I know that Carriers infect others without ever becoming ill, but I also know it's a Life Long condition, and usually Bacterial, so 🤷‍♀️
Third, why did the cdc suddenly and quietly change the definition of a "VACCINE"????🙄😒

Regarding mrna crap, why was the public not told in the beginning that a "new technology", that scientists had been working on for "over a decade", could possibly be adapted for a "vaccine" very quickly, "scientists will be working diligently to determine if it can be done" If in fact it was actually

[ManicMindTrick]

We can be certain this isn't boosted by the Youtube algorithm.

[AltangerelT.Dursahinhan]

Alina Chan is wrong at this point. No evidence backs her points about the origin. So far the zoonotic origin is valid.