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This transcript was created with speech popularity software. Although it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the audio of the episode before quoting this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes. com if you have any questions.
From the New York Times, I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily. “
Three years after COVID, the central mystery of the pandemic, how it began precisely, remains unsolved. But recently, the debate over the origins of the virus has resurfaced, this time in Congress.
Today, my colleague Benjamin Mueller on what we know about how COVID started and why politics makes it harder to find answers.
It’s Wednesday, March 15.
So, Ben, in Washington last week, there was a hearing on where and how COVID started, and it was literally like déjà vu, wasn’t it?Like here, we are back 3 years later listening to a debate about whether COVID has leaked. from a laboratory or if you have gone from an animal in poor health to a market. How can we suddenly recover this verbal exchange?
Well, the Republicans recently took over the House and made it a precedent to investigate the origins of the virus. They see themselves as having unfinished business, which is about taking a much closer look at how the virus started, and specifically at a popular theory about the Republican aspect of the hallway, namely that the virus possibly spread. would have accidentally leaked from a laboratory.
I have complaints about how Democrats dealt with many parts of the pandemic response, and that includes the idea that Democrats unfairly ignored this theory about how the virus started, the option that it came from a lab.
Hello everyone. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will take office.
They set up a committee to look into this particular issue and held their first hearing last week. And there they used it to lash out at one of their favorite political targets, Tony Fauci, a public health official who led part of the coronavirus response.
We publish a note highlighting new evidence suggesting that Dr. Fauci pushed a publication that would disprove the lab leak theory.
In particular, they blame Fauci for distancing scientists from the lab leak theory in early 2020. And they provided emails and other documents that they say result in their accusation opposing him.
It was a narrative in which the decision was made that they were going to say that it came from the rainy market and that they were going to do everything possible to deny any discussion about the option that it came from a laboratory.
But it’s not just Republicans who have taken an interest in this issue. Democrats have been much more cautious in recent years when they say we want to investigate the possibility that the virus got here from a lab leak.
I sincerely hope that we can make these paintings in an objective, bipartisan, evidence-based way, to save lives.
If there are no additional matters, without objection, the meeting of the subcommittee shall adjourn. Thank you.
But then, my recollection of the lab leak theory is that it was something that Trump really pushed and was given in his rhetoric, right?Like his insistence on calling it the Chinese virus, as if the pandemic was China’s fault, though. It was also largely ignored by scientists.
Exactly.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Scientists at the beginning of the pandemic, some of them referred to the lab leak theory as a conspiracy theory.
President Trump has now claimed, without providing evidence, that COVID-19 most likely originated in a government lab in China.
He has known a lot about Trump and his accusations against China.
Something is the Chinese flu, the Chinese flu.
He even raised the concept that it might have been deliberately taken out of the lab.
Are you implying that they deliberately let it spread?
Well, they may have only done so. And I’m just saying, well, one of two things happened. Either they didn’t and they may just not do it from a skills standpoint, or they let it spread.
I think this made it difficult for scientists to blatantly communicate the concept that the virus could have come out of a lab, even if it was only by accident.
And then what happened.
Well, that began to be replaced when Trump left office. I think he knew a little less with the theory that the virus may have escaped from a lab. Something vital also happened in early 2021.
An organization of scientists running for the World Health Organization has arrived in Wuhan.
The World Health Organization, with many contributions from China, has released a basic report on how the pandemic began.
How much cooperation did you get from the Chinese government when you conducted this research?
Would you like to see it on the table?No.
This report indicated that a lab leak was incredibly unlikely. He even classified this option under one of China’s favorite theories, namely that the virus entered the country from abroad. And now you have scientists who have spent much of 2020 without making an investment. so much from their own paintings to examine this issue, or pursuing it from afar, that they were concerned about this report, that they felt that China had too much influence on their conclusions. the World Health Organization hadn’t gotten the evidence it might have, and that motivated them to start talking more brazenly about the concept that a lab leak should be taken seriously.
So how did scientists get over this?
There was an organization of 18 eminent scientists, that is, virologists and other mavens in the box, who published an open letter in the clinical journal “Science” in May 2021, asking that all original theories be studied.
What we say in this letter is to stop voicing our criticisms and look at the bloodless and harsh facts we have.
What that did, I think, gave Democrats and Biden’s management specifically an opening for themselves and pushed the same kind of openness to the lab leak theory.
President Biden has express questions for the Chinese, and he wants other people’s intelligence to double.
This took the form of Biden’s management telling his intelligence agencies to review the evidence and seek to give their own answers about how the pandemic began.
And what did they find?
Initially, most intelligence agencies leaned in favor of the herbal origin theory, the concept that the virus spread herbally from animals to humans outside the lab. But there was one agency, the FBI, that opened the door to the concept. from a laboratory leak. And they came together just two weeks ago through the Department of Energy, which, long after Biden ordered the initial review, updated its assessment, reviewed the information, possibly discovered new information and said that, with little confidence, it also believes it’s imaginable the virus escaped from a lab.
With little confidence? What does this mean?
We’re not exactly sure. It is not transparent whether there is new and burning evidence or how new the data that led them to this updated assessment are. What I think the new assessment has done is that it has revived the public debate about origins. at the forefront and kind of revitalized public verbal exchange and verbal exchange in Congress in a way that has not been so for some time.
Ben, let us get into this debate. I mean, we have the conversion of the guard in Congress, this new assessment through this government firm that brings back the theory. But the devil’s advocate for a moment here, it’s been 3 years. Do we care where it comes from right now? How is this important?
Well, I was a crime reporter and I saw the kind of government resources that were invested to answer the question of how a single user died. We have a pandemic here that killed seven million people and sickened many more, and so I think some public health officials feel a kind of ethical-legal responsibility toward those sick knowing how the pandemic started.
So what do we know right now about what happened?And I guess there’s no transparent single answer in black and white.
There are two main theories that have gained a lot of public attention. One is that the virus leaked from a lab or similar studies in some way, and the other is that the virus naturally spread to humans outside of the lab from some kind of animal source.
Well, let’s start with the theory that the virus leaked from a lab. Tell me about this theory.
This theory begins with a coincidence, namely that the virus began to spread in the city of Wuhan, which houses a primary center for coronavirus studies, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. At first, proponents of this theory spoke vaguely about the concept that the virus may have been deliberately designed as some kind of biological weapon.
Later, the intelligence network somehow took that theory off the table and said it was unlikely to be a biological weapon. But the theory that is still on the table is that researchers at this virology institute are looking to isolate a virus from a bat sample, for example, or play with the virus possibly would have become inflamed and let the virus enter Wuhan in that way.
And Ben, what about this theory?
Well, this Wuhan lab collects new coronaviruses from bats, which are known to harbor viruses that look a lot like the virus that eventually spreads to humans. One of the main researchers in the lab, this woman Shi Zhengli, who dubbed the bat woman coronavirus experiments.
We also know that laboratory injuries happen. They occurred both in China and in the États-Unis. Some experts became more suspicious as they learned more about the kind of studies that interested the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This included a proposal in 2018 that defined experiments on novel coronaviruses and a specific characteristic of viruses that may make them more effective. infect human cells.
So was the lab making plans to do an experiment with coronaviruses and how to make them more infectious in human cells?
This is how some mavens see it. Now, it is vital to know that this grant proposal was rejected. The researchers involved say the paintings were never made. And some of the proposed experiments were meant to be conducted at the University of North Carolina and not Wuhan.
It’s also important to know that scientists who have tested the virus’ genetic series say it doesn’t exhibit the kind of hallmarks of genetic engineering. And I would say the most important thing to know is that it’s actually not imaginable for scientists to make any of those viruses from scratch. They have to start somewhere. And as far as we know, no lab in Wuhan had a virus in its collections that could have changed in such a way that this virus has become the pandemic virus.
So what is the end result of this theory of laboratory leakage in general?For example, does all of this contribute to a conclusive understanding of how COVID started?
Some scientists say that there is this circumstantial evidence pointing towards leakage from the lab, but no, so far no solid evidence has emerged to suggest that this pandemic originated in a lab.
So where is the point?
Well, for many experts, the evidence really affects this wildlife market in Wuhan more strongly than ever.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
‘Ll.
So, Ben, you just said that there is evidence pointing to the theory about the puppy market, that this is where COVID comes from. And, of course, that’s been the leading theory of how many scientists they’ve been running since the early days of the pandemic. So tell me about this theory. Distribute it to me.
Well, there is a market place in Wuhan called Huanan Market. We know that this market place sold, in the months leading up to the start of the coronavirus pandemic, animals known to harbor viruses very similar to this one. This includes the raccoon dog, for example, which is a type of cross between a fox and a raccoon. Some of the earliest instances of the virus were related to market place. So, the theory is that an animal in that market location in poor health and transmitted the virus to someone who buys groceries there or someone who works there or someone who promotes animals in the market.
And Ben, what is the evidence for this theory?What is the culprit of the market?
Well, all previous human coronaviruses had an animal origin, like most human viruses in general. And we only have to look back a few decades for a very similar occasion to have happened in China. So, in late 2002, there was an outbreak of a virus called SARS 1 linked to this coronavirus that ended up killing about 800 people. This outbreak is believed to have started at a wildlife market that sold animals and added raccoon dogs.
Well, other coronaviruses we’ve noticed have also started in animal markets. What other evidence is there?
The missing evidence in this case is an animal that became inflamed with the virus we know of on the market some time before the pandemic began. Now, part of the explanation for why is that the police acted very temporarily to close the market after the coronavirus outbreak began. That’s a big difference from the days of SARS 1, when scientists simply entered the market and freely modeled the animals that were sold there.
So, in the absence of this kind of evidence, scientists looked at what other clues they could use to get a sense of how this outbreak started. Many of those clues were combined for a series of two studies that were published about a year ago now. These studies examined, for example, the non-public addresses of early COVID patients and asked where those patients were clustered. Whether or not they shopped at the market or worked in the market, where did they live?
And it turned out that those patients lived much closer to the market site than scientists would have imagined by natural chance. walls, cages and drains in that market for evidence of the coronavirus, and they found some.
And they said samples were most often obtained from parts of the market that sold live animals, adding specific stalls where, in previous years, researchers had found animals in close proximity to others living among others in a way that facilitated the spread of viruses. to spread, mutate and jump to humans, adding, for example, raccoon dogs that live in a cage located just above a cage that houses birds.
But Ben, didn’t you say that this kind of industry was illegal in China?I mean, after all, he had spread the SARS epidemic, hadn’t he?
China proliferated after the SARS outbreak, which is part of the explanation for why China’s experts would have been so susceptible to the idea that this illegal activity was happening right under their noses in the very kind of market that we know poses great dangers. to viruses that jump to humans.
Perhaps this is partly why the government acted temporarily to close the market and beyond that, it was very complicated to investigate the farms that provided the market, for example. These animals have also been released or killed or farms have been shut down. All of this has made it difficult to paint a complete picture of the epidemic if it started on the market as some scientists would like.
And what does China itself say? Like what is your thing about the origins of COVID?
China has argued that the virus comes from anywhere within China’s borders. They warned that the virus may also have come from a U. S. Army lab. U. S. They warned that they would possibly be giant shipments of frozen food packaging.
And is it believable from a distance?
Scientists think they’re a bit ridiculous and don’t attach much importance to those explanations. They think there is very strong evidence that the pandemic in China. go back and do the kind of follow-up surveys within China’s borders that can help us identify the question of how the pandemic matrix
So, for example, they didn’t give researchers the kind of blood banks that can only help identify what kind of patients, how many, and who were inflamed in the early stages of the epidemic. They haven’t been as transparent as many otros. la people think they may have been about the kind of studies being done in Wuhan labs.
And I talked earlier about those samples they took from the walls and cages of the Huanan market. They haven’t published the complete genetic sequences of those swabs that can also help us get an idea of what kind of animals they got here and who would. They have possibly ignited in the market.
Ben, after listening to all this, I wonder if there is enough evidence for animal market theory.
Some scientists, this evidence paints a compelling picture of a virus that started on the market: the combination of location knowledge and what we know about animals sold there and genetic evidence from early coronavirus sequences. They think it clearly indicates the market.
Other scientists are much more focused on the holes left in this theory. But I would argue that the evidence published so far has a market origin. Lately the evidence lies.
So Ben, going back here, it turns out there’s still a lot we don’t know. And that, of course, leaves the door open to more and more debates about what happened. That leaves the door open for the policy to move forward and try to answer the query in committee hearings like the one we just had. I guess my query is: Is it vital that we can’t come to a conclusion about this?
It is vital because we have all been through this terrible pandemic. And we, and especially scientists, are obsessed with knowing how it all started. come to some kind of definitive conclusion.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
But I think the question about the origins of this virus inevitably shapes the verbal exchange about the steps we take to better save you from the next pandemic. On the one hand, you have experts who have been involved for decades in the dangers of harmful lab experiments. And the practical steps we can take to keep the price of those experiments going, which is to help produce vaccines and therapeutics, while reducing the chances of a virus coming out of labs and starting an epidemic.
It is also true that nature carries out experiments that, in some cases, are much more harmful than those made in laboratories. In recent months, we have noticed that bird flu has spread across countries. This includes Spain, where it has spread to mink farms and, switching from mink to mink, detected mutations that some scientists may make the virus more transmissible to humans.
These are precisely the kinds of herbal experiments that scientists think we want to pay attention to, even though we’re also under the threat of lab accidents. I view the steps we want to take now to address the threat of pandemics in the long term.
Ben, thank you.
Thank y
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
‘Ll.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Here’s what you deserve to know today. After nearly a week of chaos in the banking sector, the crisis appeared to ease on Tuesday as pressure began to mount on regional and medium-sized lenders who were at maximum risk. Shares of regional banks, adding First Republic Bank, which had to take emergency measures to shore up its finances over the weekend, rallied on the day. The crisis began last week when a sudden drop in the price of Silicon Valley Bank triggered a bank run. The Times reports that the Justice Department is investigating the collapse.
And the U. S. The U. S. military said a Russian military plane rammed a U. S. reconnaissance drone over the Black Sea, causing the drone to crash into foreign waters. Russia, for its part, denied the collision and said the drone crashed itself. A spokesman for Homeland Security The council called the Russians’ behavior, in quotation marks, harmful and unprofessional. If a collision is confirmed, it would be the first known physical contact between the militaries of the two nations after the war in Ukraine.
Today’s episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Sydney Harper and Eric Krupke with assistance from Diana Nguyen. Edited by MJ Davis Lin with the help of Paige Cowett, it features original music by Marion Lozano and designed by Chris Wood. Our main theme is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.
That’s it for “El Diario. ” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.
transcription
This transcript was created with speech popularity software. Although it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the audio of the episode before quoting this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes. com if you have any questions.
From the New York Times, I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily. “
Three years after COVID, the central mystery of the pandemic, how it began precisely, remains unsolved. But recently, the debate over the origins of the virus has resurfaced, this time in Congress.
Today, my colleague Benjamin Mueller on what we know about how COVID started and why politics makes it harder to find answers.
It’s Wednesday, March 15.
So, Ben, in Washington last week, there was a hearing on where and how COVID started, and it was literally like déjà vu, wasn’t it?Like here, we are back 3 years later listening to a debate about whether COVID has leaked. from a laboratory or if you have gone from an animal in poor health to a market. How can we suddenly recover this verbal exchange?
Well, Republicans recently took over the House and made it a precedent to investigate the origins of the virus. They see themselves with unfinished business, which is about taking a much closer look at how the virus started and, in particular, a popular theory about the Republican aspect of the hallway, namely that the virus may have accidentally leaked from a lab.
I have complaints about how Democrats dealt with many parts of the pandemic response, and that includes the idea that Democrats unfairly ignored this theory about how the virus started, the option that it came from a lab.
Hello everyone. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will take office.
They set up a committee to look into this particular issue and held their first hearing last week. And there they used it to lash out at one of their favorite political targets, Tony Fauci, a public health official who led part of the coronavirus response.
We publish a note highlighting new evidence suggesting that Dr. Fauci pushed a publication that would disprove the lab leak theory.
In particular, they blame Fauci for distancing scientists from the lab leak theory in early 2020. And they provided emails and other documents that they say result in their accusation opposing him.
It was a narrative in which the decision was made that they were going to say that it came from the rainy market and that they were going to do everything possible to deny any discussion about the option that it came from a laboratory.
But it’s not just Republicans who have taken an interest in this issue. Democrats have been much more cautious in recent years when they say we want to investigate the possibility that the virus got here from a lab leak.
I sincerely hope that we can make these paintings in an objective, bipartisan, evidence-based way, to save lives.
If there are no additional matters, without objection, the meeting of the subcommittee shall adjourn. Thank you.
But then, my recollection of the lab leak theory is that it was something that Trump really pushed and was given in his rhetoric, right?Like his insistence on calling it the Chinese virus, as if the pandemic was China’s fault, though. It was also largely ignored by scientists.
Exactly.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
Scientists at the beginning of the pandemic, some of them referred to the lab leak theory as a conspiracy theory.
President Trump has now claimed, without providing evidence, that COVID-19 most likely originated in a government lab in China.
He has known a lot about Trump and his accusations against China.
Something is the Chinese flu, the Chinese flu.
He even raised the concept that it might have been deliberately taken out of the lab.
Are you implying that they deliberately let it spread?
Well, they may have only done so. And I’m just saying, well, one of two things happened. Either they didn’t and they may just not do it from a skills standpoint, or they let it spread.
I think this made it difficult for scientists to blatantly communicate the concept that the virus could have come out of a lab, even if it was only by accident.
And then what happened.
Well, that began to be replaced when Trump left office. I think he knew a little less with the theory that the virus may have escaped from a lab. Something vital also happened in early 2021.
An organization of scientists running for the World Health Organization has arrived in Wuhan.
The World Health Organization, with many contributions from China, has released a basic report on how the pandemic began.
How much cooperation did you get from the Chinese government when you conducted this research?
Would you like to see it on the table?No.
This report indicated that a lab leak was incredibly unlikely. He even classified this option under one of China’s favorite theories, namely that the virus entered the country from abroad. And now you have scientists who have spent much of 2020 without making an investment. so much from their own paintings to examine this issue, or pursuing it from afar, that they were concerned about this report, that they felt that China had too much influence on their conclusions. the World Health Organization hadn’t gotten the evidence it might have, and that motivated them to start talking more brazenly about the concept that a lab leak should be taken seriously.
So how did scientists get over this?
There was an organization of 18 eminent scientists, that is, virologists and other mavens in the box, who published an open letter in the clinical journal “Science” in May 2021, asking that all original theories be studied.
What we say in this letter is to stop voicing our criticisms and look at the bloodless and harsh facts we have.
What that did, I think, gave Democrats and Biden’s management specifically an opening for themselves and pushed the same kind of openness to the lab leak theory.
President Biden has express questions for the Chinese, and he wants other people’s intelligence to double.
This took the form of Biden’s management telling his intelligence agencies to review the evidence and seek to give their own answers about how the pandemic began.
And what did they find?
Initially, most intelligence agencies leaned in favor of the herbal origin theory, the concept that the virus spread herbally from animals to humans outside the lab. But there was one agency, the FBI, that opened the door to the concept. from a laboratory leak. And they came together just two weeks ago through the Department of Energy, which, long after Biden ordered the initial review, updated its assessment, reviewed the information, possibly discovered new information and said that, with little confidence, it also believes it’s imaginable the virus escaped from a lab.
With little confidence? What does this mean?
We’re not exactly sure. It is not transparent whether there is new and burning evidence or how new the data that led them to this updated assessment are. What I think the new assessment has done is that it has revived the public debate about origins. at the forefront and kind of revitalized public verbal exchange and verbal exchange in Congress in a way that has not been so for some time.
Ben, let us get into this debate. I mean, we have the conversion of the guard in Congress, this new assessment through this government firm that brings back the theory. But the devil’s advocate for a moment here, it’s been 3 years. Do we care where it comes from right now? How is this important?
Well, I was a crime reporter and I saw the kind of government resources that were invested to answer the question of how a single user died. We have a pandemic here that killed seven million people and sickened many more, and so I think some public health officials feel a kind of ethical-legal responsibility toward those sick knowing how the pandemic started.
So what do we know right now about what happened?And I guess there’s no transparent single answer in black and white.
There are two main theories that have gained a lot of public attention. One is that the virus leaked from a lab or similar studies in some way, and the other is that the virus naturally spread to humans outside of the lab from some kind of animal source.
Okay, let’s start with the theory that the virus leaked from a lab. Tell me about this theory.
This theory begins with a coincidence, namely that the virus began to spread in the city of Wuhan, which houses a primary center for coronavirus studies, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. At first, proponents of this theory spoke vaguely about the concept that the virus may have been deliberately designed as some kind of biological weapon.
Later, the intelligence network somehow took that theory off the table and said it was unlikely to be a biological weapon. But the theory that is still on the table is that researchers at this virology institute are looking to isolate a virus from a bat sample, for example, or play with the virus possibly would have become inflamed and let the virus enter Wuhan in that way.
And Ben, what about this theory?
Well, this Wuhan lab collects new coronaviruses from bats, which are known to harbor viruses that look a lot like the virus that eventually spreads to humans. One of the main researchers in the lab, this woman Shi Zhengli, who dubbed the bat woman coronavirus experiments.
We also know that laboratory injuries happen. They occurred both in China and in the États-Unis. Some experts became more suspicious as they learned more about the kind of studies that interested the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This included a proposal in 2018 that defined experiments on novel coronaviruses and a specific characteristic of viruses that may make them more effective. infect human cells.
So was the lab making plans to do an experiment with coronaviruses and how to make them more infectious in human cells?
This is how some mavens see it. Now, it is vital to know that this grant proposal was rejected. The researchers involved say the paintings were never made. And some of the proposed experiments were meant to be conducted at the University of North Carolina and not Wuhan.
It’s also important to know that scientists who have tested the virus’ genetic series say it doesn’t exhibit the kind of hallmarks of genetic engineering. And I would say the most important thing to know is that it’s actually not imaginable for scientists to make any of those viruses from scratch. They have to start somewhere. And as far as we know, no lab in Wuhan had a virus in its collections that could have changed in such a way that this virus has become the pandemic virus.
So what is the end result of this theory of laboratory leakage in general?For example, does all of this contribute to a conclusive understanding of how COVID started?
Some scientists say that there is this circumstantial evidence pointing towards leakage from the lab, but no, so far no solid evidence has emerged to suggest that this pandemic originated in a lab.
So where is the point?
Well, for many experts, the evidence really affects this wildlife market in Wuhan more strongly than ever.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
‘Ll.
So, Ben, you just said that there is evidence pointing to the theory about the puppy market, that this is where COVID comes from. And, of course, that’s been the leading theory of how many scientists they’ve been running since the early days of the pandemic. So tell me about this theory. Distribute it to me.
Well, there is a market place in Wuhan called Huanan Market. We know that this market place sold, in the months leading up to the start of the coronavirus pandemic, animals known to harbor viruses very similar to this one. This includes the raccoon dog, for example, which is a type of cross between a fox and a raccoon. Some of the earliest instances of the virus were related to market place. So, the theory is that an animal in that market location in poor health and transmitted the virus to someone who buys groceries there or someone who works there or someone who promotes animals in the market.
And Ben, what is the evidence for this theory?What is the culprit of the market?
Well, all human coronaviruses in the past had an animal origin, as did most human viruses in general. And we only have to look back a few decades to see that a very similar event occurred in China. Thus, at the end of 2002, there was an outbreak of a virus called SARS 1 related to this coronavirus that ended up killing about 800 people. This outbreak is believed to have started at a wildlife market that sold animals, adding raccoon dogs.
Well, other coronaviruses we’ve noticed have also started in animal markets. What other evidence is there?
The missing evidence in this case is an animal that became inflamed with the virus we know of on the market some time before the pandemic began. Now, part of the explanation for why is that the police acted very temporarily to close the market after the coronavirus outbreak began. That’s a big difference from the days of SARS 1, when scientists simply entered the market and freely modeled the animals that were sold there.
So, in the absence of this kind of evidence, scientists looked at what other clues they could use to get a sense of how this outbreak started. Many of those clues were combined for a series of two studies that were published about a year ago now. These studies examined, for example, the non-public addresses of early COVID patients and asked where those patients were clustered. Whether or not they shopped at the market or worked in the market, where did they live?
And it turned out that those patients lived much closer to the market site than scientists would have imagined by natural chance. walls, cages and drains in that market for evidence of the coronavirus, and they found some.
And they said samples were most often obtained from parts of the market that sold live animals, adding specific stalls where, in previous years, researchers had found animals in close proximity to others living among others in a way that facilitated the spread of viruses. to spread, mutate and jump to humans, adding, for example, raccoon dogs that live in a cage located just above a cage that houses birds.
But Ben, didn’t you say that this kind of industry was illegal in China?I mean, after all, he had spread the SARS epidemic, hadn’t he?
China proliferated after the SARS outbreak, which is part of the explanation for why China’s experts would have been so susceptible to the idea that this illegal activity was happening right under their noses in the very kind of market that we know poses great dangers. to viruses that jump to humans.
Perhaps this is partly why the government acted temporarily to close the market and beyond that, it was very complicated to investigate the farms that provided the market, for example. These animals have also been released or killed or farms have been shut down. All of this has made it difficult to paint a complete picture of the epidemic if it started on the market as some scientists would like.
And what does China itself say?Like what is theirs about the origins of COVID?
China has argued that the virus comes from anywhere within China’s borders. They warned that the virus may also have come from a U. S. Army lab. U. S. They warned that they would possibly be giant shipments of frozen food packaging.
And is it believable from a distance?
Scientists think they’re a bit ridiculous and don’t attach much importance to those explanations. They think there is very strong evidence that the pandemic in China. go back and do the kind of follow-up surveys within China’s borders that can help us identify the question of how the pandemic matrix
So, for example, they didn’t give researchers the kind of blood banks that can only help identify what kind of patients, how many, and who were inflamed in the early stages of the epidemic. They haven’t been as transparent as many otros. la people think they may have been about the kind of studies being done in Wuhan labs.
And I talked earlier about those samples they took from the walls and cages of the Huanan market. They haven’t published the complete genetic sequences of those swabs that can also help us get an idea of what kind of animals they got here and who would. They have possibly ignited in the market.
Ben, after listening to all this, I wonder if there is enough evidence for animal market theory.
Some scientists, this evidence paints a compelling picture of a virus that started on the market: the combination of location knowledge and what we know about animals sold there and genetic evidence from early coronavirus sequences. They think it clearly indicates the market.
Other scientists are much more focused on the holes left in this theory. But I would argue that the evidence published so far has a market origin. Lately the evidence lies.
So Ben, going back here, it turns out there’s still a lot we don’t know. And that, of course, leaves the door open to more and more debates about what happened. That leaves the door open for the policy to move forward and try to answer the query in committee hearings like the one we just had. I guess my query is: Is it vital that we can’t come to a conclusion about this?
It is vital because we have all been through this terrible pandemic. And we, and especially scientists, are obsessed with knowing how it all started. come to some kind of definitive conclusion.
[MUSIC IN PROGRESS]
But I think the question about the origins of this virus inevitably shapes the verbal exchange about the steps we take to better save you from the next pandemic. On the one hand, you have experts who have been involved for decades in the dangers of harmful lab experiments. And practical steps we can take to maintain the cost of those experiments, which is to help produce vaccines and therapies, while reducing the chances of a virus coming out of labs and starting an epidemic.
It is also true that nature carries out experiments that, in some cases, are much more harmful than those made in laboratories. In recent months, we have noticed that bird flu has spread across countries. This includes Spain, where it has spread to mink farms and, switching from mink to mink, detected mutations that some scientists may make the virus more transmissible to humans.
These are precisely the kinds of herbal experiments that scientists think we want to pay attention to, even though we’re also under the threat of lab accidents. I view the steps we want to take now to address the threat of pandemics in the long term.
Ben, thank you.
Thank y
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‘Ll.
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Here’s what you deserve to know today. After nearly a week of chaos in the banking sector, the crisis appeared to ease on Tuesday as pressure began to mount on regional and medium-sized lenders who were at maximum risk. Shares of regional banks, adding First Republic Bank, which had to take emergency measures to shore up its finances over the weekend, rallied on the day. The crisis began last week when a sudden drop in the price of Silicon Valley Bank triggered a bank run. The Times reports that the Justice Department is investigating the collapse.
And the U. S. The U. S. military said a Russian military plane rammed a U. S. reconnaissance drone over the Black Sea, causing the drone to crash into foreign waters. Russia, for its part, denied the collision and said the drone crashed itself. A spokesman for Homeland Security The council called the Russians’ behavior, in quotation marks, harmful and unprofessional. If a collision is confirmed, it would be the first known physical contact between the militaries of the two nations after the war in Ukraine.
Today’s episode was produced by Mary Wilson, Sydney Harper and Eric Krupke with assistance from Diana Nguyen. Edited by MJ Davis Lin with the help of Paige Cowett, it features original music by Marion Lozano and designed by Chris Wood. Our main theme is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.
That’s it for “El Diario. ” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.
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Organized by Sabrina Tavernise
Produced by Mary Wilson, Sydney Harper and Eric Krupke
With Diana Nguyen
Edited by MJ Davis Lin and Paige Cowett
Original music through Marion Lozano
Designed by Chris Wood
Three years after covid, the central mystery of the pandemic, how it began precisely, remains unsolved. But recently, the debate over the source of the coronavirus has resurfaced, this time in Congress.
The Energy Department concluded, with “low confidence,” that an accidental lab leak in China is likely the cause, but the policy makes it harder to find definitive answers.
Benjamin Mueller, New York Times and science correspondent.
Republicans have pushed the lab leak theory, but they don’t have a “smoking gun. “
What we know and don’t know about the origins of Covid.
There are many tactics to pay attention to The Daily. Here’s how.
Our purpose is to make transcripts available the next business day after an episode is posted. You can place them at the top of the page.
Benjamin Mueller contributed to the report.
The Daily is directed by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, MJDavis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba IttoopArray Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.
Our theme song is through Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk from Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Julia Simon, Isabella Anderson, Desiree Ibekwe, Renan Borelli, Mahima Chablani, Nell Gallogly, Jeffrey Miranda, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer and Maddy Masiello.
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