Name: Coronavirus Lab Origin No Longer Just “Conspiracy Theory”?
Uploaded: 2021-05-02T15:26:54.000Z
Duration: 4 min 43 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

Or was the scientist who said that  just covering for his colleagues?

Welcome to China Uncensored. I'm Chris Chappell.

Before I start, did you know YouTube  demonetizes a lot of our videos?  

Especially when they're about  the coronavirus. That's why  

we rely on direct viewers support. Go to  Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored to learn more.

An update on the coronavirus situation. First,  you may remember that early on last year,  

scientists condemned the idea that the  coronavirus could have come from a Chinese lab.

Back in February 2020, U.S. scientist Dr.  Peter Daszak, president of the New York-based  

EcoHealth Alliance, pushed back against that idea  in this article in the medical journal the Lancet.

“We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy  

theories suggesting that COVID-19  does not have a natural origin.”

He also wrote in a February 2020 email that  “Scientific evidence overwhelmingly suggests  

that this virus originated in wildlife,  as have so many other emerging diseases.”

Well it turns out the scientific evidence  wasn't actually scientific evidence at all.  

Last week, Dr. Daszak's spokesperson told  the Wall Street Journal that actually,  

“The Lancet letter was written during a time  in which Chinese scientists were receiving  

death threats and the letter was intended as  a showing of support for them as they were  

caught between important work trying to stop an  outbreak and the crush of online harassment.”

Ok, that's understandable that he  didn't want Chinese scientists to get  

death threats in the early days of the pandemic.  But then he wrote another article in June about  

why the idea of the coronavirus coming  from a lab was a conspiracy theory.

Dr. Dazak's statements are under scrutiny  because he's one of the World Health Organization  

investigators who are traveling to China to  investigate the origins of the coronavirus.

But other scientists have brought up some pretty  big conflict of interest problems. That's because  

“Dr. Daszak has been a longtime  collaborator of Dr. Shi [Zhengli]  

since they worked together to trace SARS  viruses to bats after the 2003 epidemic.”

Dr. Shi's work studying bat coronavirus at the  Wuhan Institute of Virology has been theorized as  

one of the possible origins  of the current pandemic. 

Over the past year, more and more  people have been questioning—could  

the coronavirus have begun in a Chinese lab?

Once upon a time, you could get deplatformed  from social media for even suggesting that.

But the State Department recently suggested  that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of  

Virology had a coronavirus-like  illness in the Autumn of 2019.

“The U.S. government has reason to believe  that several researchers inside the Wuhan  

Institute of Virology became sick in autumn 2019,  before the first identified case of the outbreak,  

with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19  and common seasonal illnesses. This raises  

questions about the credibility of senior  researcher Shi Zhengli's public claim  

that there was 'zero infection' among the Wuhan  Institute of Virology's staff and students.”

It also says, “The CCP has prevented  independent journalists, investigators,  

and global health authorities from interviewing  researchers at the [Wuhan Institute of Virology],  

including those who were ill in the fall of 2019.  

Any credible inquiry into the origin of  the virus must include interviews with  

these researchers and a full accounting  of their previously unreported illness.”

So it really is possible that the coronavirus  leaked from a Chinese lab. Of course we don't  

know yet, as the investigation is still ongoing.  But this whole incident with Dr. Daszak just  

goes to show: Sometimes conspiracy theories  just turn out to be investigative journalism.

Thanks for watching China Uncensored.  I'm Chris Chappell. See you next time.