welcome to another video if you're not new to my channel you know that i've
made a lot of videos on covid but so far have not made one on the origin of covid
and if you're new to my channel welcome my name is doctor mike hansen and i specialize in internal
medicine also pulmonary disease and critical care medicine board certified in all three so you've
seen the clip by jon stewart on the late show or the tonight show with stephen colbert
science has in many ways helped ease the suffering of this pandemic
which was more than likely caused by science
so my response my reaction to that is okay even if there was a lab leak which
i think is more plausible than a bad origin to say that this pandemic was the result of science
the first sars virus wasn't a result of science yes it was originated in bats and there was some
leaks that led to outbreaks but it wasn't signs that caused the sars outbreak neither
was mers the other bad coronavirus so these viruses went from bat and eventually to human
and it's only a matter of time before this happens again because there's so
many coronaviruses and bats that are very similar and continue to mutate and evolve but
to the argument that they were messing around with this virus with gain of function research
and essentially hot rotting the spike protein so that it binds more effectively
to the ace2 receptor and that subsequently that virus that new modified virus leaked from the lab
that's a very real possibility but even if that were proven it's still over the top to say that science caused the pandemic
i don't i i oh my god evidence i'd love to hear there's a
novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking wuhan china what do we do oh you know who we could ask
the wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab the disease is the same name as the lab that's just
that's just a little too weird don't you think
the name of the lab is the wuhan institute of virology
so i don't know why he's saying that but it does house the most bat coronaviruses in the world
but there's a lot to his point and when you add up all the pieces of the puzzle every
day it looks more and more like it was leaked from a lab so let's break it down
the origin of how covid originated it's important because the answer has the potential to aid in the prevention
or mitigation of future pandemics so on may 26 2021 president biden directed the u.s intelligence
community to step up their investigative efforts into the origin of the pandemic and report back
in 90 days also australia the european union and japan have expressed the desire to make a more
concerted effort to determine the origin of the star's cov2 virus now on march 4th
prominent scientists in an open letter to the who called for a full and unrestricted investigation
why this sudden interest a recently released u.s intelligence report stated that several
researchers at china's wiv fell ill in november of 2019 and had to be hospitalized and just today
there was a study that showed evidence that people had antibodies in the united states in december of
2019 since another pandemic is inevitable we need to learn from its virus origins it took 14 years
to definitively determine the origin of the first star's epidemic as it jumped from bats to humans
most likely through civets until recently the dominant theory has been that the virus originated
from nature going from bats to another animal and then finally to humans historical evidence
supporters for this theory point to history most previous outbreaks of infections have occurred
naturally not just sars and mers but also hiv influenza including spanish flu and ebola
humans and animals are living in closer proximity in more parts of the world
than ever before but the location of the first human cases of covid was in muhan
one thousand miles away from where all of the closest coronaviruses are known to exist in nature
initially at least there was some evidence that the virus was found in markets near wuhan
but this evidence has since been questioned because that virus detected there
that could have been just as easily been there as a result of human human transmission
researchers have tested more than 80000 wild and domesticated animals so far none have been
positive for covid 19. however this number is but a small fraction of the potential animal reservoir
because coronaviruses are found in bats it's reasonable to assume that sars-cov 2 was
present in bats at some point in the past in 2013 the ratg13 or g13 coronavirus which is most
closely related to sars cov2 that was discovered in horseshoe bats in the southern chinese province
of union this sounds like a close genetic link but evolutionary speaking it's not just like
humans have 99 of the same genes as chimps but that one percent is actually a huge difference
so let's break down the lab leak theory was an employee at the wuhan virology lab accidentally
infected and then spread the virus especially if the initial contacts were asymptomatic
the largest collection of bat samples especially ones containing bat coronaviruses
are housed at the wiv could poor lab techniques by inadequately trained technicians allow the virus
to escape of course could researchers at the wiv have made the virus more violent and transmissible
by experimenting with gain of function mutations absolutely these mutations are designed to hasten
the evolutionary process so that scientists can be prepared for future pandemics but this lab
leak theory carries more controversy because it's more politically charged and has economic
social and political implications unfortunately this theory received only a brief mention
in that who report only 4 out of 313 pages were actually devoted to that
several researchers inside the wiv became ill in the fall of 2019 with symptoms that were
consistent with covid 19 or the seasonal flu so back in that november three wiv researchers
became sick enough to seek hospital care dr robert redfield believes the current pandemic
began in wuhan as a localized outbreak sometime in september through october of 2019. especially
because of how well adapted this virus is to human ace2 receptors that's why he thinks that this was
coming from a lab the virus essentially hit the ground running the program for monitoring emerging
diseases did not formally notify the united states of the cluster of patients with pneumonia
until december 31st of 2019. dr robert cadillac said that china uses 30-day lead time to purchase
supplies dr redfield spoke with his chinese counterpart dr george zhao who was distraught
that many people infected with covid were not at that wet market
lab outbreaks have occurred before this has happened in china where sars was actually leaked from the lab but also other parts of the
world as well a smallpox lab leak occurred in the uk in 1978 anthrax which occurred in
2014 in the united states also dr xi xengeli the batwoman she's admitted that coronavirus research
was carried out in labs with biosafety level 2 rather than the more astringent biosafety level 4.
so in a biosafety level 2 lab researchers wear white coats and gloves but not protective gear
us embassy officials did raise concerns about wiv's lab safety in 2018.
these concerns specifically addressed a severe shortage of appropriately trained
technicians chinese experts have also expressed concerns about lab safety in their own country
lamenting that lab trash can contain man-made viruses bacteria or microbes and that quote some
researchers discharge lab materials into the sewer after experiments without a specific biological
disposal mechanism u.s labs have also been cited for safety issues including the biosafety level
bsl4 the united states army medical research institute of infectious diseases
that facility in fort dietrich mark lipsich a well-known harvard university epidemiologist
estimated the risk of a pandemic occurring due to an accidental release from a high
security bile lab at around one in one thousand to one in ten thousand per year
he previously warned about the proliferation of these labs globally especially as it pertains
to gain of function research so this lab leak theory gains credence when independent journalists
investigators and global health authorities have been denied access to wiv researchers
so wiv researchers have published research on engineering the gain of function mutations
in chimeric viruses in other words a man-made product from artificially fusing two different
viruses together the argument in favor of gain of function research in general
is that it's going to help us prepare for the next pandemic by developing drugs and vaccines
the opposition to doing that gain of function research is based on the risk of a lab escape that
could cause the next pandemic the wiv received a six hundred thousand dollar grant from the
u.s government through eco health alliance in american nonprofit according to that nonprofit
group the funds were provided to help with sampling and lab capacity not gain of function
research quote the nih has not funded gain of function work according to robert kessler that
was quoted from an email exchange with reporters at the washington post another quote eco health
alliance was funded by the nih to conduct study of coronavirus diversity in china from that award
we subcontracted work with the wiv to help with sampling and lab capacity the researchers at wiv
have conducted experiments on rat g13 it's a back coronavirus that is 96.2 similar to sars cov2
so it's the most closely genetically speaking resembled virus of this sars cov2
these experiments were to understand how bat coronaviruses might infect humans
some of the work was funded by the nih and by the us defense threat reduction agency of department
of defense through eco health alliance u.s intelligence agencies suggest that rat g13
may have been the backbone for this sars cov2 other scientists have suggested that the
combination of an optimized receptor binding site where the virus binds to the human ace2 receptor
and the furon cleavage site which is a unique series of nucleotides that helps the virus enter
human cells so that might also provide evidence in favor of lab manipulation
david relman is a microbiologist at stanford and he speculates that scientists may have been tempted to create
a recombinant virus to study the furon cleavage site so chimeras have been produced in the lab
these chimeras have bat coronavirus backbones and spike proteins that bind to human ace2 receptors
the chimeras were meant to simulate natural genetic recombination events dr shi published
a paper back in 2017 about an experiment in which she created new hybrid coronaviruses
was the sars cov2 virus biologically engineered or manipulated so the team led by christian
anderson a virologist at scripps research that's in la jolla california determined that it was
improbable the genetic differences between sars cov 2 and rat g13 are randomly spread throughout
that genome a genetic analysis suggests that sars cov2 didn't originate from rat g13 but since then
other virologists including dr alina chan from mit and harvard have refuted this nikolai petrovsky
an australian immunologist studied the sars cov2 virus after chinese released its genetic sequence
he said that the spike proteins studying sars cov 2 bound more tightly to the human ace2 receptor
than target receptors on other species his investigation came out at a time when scientists
were saying that anything other than a natural origin of the virus was a conspiracy theory
the chinese ministry of education sent out a directive quote any paper that traces the origin
of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed there is evidence that researchers at wiv removed
and then altered online records of their work working with that rat g13 and other viruses
here's a quote for you how on earth can i offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence
that's what shi said but china's refusal to allow investigations into the lab has only furthered
accusations so in conclusion there's no solid evidence that sars cov2 infection originated in
nature or from a lab leak shi was responsible for investigating the coronavirus infections in wuhan
back on december 30th of 2020 shi said she breathed a sigh of relief when none of the samples
from the sick matched any of the samples in her lab shi also claims she looked into the matter
and reviewed the lab records and basically said trust me nothing to see here i already
looked and the chinese government gave the who limited access to data and samples
this secrecy resulted in a report that 14 governments including the united states believe
is incomplete a classified report drafted in may 2020 by researchers at the government-backed
lawrence livermore national laboratory found that the covid 19 virus might have escaped from a lab
in wuhan however the report also said that the virus might have originated naturally by zoonotic
unfortunately so far we don't have an answer and we might not get an answer for a long time if
we get an answer at all but that's it for this video thank you for watching hope you enjoyed it
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