Professor Stephen Maceno says the scientific establishment wasn’t fully transparent and ruled out the theory that COVID might have come from a lab in Wuhan, China. #COVID #China
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00:00And, of course, the term follow the science became quite widely used during the pandemic.
00:05Now, initially, people on both sides of the divide generally trusted health officials.
00:11What changed?
00:12Well, I mean, I think a number of things changed.
00:18Partly, it became clear that the scientific establishment was not being altogether frank
00:25about various things.
00:26I mean, I would identify first the origins of the virus.
00:30The virus emerged in Wuhan in Hebei province in China.
00:35And Wuhan is home to China's leading bat coronavirus research institute.
00:43On the other hand, China has many live animal markets.
00:47And yet, after there were some suggestions that the virus might have leaked from the
00:51Wuhan lab, the scientific establishment swung into action very quickly to try to suppress
00:58that idea, to try to cut off debate about it, the evidence rather suggests, and to push
01:05the argument that it had to have arisen in nature.
01:09And I think that was deeply implausible to people.
01:12And the evidence was always mixed, and it was always at least a reasonable hypothesis
01:18that the virus might have emerged in the lab.