The Lab Leak

The whole right wing strategy of focusing discourse on the controversy rather than the substance could be a multipart saga. I do think you missed sane, credible voices on this by focusing on the garbage. Jeffrey Sachs, the chair of the Covid-19 commission on the Lancet, wrote in PNAS about the difficulty of investigating the lab leak hypothesis in May of 2022 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202769119 I'd love to see an update to this now that it seems like the lab leak has become more accepted, and there is plenty of evidence now that the lab in Wuhan was working on SARs-like coronaviruses. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share

Trevor Blackford

Arkansans received official correspondence from Cotton’s office with the subject line “China Virus Relief Information for Arkansans.”

Brittney Schrick

it surprises me every time that antigenic shift isn’t mentioned in lab-leak discussions. I do not see it mentioned anywhere here (but I might have missed it in the podcast) Influenza isn’t exactly a very unknown virus, and it’s the antigenic shift that causes it to mutate from ‘nasty cold/staying in bed for 2 weeks’ to pandemic-scale horror. Large influenza outbreaks have been caused by antigenic shift, and it’s thought the Spanish flu was also due to this phenomenon. I say horror because should influenza want to take center stage at some point, it is not likely to spare kids

Astrid Hogenkamp

I only wish there was MORE of this kind of evaluation and critique going on in public circles. We’re on a slippery turbo-speed slope to complete media illiteracy and zero critical thought, and the pandemic only accelerated that. Amazing discussion. Sincerely, a brand new subscriber.

Ron McKenzie

Different note, but since you mention him here, Can you guys do an episode on Andrew Sullivan?

There’s a big holiday in China called the Mid-Autumn Festival that falls in September. It’s like saying New York City is hiding something because there’s an increase in traffic there every 3rd week in November.

Sei B

V cc

As far as I know, the results are "low confidence" so it isn't really a meaningful result. An NBC article says: "The Energy Department concluded with "low confidence" that the Covid-19 pandemic "likely" originated from a laboratory leak". This feels like very imprecise language, but it at least tells us they haven't made any strong conclusions about the matter. We also have no idea what new information/statistical analyses have been done to get to this point... as Michael Hobbes would say, it feels kind of like a nothingburger.

Looking for book recommendations for what I should spend some time reading :)

Elisa I

Just saw from a dubious insta source summarizing a WSJ article that the Dept of Energy released a report saying that COVID was likely a result of a lab leak. I’m assuming this isn’t true given all you covered in the episode, but wondered if you saw this and had thoughts.

Bridget