Please note this event is for those who are fully vaccinated against covid-19. Thank you
Recently there has been renewed interest regarding the origin of the covid-19 virus. The standard narrative, as given by the Chinese government and generally accepted by the Western media and most scientists since then, has been that it originated in a “wet” market in Wuhan, wherein live wildlife were sold and slaughtered onsite. The thinking was that this originated with bats in the wild and that maybe certain other animals, such as pengolins, might have been infected and sold at this market.
RSVP Here
This narrative was challenged early in the pandemic, as some people pointed out that there is a major virology lab very close to this wet market in Wuhan and this lab was known to have been doing experiments on bats and studying various coronaviruses. There was an alternative theory from the beginning that covid might have slipped out of the lab inadvertently and then the Chinese government covered that up.
Please note that this theory is not the same as any that would have it that covid was somehow manufactured as a bioweapon or was deliberately released. We are not going to take any such hypothesis seriously at this event. Instead, we’re going to weigh what are now two alternative narratives that are both somewhat plausible and that attribute this pandemic to inadvertence. Was the initial propagation in Wuhan due to this wet market or was it due to somehow accidentally slipping out of this virology lab? Was is both? If it was neither, you can present a plausible alternative narrative, but please don’t get crazy with conspiracy theories. This isn’t the place for that. Also please note that this discussion should not be seen as racist in any way. We are all humans and we are all capable of making mistakes that inadvertantly harm others. In this case, it is likely that the authoritarian Chinese government made mistakes due to its heavy-handed rule that caused this pandemic to be worse than it otherwise would have been. We can acknowledge this fact regardless of which of the two main narratives we might accept as the most plausible. In neither case would it be racist to acknowledge this, since the blame is put in the Chinese authorities. This might be sensative to some people if they choose to believe that scientific research professionals would not make mistakes like this and that encroaching on wildlife and selling it at markets is far more unethical and that therefore that would have to be the cause of this. In response to that, I only say that we need to follow the evidence rather than start with a firm conclusion on this matter.
This NYT article contains a lot of information:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/opinion/media-lab-leak-theory.html?fbclid=IwAR0pl5Xx2jpNr0B1qTHFBFr11uFv_gwHmnEVcnPgXg_GnvQQ-8Gg8voWVlY
