 Good evening and welcome to a Monday night edition of Tiskey Sour as today is a bank holiday. We're going to do a slightly shorter show than usual. We've got a few fewer segments lined up for you, but we are making the most of it because we are going to take on one of the biggest questions of our age. Where did COVID-19 which has killed upwards of three and a half million people, potentially nearly 10 million if you believe some estimates, where did it come from? Now until now, the dominant theory has always been that the novel coronavirus jumped from animals to humans, maybe via an intermediary animal. However, in recent weeks, the idea that the virus originally leaked from a lab has gained prominence. So why are the press and politicians changing their tune? Does this reflect new evidence about the virus's origins or a deeper political agenda? And what would be the implications if we were to confirm that COVID-19 did leak from a lab? I have an expert guest lined up for you to answer all of those questions before that. If you haven't already, do subscribe to the channel, hit that subscribe button. Now over a year ago, Donald Trump said this. Seeing anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus. Yes, I have. Yes, I have. And I think that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they're like the public relations agency for China. Now at the time, that was widely dismissed as a crank conspiracy theory from Donald Trump, a conspiracist and many of his conspiracist supporters. However, the tide of opinion among liberal politicians and some in the scientific establishment now seems to be shifting. The new US President Joe Biden has launched a new investigation into COVID-19's origins. This was his spokesperson, Kareem John Pierre. President is asking the US intelligence community in cooperation with other elements of our government to redouble efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring the world closer to a definitive conclusion on the origin of the virus and deliver a report to him again in 90 days. So what changed and how did the lab leak theory go from a conspiracy to the subject of serious investigation? That was the question posed in a recent piece in The Guardian by science writer Stephen Buranyi. You can see the headline there and Stephen joins me now. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. And an extra special thanks for coming on on a bank holiday Monday. We do appreciate it. I want to start by asking you to give us an introduction. The title of your article was how this went from a conspiracy theory to something that's been seriously investigated. Can you talk about that transition? What did change? Yeah, I mean, there's been enormous acceleration on this in just like the past a couple months, sort of starting with media attention in sort of January, February, specifically some pieces in New York magazine, some former New York Times reporters sort of laying out what had previously been thought of as like quite a conspiratorial case, quite a circumstantial case for the COVID-19 pandemic actually arising in the lab. And then you had sort of a break moment a few weeks ago. 18 really prominent scientists wrote a letter, an open letter in Science Magazine basically saying not that the lab leak was for sure, not even that they thought that lab leak was the most likely explanation, but that they were looking for their backing rather like a full investigation. And then you've got Biden sort of following much more reasonably Trump's call to look into lab leak. And I think you can say it's sort of fully mainstreamed at this point. And then let's, I suppose, break down what one means by a lab leak theory. So obviously, on the very basic level, it's saying this didn't come organically from humans, sorry, from animals to humans, it leaked from a lab. But within that, you've got three types of theory, haven't you? You've got one which was that this was a strain that existed naturally in nature from a bat, but it had been collected by people in a lab and then it leaked from the lab. The other is you've had something called gain of function research whereby people in the lab have been intentionally improving a virus, making it more fit to spread among humans to then, I suppose, prepare for if it were to occur naturally in the environment, but it's actually leaked and what they were trying to warn us about that they've ended up creating. And then the final one is some sort of bio weapon. So you've got a lab that was that told us it was investigating viruses that occur naturally, but actually they were creating a virus which could later be used as a weapon. Those are the three. Now I'm guessing the two that are being taken seriously are the natural strain that was collected and the virus created in the lab through this gain of function research, which is to improve the fitness of a virus. Is that correct or are there people in the scientific community saying it might be a bio weapon? Yeah, that's a bit right. I mean, the bio weapon one, God, I mean, if you think if you're really sure about anything after the past year, like you're a jerk, but I'd be willing to say that the bio weapon is the sort of most at there. I mean, SARS is not, COVID is not like a very good bio weapon, if that makes sense. Like it's really bad, but surely I would think, you know, if our scientists are any good, it could be much worse. It also doesn't make a lot of sense as one. But yeah, I mean, the first two seem to be the most reasonable. I mean, like you said, we'll get onto this very specific, the very specific circumstances of the lab that people are very suspicious about. But you know, this lab is the world's premier collector of wild coronaviruses. So the question is, you know, did they get one that they then didn't report? And then it got out or did they actually improve it, which is something that frighteningly goes on. Well, now people are learning much more than they previously thought. I think it's time to name the lab. We're going to name that suspicious lab. It's the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now, obviously the Wuhan Institute of Virology is very nearby Wuhan, which is where the first outbreak emerged. I want to go to a paragraph in Stephen's piece from The Guardian, which is suggesting why people are quite so interested in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. So in the piece you write, what is also known for sure is that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, nearby to the first recorded outbreaks, is the world's premiere collector of wild bat coronaviruses, has grown them in their in-house laboratories before and had the expertise to conduct gain of function experiments. If you wanted to create a pandemic coronavirus in a lab, the whiff would be a hell of a place to do it. I've never really dismissed the lab leak theory just because it seems to me an incredible coincidence. If this were to have emerged in nature, for it to have emerged in nature, and it just so happened to do so in an enormous country, but next to the one specific lab that does the investigations into this type of coronavirus, and they don't do investigations in that lab because these types of coronaviruses are native to Wuhan, the back cave is actually where they collect these things from is really far away. So it seems to me this would be a big coincidence, were it not to be a lab leak. And I suppose my question to you Stephen is, if this were a naturally occurring virus, what would be the chances of it emerging precisely next to a lab such as this? Are there labs like this everywhere and it could have emerged next to some Beijing Institute of Aurology and we would be having the same conversations about that lab, or is it a real, real coincidence that it emerged next to this one? I mean, I think what you're sort of getting at is that the case for lab leak, for this coming from a lab, is that circumstantially you've got a lab that does this exact research, which is right there. And then you're sort of placing that up against, you know, whether this could be a naturally emerging phenomenon, even though, you know, the bats in question are not nearby. I mean, I think that if you're going to be fair to the natural emergence theory, you have to start from the idea that it's probably an incredibly rare evolutionary and logistical occurrence anyway. You know, there's tons of coronaviruses in the world, there's tons of viruses in the world, most of them don't go, you know, don't turn into a worldwide pandemic. So you're already looking at a really rare event. And you know, these sort of things happen all the time in nature, incredibly rare events that have massive consequences in the history of nature and history of evolution. And I guess the burden of proof on the natural emergence side is to show both that it's evolutionarily evolutionarily plausible, that the virus emerged in the form that it did, and then also that it's logistically plausible, that it made its way to Wuhan. And I mean, the way that would happen is the way that you've already seen sort of presented, which would be sort of through the movement of animals, not bats, but some sort of intermediary. And of course, the fact that they haven't found anything for that is one of the big, big knocks on the natural emergence theory. But again, you know, it took years to find the natural reservoir or the natural emergence point for both MERS and SARS. So anybody who's sort of on the side of natural emergence says, you know, let's just wait, we're looking, we're looking, we're looking, which of course doesn't satisfy anybody who said the labs right there. I suppose what I was getting at in maybe a roundabout way is how rare is the Wuhan Institute of Virology or how specific is it? There's circumstantial evidence that there is a lab that does research on this kind of viruses. But if these labs are everywhere, then, you know, it wouldn't be particularly strong evidence that it came from a lab because wherever it emerged, we could say, oh, but it's nearby this lab that also does this. But if this is kind of the only lab in the world, or one of only a very small amount of labs in the world that produce coronaviruses like this, that would seem like a much stronger case that it would be too much of a coincidence for it to have just naturally emerged next to the one leading, you know, institute. So, you know, is it correct to think of this as a very, very specific lab that is doing research on these kind of coronaviruses in a way that not many other labs are? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, if that's the simplicity of the question you're asking, yeah, 100%. I mean, there are several other institutes in China that conduct research on coronaviruses, but there's not very many of them, and none of them to the level of the one institute of virology. I mean, again, the world's premier collection of bat coronaviruses. So if there were to be a lab leak, it would be here. That's the one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, doesn't mean it was, but it's a hell of an argument. Yeah. Let's talk in general terms about gain of function research. I've sort of explained briefly what it is, but you're the science writer. So I want to throw this to you in terms of, you know, what is gain of function research? Why is it controversial and why is it, you know, in the spotlight when it comes to the lab leak hypothesis? Yeah. I mean, I'd practice by saying that I don't think the vast majority of gain of function research is a good idea. There's ways to alter viruses that are safe. But, you know, if you're if you're telling them how to infect human cells, that's probably bad. So gain of function research is basically, I mean, some people don't like the term, but as it's being presented is basically taking a virus and as you said earlier in the show, improving on it. And what this means in the context of what people are talking about in terms of the one institute of virology or other institutes that have studied coronaviruses are to look at a virus that, you know, infects animals, but is known to or suspected of being able to jump to humans at some point. And so basically what you can do is you can introduce functions that other viruses have that allow them to infect humans. And so this is like direct editing of the virus by a scientist. And then you can see how it how it works in human cells. So it's sort of get an idea of what kind of threat this might be. And then the other thing, which is really central to this sort of idea that there might have been a lab leak, is you can sort of mimic the conditions of placing the virus right up against a human population. So you just you basically like bang the virus against human cells over and over and over again, until it evolved the ability to enter them. And this is sort of like accelerated evolution. And the reason people do it, you know, whether or not it's it's a good thing to do. The reason people do it is because then the virus sort of naturally shows you the path that would take to infect humans. And if you keep doing it, and it keeps using the same the same mechanism, then you can sort of assume that's probably how it's going to to emerge as a pandemic. Now, if you've been listening to that, you probably realize that then that means the virus that they just used for those experiments can now infect at least human cells. And so, you know, there you have the sort of core of why people are opposed to it. You've sped up evolution in the worst direction you could speed it up in, which is to say, how can we make this animal virus really infectious in humans? And the justification to do it is to say, now we can prepare for if it happens in nature, but it will the lab leak hypothesis in the in the gain of function version, which is that you know, they modified the virus as well as collecting it, then that would be that they then leaked it and they caused it. Let's look at some of the intelligence that's been coming out. And now lots of this is, I suppose unpublished intelligence, which I'm inherently suspicious of. But it's worth mentioning it anyway. So one of the reasons the lab leak hypothesis is back in the headlines is because of US intelligence, which has either recently come to light or recently come to prominence. However, one looks into it and especially a write up about them in the Wall Street Journal. So this was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. And it's suggesting that there were a group of researchers in the Wuhan Institute of Aurology who in November, so a couple of months before we know the outbreak started, came down with symptoms of something which would be consistent with COVID-19, but could also be consistent with with other types of flu. And again, this is circumstantial evidence. Well, I suppose another way to put this, if there were to be a lab leak, this is how you'd expect it to happen. You'd expect there to be some workers in the lab who get sick because it's, you know, it's leaked out of wherever. Then you get a cluster. Some of them have symptoms of COVID-19 and then it's out by then, isn't it? A family members got it or whatever. So if this were to be the case, it would seem again, it sort of builds that circumstantial case. What do you make of this? Do you trust the Americans here? I think you just have to, like you can, you just can take anonymous intelligence briefings off of a report that I think, if I recall properly, the WSJ hadn't even seen the report itself. Is it just just an anonymous intelligence source? But yeah, like you said, Iraq, the entire history of planted stories in the Cold War, as delicious as it is, I think the best you can do here is to use that as a jump off point to, you know, as an investigation that could actually be legitimated. But, you know, an anonymous intelligence report, I just can't, I can't do it, I can't do it. And I suppose that in a way is a bit of a segue into who do we trust? Who don't we trust? And especially, you know, myself, I'm not a scientist. So I don't understand how viruses evolve. But I do kind of understand interests. So, you know, whose, whose interest is it to make a big deal out of this? Maybe the American intelligence services, who's in favor of covering this up? Parts of the scientific community who are invested in gain of function research, probably the Chinese government. And you've got this, you know, this constellation of interests with certain people wanting us to know nothing about this and certain people wanting us to go wild with our imaginations. And, you know, Trump obviously wanted us to kind of think it was a bio weapon. So who, who's trying to cover this up? And who's trying to blow it out of proportion, I suppose, is my question to you. Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, It seems there isn't it. Yeah. Well, who's trying to suppress good investigations into this? And who's trying to, you know, blow it out proportion? Yeah, yeah. I mean, anybody that there are still, I have been trying to as much as I can follow this through the scientific literature, just because again, if I'm following intelligence reports, I'm going to be up until 4am parsing these things that I'm never going to figure it out. And you'll never know. But if you sort of go through that, there are still people. You mean you can you can find them in the scientific literature, you can find that clearly the most plausible explanation is natural emergence. And they'll come and say that and you should not listen to me. I mean, there are the weight of experts, people that have parsed these things at this point is is really on the fence. It's on maybe it's on it's on we need to investigate. You know, by that same token, you know, maybe the US senators and sort of current and ex intelligence personnel who are deeply invested in some manner of cold or otherwise war with China, you know, you know, where where they're sort of going with it. And and a lot of this has muddied the waters since it first started. You know, the reason that it was discounted. So early, some combination of business, laziness, credulity, and also people genuinely not not wanting to to enter into a needless conflict with China. I mean, I think that the way you need to look at it is that it's not really necessary to be a partisan of either side as as boring as that is. I hate to be a centrist. I hate to be a both sides kind of person. But what what you've seen over the past couple months in terms of like the idea of what I believe picking up steam is not so much the the actual proving of a lab leak theory. It's it's bringing up enough circumstantial evidence so that the balance of opinion is now open, you know, both sides are incredibly open. And it's just incredibly hard, you know, to tell either way. And the really sad thing is that you I'm just going to have to tell you to, you know, maybe wait or push for an investigation or whatever. But yeah, it's not that it's not that anybody's proved anything at this point. The moment right now is just in the opening up the discussion. Who would do the investigation? Because I mean, there has been an investigation by the World Health Organization, they came away with a report that said, you know, the natural origin story is very, very likely. And even though they're not rolling out the lab leak story, they're saying it's highly unlikely. Now, they got a lot of backlash for that because they, you know, they said they would they interviewed scientists, and they just believed whatever answer they gave them, they said, Oh, we're not going to look at the raw data. And I mean, China was obviously involved very heavily in the investigations kind of a diplomatic thing, which sort of undermines its ability to search for the truth. But who would be able to search for the truth? I mean, obviously, the Chinese government, and I mean, I think they're overly demonized in many ways, but they don't want people to find out that it was a lab. If it were a lab leak, they wouldn't want people to find that out. So how would a fair investigation possibly take place? So that is really like that's the billion dollar lovely question. I mean, you're you're entirely right. I mean, I wouldn't even phrase it the way you phrased it like that they wouldn't want people to know if there was a lab leak. I mean, I think the thing that makes this so difficult is that if China knew that there was no lab leak, if they knew like what people are asking for in an investigation is for the Wuhan Institute of Virology to be opened to investigators from some sort of international body for full interviews, full parsing of their lab journals, whatever records they have, and to take all of the strains that may not be catalogued of coronaviruses that they have and let people investigate and sequence them, get taken to the scientist. Even if China knew that those records were claimed, they're not going to let anybody in. It's not in their interest. The Chinese government, the Chinese state didn't avoid the sort of open society can opener of intervention in the 90s just to sort of let international investigators in now. It's just not how they operate. Sort of demanding an investigation. I think the only way that actually happens is if it manages the demands for it managed to move into a sphere that China would actually care about, which would be actually just like literally the balance of world powers and not just the United States, which is this very adversarial power that China has a big interest in stonewalling actually came along. Like if the entire WHO turned on them, if countries actually sort of cared about cultivating, turned on it, there's a possibility. But the other possibility is that they're able to stonewall it forever. Then the only thing you can sort of hope for is a whistleblower within, and then even then, it's not clear that you'd ever get sort of the smoking gun that everybody's looking for. Two more things I want to go through. One is historical precedent and one is what would be the implications either way. In terms of historical precedents, I did some very basic research before this show. SARS, that was natural origin. It went from bats to civic cats to humans. MERS, that was natural origins. Bats to camels to humans. But we also do know that lab leaks do happen. Since 2003, there have been six lab leaks of SARS. That was lab staff catching the virus. In one case, they passed it on to a family member. We know that with SARS, you die quite quickly. It's much harder to pass on than COVID-19. If you accidentally gave COVID-19 to a family member, you can see how that would start an outbreak in a way that SARS is much more containable. This isn't a problem with anyone. Country lab leaks happen everywhere. It's why people have been wary of things like gain of function research everywhere. Close to home in 2007, a leaky pipe connecting Britain's Institute for Animal Health and an animal vaccine manufacturer led to an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The reason they had a leaky pipe was because the Institute for Animal Health and the vaccine manufacturer were arguing over who was responsible for paying to renovate the pipe. There can be quite mundane things which lead to quite serious outcomes. What's history on the side of here? Would you say that MERS came from nature, SARS came from nature? Why are we suddenly assuming that this one didn't? You're looking at what might be an incredibly rare evolutionary event, which by nature doesn't happen very often. History on both sides is like most things on both sides kind of deadlocked right now. I mean, you mentioned the two previous coronavirus epidemics. Marburg virus came from bats. Nipah virus also came from bats. Those are two other human-infective viruses that came from bats. I don't know. You're asking me to adjudicate what seems more likely, given the background, where I think that what you need to focus on is what would prove it either way because both are pretty unprecedented events because it's an unprecedented pandemic. The question on the side of the natural emergence is that you need to find this plausible evolutionary route. Like you mentioned the viruses that had previously backed back to animals, mostly bats. What you would need here is you would need those intermediaries. In evolutionary speak, you need a missing link. You need to find animals that had the SARS coronavirus that had very similar structures to the one we see. And then it no longer looks like a crazy rare event. The sort of backing product is going on right now. I mean, they're looking, but it could take forever. We don't have a very good library of SARS coronavirus. The best one was in the Wuhan Institute of Biology. It's not even that big. The other side is quite provable as well. I mean, that's the smoking gun on the lab league side, which is that you get a whistleblower. You get access to the documents. I think that's what you need to focus on is like what's provable because history can be very misleading when you're looking at incredibly rare events. Yeah. Let's finally talk about the implications then. So what if, I mean, I'm also sort of, I think it seems quite likely that we'll never know from what you're saying in terms of what we might need to know the truth. But say we do, say we confirm one way or the other that it was a lab leak or it was natural origins. And actually, let's focus on just the lab leak because that obviously has much greater implications. If it were a lab leak, what would that mean for, I mean, geopolitics on one level, but then also the scientific community on the other? Because obviously, there are lots of sort of dystopian novels or disaster movies where scientists have created something they can't control to horrible effect. And it's very rarely been confirmed that that's happened in reality. But if it is confirmed that this pandemic, which is the most traumatic two years in world history and quite a long time was created by some well-meaning scientists in a lab in Wuhan, that could have devastating effects for public faith in science, couldn't it? And presumably, then the regulators are going to clamp down really, really hard on certain kinds of potentially dangerous scientific endeavor. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'd leave the geopolitical politics to somebody else. I mean, I think you can imagine how bad it would be if, you know, it turned out that I don't know about this and they covered it up. I mean, it would be awful. It would set off a whole new range of conflicts and who knows where it would go. I can more easily speak to the scientific sides. I mean, I would start with saying that I think that, you know, you said a regulatory crackdown on the sort of thing, I think that should happen anyway. You know, now that people are focused on it, I think the whole idea of like gain of function, you know, should be should be looked at really closely, possibly the idea of like international regulatory frameworks, I mean, the US banned gain of function during the Obama administration in 2014, and then brought it back in a very limited form. And, you know, I think that's that's what needs to be going forward, you know, heavily regulated, really cracked down on, because even if it's never proved that this happened, even if it's proved that loudly didn't happen and it was natural emergent, we've definitely shown that, that, you know, there are this stuff goes on in poorly regulated environments. So there's that. I mean, I think you just see it an enormous backlash against science and the scientific community in general, starting with the fact that they sort of poo-pooed this from the beginning. And so, you know, if it turns out that the hashtag lab leak is real, I mean, I think you'll definitely see an intensification amongst people who already don't cross science. I think you see a huge backlash even amongst people who do, I think you'll see sort of scientific research, scientific credibility in general really take a hit. Although, I mean, I do think that though there's sort of, there's a bit of self-correcting going on right now, which is where you see a lot of scientists, a lot of very prestigious scientists, sort of positioning themselves in a sort of middle ground, whether they're very receptive to the idea that this might come from a lab, but I think that sort of take the lead and sort of show that if this is indeed the case, sort of science is capable of sort of punishing the wrongdoers and sort of performing itself. Let's go on to our next story, which is also COVID-related. And actually, in the here and now, probably more significant because it's about saving lives in the here and now. Before we do that, if you're enjoying the show, do like the video. It helps us on the algorithm. Now, the rise of the B16172 variant of coronavirus in Britain risk throwing, of course, our schedule for abandoning lockdown restrictions or the final social distancing restrictions, which are in place. However, in the success of our vaccination drive, even if the variant continues to spread, that shouldn't risk another wave of deaths, anything like what we saw in January and February. And the reason because most vulnerable people have been vaccinated, nearly all vulnerable people have been vaccinated. Yet while the vaccine is mostly able to keep up with the new variant in Britain, that's not the case in much of the rest of the world. And due to the heightened transmissibility of this new variant, one of the UK's leading epidemiologists has warned that the majority of COVID deaths on a global scale could take place after there are enough vaccines to protect all of those most at risk. So in short, the maldistribution of vaccines could lead to millions more deaths, more deaths than we had before a vaccine was available. Now, the epidemiologist who made this warning is Adam Kaczarski. He is an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and also sits on the SPI-M modeling subgroup of SAGE, someone who really does know his stuff. However, this is probably an issue where you don't need to be an expert to see how dangerous the current situation is in the world right now. First of all, we know the Indian variant or the B16172 variant is much more transmissible than Kent. You remember the effect that the Kent variant had on us. That case is absolutely rocketed. This is worse than that. Two, most places in the world have really, really low rates of vaccination. Now, this map shows what proportion of each country has received at least one dose of the vaccine. Now, the darkest blue means that over 60% of the population received one dose at the moment. That only includes Israel, Malta, Bhutan, and some very small island nations. The royal blue color, you can see there's more countries which are colored in that. That means between 50% and 60% have had at least one vaccine. That includes the UK, the US, Canada, and Chile. Then the lightest blue, so I'm going through some of the intermediary ones, but you can see that the lightest blue is between 10 and 20. So that's not very many people at all, really. If you've got a highly, highly transmissible strain, then just having 10 to 20% of the population having one dose, you're still in a real danger zone. That includes India, Colombia, Mexico, and Russia. Then most depressingly, you can see the orange color, which is less than 5%, and the red color, which is less than 1% of people having had one vaccine. That includes nearly all of Africa and most of the Middle East and then also some parts of Southeast Asia. You can see if you've got this highly, highly transmissible variant and you've got the majority of the world essentially living in countries where you've got less than 10% of the population vaccinated, we could see something, I mean, essentially worse than what we've already had and what we've already had was horrific. That's where that warning is coming from. Now, the answer here, of course, is that we need to produce more vaccines. We need to be distributing those vaccines better so that people in Africa, for example, aren't waiting another two years to get vaccinated because it's going to be quite difficult to keep out the B16172 variant until then. On that issue, so this quote was from an article by Zaynep Tufeki in The New York Times, very, very clever analyst. Actually, I do recommend reading her stuff. See, COVID's deadliest phase may be here soon. So on how we should respond to this, she writes, waving vaccine patents is fine, but unless it's tied to a process that actually increases the supply of vaccines, it's a little bit more than expressing thoughts and prayers after a tragedy. Officials from all nations that produce vaccines need to gather for an emergency meeting immediately to decide how to commandeer whatever excess capacity they have to produce more for whatever means necessary. And that piece ends by saying, like all pandemics, this one will end either with millions, maybe billions, being infected or being vaccinated. This time, world leaders have a choice, but little time to make that choice before it is made for them. So a bit of a call to action there. We're even going to get herd immunity via having a vaccine, which is distributed fairly to almost everyone. Or we're going to get herd immunity by millions or billions more people catching this virus and millions more people in that case inevitably dying. Steven, you've written a lot on vaccine production over the last few months. You've spoken about it on this show before. What are your, I suppose, top takeaway points from how we do avoid this catastrophe waiting to happen? Right. So I mean, something that she wrote about in that piece, which is super, super good. And I also really recommend saying up as an analyst was that there needs to be a high level meeting amongst states, amongst, as they say, stakeholders about how to produce more vaccines. I mean, I think something that might absolutely shock people and absolutely shocked me when I learned about it is that to my knowledge still, actually, but at least as of a month ago, there have been no high level interstate meetings, whether through the WHO, whether through the G20, whatever international channels you want about how to make more vaccines. It's been done entirely at the national level. And so she's totally right. I mean, there needs to be some sort of international coordination. Pandemic response in general at the international level has been a huge failure, but that can't continue as we move into this sort of, as you said, new and still incredibly dangerous phase. And how much of it is about patents and how much of it is about something else? So it's sort of tricky to say. I mean, there's, as you know, I've been on here, you've talked to me about it, advocating for dropping patent protections. There have been lots of people getting behind dropping patent protections. Even even old Joe Biden is at least partially supporting waving patents. But, well, some people will argue against this and say that it doesn't matter to share patents. You need to need to know how it's just a distraction. I think we've always seen patents as the first step. You need to make sure that some companies not going to sue you. And then the next step is to actually, in an environment where you're not worried about some pharmaceutical company coming after you, and ideally in an environment where states and international organizations actually get involved on the production side. You know, then you sort of create a global response and move forward. So the patents are a really good rallying cry. But it's always been seen as just a first step in this process. And finally, I mean, this warning from Zaynep Tufeki and Adam Kacharski, it's nothing new, right? This is not a new discovery. And it does feel like at times, you know, people have been raising this warning for a very long time now. And it feels like kind of nothing's changed. I mean, from your perspective, what would be the worst case scenario here and what would be the best case scenario? Is there a sequence of events whereby the world suddenly wakes up, takes this seriously, and we get vaccines distributed everywhere? What would that look like? And what's the worst case scenario? What are those decision points going to be? Yeah. I mean, I'd start with the worst case. The worst case scenario is, I mean, you've read the same analyses I have. The worst case scenario is that we basically rely on the vaccine producers we already have. It doesn't get expanded very much. The developing world gets it after we're done. And then the ideas are that anywhere from 2023 to 2024 is when we get reasonable amounts of vaccination. And that's only, in most analyses, about 60%, which we now know is not necessarily fully protective. And I don't like to speculate on how the virus is going to evolve. I do hate doom saying, but the longer you wait, the more infections there are, the more likely you start to see more significance. I hate saying immune escape because there's no snapping and it just suddenly escapes. But you'll see a decline in efficiency of the vaccines for sure. The best case scenario, it looks like we have an international response that joins up production across the world. You have, in my view, the best way to do it would be basically a public option for vaccine production. You have coordination of supply chains, of knowledge sharing between countries. And then you actually have the countries where coronavirus is raging right now, manufacturing their own way out of the crisis. What you are actually seeing now is a little bit of movement. I mean, you're seeing some proposals in the United States that look quite good, a limited version of good, where people are basically like public citizens, got a very good analysis of this, but that the US itself could produce probably enough vaccine for the world for under, what is it, I think $30 or $50 billion. And so this is still national level, but at least people are looking at sort of a non-marketized production option. And what I'd really like to see is that jump beyond national borders and into an international response. Super, super interesting, obviously an incredibly important question. And I fucking hope some progress happens on it soon because it's terrifying to think about what could happen next. Stephen, thank you so much for talking to us about both of those issues tonight. I'm sure both of them clearly we're going to be talking about for a long time from now. Both, I suppose, worrying in their different ways as well. Obviously, it's obvious how it's incredibly worrying, the maldistribution of vaccines and the future of this pandemic. Also, I think the lab leak, if it turns out to be true, we're going to have to really jump into action to stop this being a weapon in the new Cold War and point out how this is actually a problem for the scientific community and regulation internationally and not the problem with one nation. So lots to discuss. But in any case, thank you so much for joining us on this sunny bank holiday. No problem. Thank you for having me. And thank you for watching as ever. Tomorrow night from 7pm here on Navarra Media YouTube, Aaron Bostani will be speaking with Tom Fowler all about the spy cops inquiry. You'll be redirected to the page for that show when this stream ends. So stay tuned and then you can set a reminder for now. You've been watching Titski Sauer on Navarra Media. Good night.