Gary Peters Questions Experts On 'Hard Evidence' That Proves Wuhan Lab Conducted COVID Experiments

3 months ago

During a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing last week, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) spoke about the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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Transcript

00:00And I'll start, actually, Doctor, I'll just pick up from your answer there.

00:04A lot of it has been directed towards the paper that you wrote and the research that

00:08went into that.

00:10Does the science since the paper came out strengthen your argument or weaken it?

00:17What does the science show?

00:18It absolutely strengthens it.

00:20I mean, we published a series of papers after the proximal origins paper, all of them conclusively

00:27moving towards the natural origin hypothesis.

00:31So nothing, you know, we stand by that paper, it was a good paper.

00:37We are currently seeing enormous changes in technology in the biological sciences from

00:43artificial intelligence to biological design tools, even robot laboratories where experiments

00:51can be conducted from really anywhere on the globe.

00:54Doctor Koblentz, my question for you is, in your opinion, will these types of technological

01:00changes make it easier or harder for us to determine the origins of future pandemics?

01:10The advances you just discussed will definitely make it more complicated to do that.

01:15On the one hand, we are going to have much more sophisticated capabilities to analyze

01:19viral genomes and do the kind of analyses that are some of the feature of Doctor Gary's

01:24work to understand the evolution of these pathogens and where they come from.

01:27And so that will be incredibly useful in investigating any future outbreak.

01:32On the other hand, the fact that these technologies are going to be globally diffused, the fact

01:36that there are a growing number of high and maximum containment laboratories that conduct

01:39high consequence research will make it a more complicated process because there will be

01:43more potential sources for outbreaks, whether they are naturally occurring or from laboratories.

01:49So the technologies are not a net negative, but they are not a panacea.

01:55But it's definitely going to be a much more complicated endeavor to go through this exercise

01:59in the future.

02:00Very good.

02:01Doctor Cray, a question for you.

02:05We know the U.S. intelligence community has reported that a few scientists at the Wuhan

02:11lab got sick in December, the fall of 2019.

02:17But it's not clear that any of them had COVID-19.

02:21So my question for you, sir, is what evidence do we have that someone at the Wuhan lab got

02:27COVID-19 before anyone else did?

02:30And do you know if these scientists actually got tested for COVID-19?

02:33No, I don't.

02:35All of my data around that relies on the State Department statement.

02:40There were three individuals.

02:41We believe we know one of them at least, Ben Hu, was responsible for some of the synthetic

02:46work in the laboratory, a reasonably young person who was said to have been hospitalized

02:52with an X-ray-confirmed disease consistent with COVID-19, but not blood testing.

03:00We do know also that in March of 2020, Dr. Shi reported that no one at the Wuhan Institute

03:08of Virology had SARS-CoV-2.

03:11And with another individual, we did a statistical analysis of the probability of that with the

03:16incidence in Wuhan, and that is not a truthful statement because of that.

03:21So those are the two facts I have.

03:24Dr. Gary, you want to respond?

03:26Senator Peters, could I read from the Intelligence Committee, the Director of Office of National

03:32Intelligence about these three supposed sick workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

03:38And they write, while several WIV researchers fell mildly ill in fall 2019, they experienced

03:46a range of symptoms consistent with colds or allergies with accompanying symptoms typically

03:52not associated with COVID-19.

03:55And some of them were confirmed to have been sick with other illnesses unrelated to COVID-19.

04:01So the three sick workers at the WIV is simply a myth.

04:07Dr. Guay, what specific hard evidence proves that the Wuhan lab did experiments that created

04:15the virus?

04:16Do we have specific hard evidence?

04:18No, one of our biggest challenges is we don't know what they've done inside there.

04:22We know what they were doing in the past.

04:25We know what they did in the fall of 2019, all consistent with the things you would do

04:29if there had been a laboratory accident there.

04:32Filing a patent, the first patent out of 600 patents for a device to prevent a coronavirus

04:38infection in an infected worker.

04:41One of the inventors on that patent is a PLA military doctor-scientist.

04:46The head of the laboratory was dismissed, and a PLA soldier was put in charge of the

04:52laboratory December 2019.

04:55So we don't have access inside the laboratory.

04:58We probably will never have it.

05:00But the genome inside the virus comports to the diffuse grant in such a way that it's

05:07inconsistent.

05:08I mean, in a court of law, you find someone criminally for 95% or greater probabilities,

05:15and this is one in a billion, which is greater than that, that this is a synthetic virus.

05:20So I don't want to put words in your mouth.

05:21So I mean, a lot of this is, these are assumptions that you're making, not hard evidence.

05:27The hard evidence is the incidence of the features of SARS-CoV-2 can individually be

05:32looked at in nature, they can be identified with the frequency in nature, and then you

05:37can say, what is the chance that each of these were combined in one virus at the same time?

05:42This is what virologists do all the time in looking for origins.

05:46And when you do that, you conclude that it has a one in a billion chance of coming from

05:51nature and it meets all seven criteria of the diffuse grant.

05:56Thank you.

05:57Thank you all.

05:58You're recognized for questions.

Gary Peters Questions Experts On 'Hard Evidence' That Proves Wuhan Lab Conducted COVID Experiments

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