In late 2021, Matt Ridley and Alina Chan published the hardback edition of ‘Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19’. Well received by many and loathed by some, it remains the most comprehensive book on the origin of the pandemic that leans in the direction of the lab. In a debate that has neither gone away nor gotten more polite over time, there is one thing that both sides tend to agree upon: unanswered questions lead back to China, to Wuhan, the WIV and Zhongnanhai, the leaders’ compound in Beijing – and to the tropical southern borderlands of Yunnan, Burma and Laos. Evidence has trickled into the debate like the steady drops in water torture: by summer 2022, when the paperback of Viral was published, it was necessary to add an update to the epilogue. A genetically closer virus to COVID-19 had been found, this time in Laos. That discovery added to the vast puzzle around the origins, and, like the account of Chinese workers falling sick in a Yunnan cave at the start of the work, directed attention to the tropical south, the home of the bat colonies sampled by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In this conversation, Matt Ridley and Luke Sheehan trace out some of the local particularities of the pandemic’s eruption in China, with the latter’s personal experience there coming to the fore.

Episode Credits:

Host: Luke Sheehan

Music: Loafing Heroes - ​​https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com

Produced by Massimiliano Galli - https://www.massimilianogalli.com

Links:

‘Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19’ by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/viral-matt-ridleyalina-chan?variant=40127936987170

China and COVID origins essay by Luke Sheehan:

https://www.lilliputpress.ie/uncategorized/post-china-post-5-by-%E9%B2%81%E7%A7%91

Associated Press article by Dake Kang:

https://apnews.com/article/china-covid-virus-origins-pandemic-lab-leak-bed5ab50dca8e318ab00f60b5911da0c