There has been a lot of news surrounding the origins of Covid lately that it is difficult to keep up.

What often gets lost in these news is the science and the voice of experts, and the valuable insights they have on offer. To remedy some of this imbalance, we decided to upload this bonus video with Prof. Alice Hughes, where we talked about the recent news, the media environment, her field work as bat ecologist in China, the drivers of spillover risk, especially wildlife trade, and what lessons we failed to learn from this pandemic. (Also, we don't have patreon or monetize our science communication)

Alice did her PhD in bat ecology at the University of Bristol with fieldwork in Thailand. She had a research group in Yunnan, China for nine years before she decided to leave for a position in Hong Kong after Chinese censorship of her work. Alice has broad expertise and deep knowledge on many topics related to the origin of Covid, so in this conversation, we make full use of her insights and fly through a variety of topics at a fast pace, and having tons of fun doing so. In this bonus material, you will find an amazing and insightful conversation worth listening in full, but you’ll also be able to find the topics we touch on sorted by time stamp in the video description below. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 04:45 Wildlife trade in Asia 14:45 Work at the Wuhan CDC 18:27 Actual drivers of risks 33:36 Chinese censorship 43:20 Science is about data 49:18 DoE report ‘vindicated’ lableak 57:20 Virus hunting: Risk versus benefit 01:08:50 Miles Guo and the bioweapon conspiracy 01:15:00 Politics versus Science 01:19:54 Raccoon dog news at Huanan market 01:28:08 A true positive outlook? References: Liu et al: data from Huanan market https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37019... Raccoon dog report presented to WHO: https://zenodo.org/record/7754299#.ZE... Sarbeco viruses in Myanmar: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...