Watch: My Seminar on Covid Origins at Fiocruz

An unusual discussion about the disputed origin of Covid-19 & information pathogens

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Background:

Last year, I reached out to Dr. Carlos Morel from the WHO’s SAGO mission to interview him about his perspective on the origin of Covid, his life-long dedication in fighting against neglected and emerging diseases, biosafety, and how to prevent future pandemics with regional, national and global virome projects. Carlos is an impressive character and scientists who has fought hard for science and public health all his life, and getting almost two hours to plug his brain has been enriching. 

(If you missed this fantastic conversation, feel free to catch up and watch it here)

My talk:

Recently, I decided to visit family in Rio, and thought this would be a good opportunity to maybe reconnect with Carlos in person and learn some more about his work on technological developments in health. Carlos on his part has been interested in my science communication approach. So long story short, it turned out that this time, it would be me who would be interviewed.

Because this arrangement was rather short notice, I scambled to get my thoughts together and prepare my presentation; and on top of that, I arrived in Rio without my luggage (thanks AirFrance) the day before my presentation. Anyways…

On the 3rd of April, I had the honor to give a talk at Fiocruz, which is an organisation comparable with the CDC, independent but under the umbrella of the ministry of health. Fiocruz has an interesting history and has been the heart of fighting public health threats of known & novel emerging diseases; and they were quite open to the idea that public health faces new challenges with our changing information environments.

My talk on information pathogens and why the lableak theory is so popular (and dangerous) was recorded and I am happy to share with everybody interested.

CLICK HERE

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction by Prof. Simone Petraglia Kropf (COC/Fiocruz)

05:00 Situation statement from Dr. Carlos Morel (portuguese)

18:00 Background Dr. Philipp Markolin

20:15 Presentation overview

25:00 How to approach the origin discussion

30:05 How likely are lab leaks vs spillovers?

34:20 Was the viral genome manipulated?

43:38 What about the WIV versus market?

52:50 How plausible is a lab leak given the evidence?

56:10 Why does science struggle today?

57:15 Asymmetries of the attention economy

1:09:35 The merchants of doubt

1:15:05 Velocity hackers

1:20:25 Information pathogens & Information cascades

1:28:25 How did I get infected by the lableak myth?

1:35:40 Concluding remarks

1:40:50 Q&A session and discussions

As always, I try to make my science communication work as accessible as possible, so please find a link to the (very comprehensive) slide show here.

If you are a scientists or scientifically-minded citizen who feels worried about speaking out for evidence-based discourse, this talk might give you some idea what to expect, what to do, and why to do it.

I wish you the best of luck and thank you!

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Disclaimer:

There is no monetization on my articles. As always, my hope and goals are to educate and equip citizens with conceptual tools and new perspectives to make sense of the world we inhabit. This is why I do not want it locked behind any type of paywall.

I see this work as a public good that I send out into the void of the internet in hopes others will get inspired to act.

So feel free to use, share or build on top of this work, I just ask you to properly attribute (Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 4.0).

Slideshow Pm Fiocruz

63.4MB ∙ PDF file

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