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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Daybreak. I'm Nathan Hager alongside Karen Moscow.

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Speaker 1: I want to get some in depth insights on another

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Speaker 1: major story we're watching this morning. It's a report in

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Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal that the Energy Department, according to

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Speaker 1: a classified document, has shifted its view on the origins

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Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen and now sees a leak from the

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Speaker 1: lab in Wuhan, China as the most likely source of

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Speaker 1: the outbreak. We're pleased to be joined once again this

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Speaker 1: morning by Andy Pecosh, professor of molecular biology and Immunology

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Speaker 1: at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, to

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Speaker 1: get more on this. Professor, good morning, what's your reaction

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Speaker 1: to this report? Well, thanks for having me on, Nathan.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's one of those cases where we haven't

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Speaker 1: seen the report. We haven't seen what data has caused

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Speaker 1: the Department of Energy to shift from to this low

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Speaker 1: confidence reading, and so it's a little bit difficult to

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Speaker 1: try to figure out what's driving this change. Instance. How

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Speaker 1: much research has been done to now, at least on

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Speaker 1: the US side, into the origins of COVID nineteen. Well,

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Speaker 1: there has been a significant amount of work that's been

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Speaker 1: done particularly around the wet market in Huan, China, and

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Speaker 1: looking at environmental and animal samples and human samples from

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Speaker 1: that area. There's a fair amount of evidence that's very

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Speaker 1: strongly points to that market as being the source of

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Speaker 1: the outbreak. But again, there have been some political issues

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Speaker 1: here between the US government and the Chinese government that

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Speaker 1: have really prevented a full and complete investigation of the

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Speaker 1: source of this outbreak, and I think that's what's fueling

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Speaker 1: a little bit of sort of haze and fog around

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Speaker 1: this issue of where COVID nineteen originated. Yeah, I wanted

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Speaker 1: to ask you about that whether we could ever get

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Speaker 1: a full picture of the origins if we don't get

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Speaker 1: more information from the Chinese government. How forthcoming has the

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Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party been up to this point. We just

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Speaker 1: got some reaction to this report from the Chinese Our

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Speaker 1: Ministry that seems to suggest that, at least on their side,

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Speaker 1: the report from China and the World Health Organization should

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Speaker 1: be the final word on this. I think that this

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Speaker 1: is where politics and science are really mixing together at

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Speaker 1: this point in time. There's not a lot of samples

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Speaker 1: that are left from those initial days, so it would

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Speaker 1: be really challenging for us to come up with a

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Speaker 1: lot more data about them, but the potential lab league

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Speaker 1: hypothesis unless there's data out there that again hasn't been released.

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Speaker 1: This report is still confidential, so hopefully we will see

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Speaker 1: what other information comes has come out about this in

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Speaker 1: the near future. But right now, this is a Everything

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Speaker 1: points to a to a natural occurrence of this virus

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Speaker 1: as being the point that has initiated our the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: but we still don't have all all affirmed data about

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Speaker 1: that from the Chinese government. Yeah, we should say that

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Speaker 1: this Energy Department report to the Wall Street Journal says

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Speaker 1: that they've reached this conclusion with low confidence, and that's

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Speaker 1: pretty much where the FBI sits on this as well.

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Speaker 1: Most other intelligence agencies either haven't decided or are leaning

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Speaker 1: toward the natural animal transmission theory. But how much weight

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Speaker 1: from your perspective does an Energy Department assessment hold compared

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Speaker 1: to some of those other agencies, given that the Energy

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Speaker 1: Department oversees the national labs like Lawrence Livermore, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think one has to put this into contexts and understanding

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Speaker 1: that there are multiple other agencies that don't really agree

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Speaker 1: with the Department of energies assessment at this point in

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Speaker 1: time sort of tells you that whatever's information is being

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Speaker 1: passed around is not really the strongest of evidence that

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Speaker 1: points to a lab origin of the virus. So we

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Speaker 1: have to put this report in contexts, particularly until we

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Speaker 1: see the data that has made the Department of Energy

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Speaker 1: change its opinion, whereas other government agencies have not. Where

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Speaker 1: would you assess the level of COVID right now? What

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Speaker 1: is happening with the pandemic at this point. We don't

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Speaker 1: hear as much about it obviously as we did when

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Speaker 1: you were a regular guest on our program and we

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Speaker 1: were talking about it almost on a weekly basis. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, we've had a major change with respect to

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Speaker 1: hospitalizations and deaths from the pandemic. Those have stayed relatively

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Speaker 1: level and relatively low for a significant amount of time

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Speaker 1: right now, and we haven't seen massive bursts of cases either.

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Speaker 1: So I think we're approaching that stage where the efforts

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Speaker 1: of the medical community and the scientific community to get

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Speaker 1: treatments and vaccines out there have really caused us to

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Speaker 1: be able to blunt the severe impact of COVID nineteen,

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Speaker 1: and we're now dealing with it as a standard disease

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Speaker 1: that we have to maintain our focus on, and we

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Speaker 1: have to maintain vaccination and treatment schedules for it. But

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Speaker 1: it's not representing those surges of cases that we saw

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Speaker 1: in the first two years of the pandemic. Does understanding

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Speaker 1: the origins of COVID nineteen help to combat the pandemic

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Speaker 1: as it stands now we've got about a minute left here.

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Speaker 1: I think understanding the origins of COVID nineteen really helps

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Speaker 1: us prepare for the next pandemic more than it prepared.

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Speaker 1: It allows us to deal with the current pandemic. We

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Speaker 1: have the tools to deal with COVID nineteen right now,

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Speaker 1: we should be using them more efficiently. But we can't

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Speaker 1: forget the fact that this is one of at least

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Speaker 1: five virus mediated pandemics that we've seen over the past

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Speaker 1: twenty five years. We have to be better prepared and

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Speaker 1: understand how these viruses make the jump into the human

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Speaker 1: population so we can minimize that risk at the source.

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Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see whether we get that extra

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Speaker 1: bit of information that helps to give us further clarity

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Speaker 1: on those origins. As always, doctor Peckosh, great to have

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Speaker 1: you back on with us on daybreak Andy Pecosh is

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Speaker 1: a professor of molecular biology and immunology at the Johns

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Speaker 1: Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is supported by

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Speaker 1: Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP

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Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot Com. I'm Nathan Hager and I'm

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Speaker 1: Karen Moscow. Join us again tomorrow morning. For all the

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