What are the origins of COVID-19? Did it occur in nature, as the media has strongly suggested? Or did it escape from a lab where scientists were conducting risky experiments with viruses?

In the video, “COVID Cover-Up: Did It Come From a Lab?,” Russell Brand questions the lack of transparency around the origins of COVID and asks, why is this discussion so contentious?

It’s important to question science, says Brand, particularly when it’s entangled with “powerful economic interests” that have ties to “powerful global figures with incredible influence on the global stage.”

Brand highlights an article by and interview with science writer Nicholas Wade who raises concerns about risky gain-of-function research performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.

Wade’s report, “The Origin of COVID: Did People or Nature Open Pandora’s Box at Wuhan?,” examines the two main theories behind the origins of COVID, including whether the virus may have originated in a lab where Chinese virologists were experimenting with natural animal viruses.

Is there a “deliberate attempt to obscure the facts of the origins of the coronavirus?” asks Brand.

Regardless of the origins of the virus, Brand argues there should be clear and transparent conversations about it. Sometimes, Brand says, questioning science means you’re “opposing the interests of some of the world’s most powerful people.”

Brand said:

“One of the problems around science is not science itself, the model of investigation, but the relationship between science, finance and economics. It shows us that ideally, the way you would not have money involved in politics through lobbying, you would not have money involved in science through the funding of research and investigation.”