Deborah Seligsohn on China's COVID-19 response and the virus's origins

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Deborah Seligsohn, who served as the State Department’s Environment, Science, Technology and Health Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2003-2007. She is now Assistant Professor of Political Science at Villanova University in Philadelphia, where she’s currently teaching a course on pandemics and politics. She recalls her first-hand experience with China’s SARS response in 2003, shares her views on how much China improved in the intervening years, and talks about how, when, and why China mishandled its initial response to the novel coronavirus in the winter of 2019-2020. Deborah also offers her critical perspective on the persistent “lab-leak” theory.This show was recorded on March 12, with an addendum just before recommendations from March 29, in which Deborah addresses some of the news relating to the search for COVID’s origins that came out in the intervening weeks.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.