Speech #2 - Was the COVID-19 pandemic finally originated in a laboratory or by a nature accident?

Christmas, 2019. I was celebrating with my family, next to the christmas tree, spending a good time.
New year’s celebration, All my relatives were raising a cup of wine, celebrating the new year that was
coming. My birthday, spending with my friends singing happy birthday. I remember listening to my
parents' conversation about the new news, nothing that I did care about at that time. Carnival, it was
my favorite celebration, cause it brought a lot of happiness but that didn’t last long, until February
29th, cause that’s when I first felt scared watching news on tv. It was COVID-19 and it’s first
contaminated in the country.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen in this Auditory, my name is Kristel Peralta representing liceo
panamericano, and I’m here to persuade and explain my point of view for the following topic, Was the
COVID-19 pandemic finally originated in a laboratory or by a nature accident?

I first will cover the fact that according to the center of disease, control and prevention (CDC)
COVID-19 was firstly notificated on Wuhan, China on december 31, 2019 so as a result, the first
direct quarantine started in this country where the government threatened by putting a lockdown on
the Hubei province on January 23, 2020 that included Wuhan, the city where it appeared. After all
these events, it was declared as a global pandemic on march 11 2020. Covid was my first pandemic,
and of course my first quarantine, which actually hit really hard, and not only for me, for everyone, and
It’s pretty evident how this event is getting us a lot of consequences.
.
We do know how hard covid hit on our countries, in this country, Ecuador, you could clearly see on the
news how each day, the mortality rate number was increasing, just as the people infected rate. But
the question that is in debate now is where it originally started. We do know it comes from China, but
where? Actually, The question that is mostly debated now is if it was made or if it was discovered.

During these couple years, a lot of theories have been put forward, the most popular ones are that it
was created in a laboratory, that it was brought to china from the American military, even that bill
gates financiated its creation. Of course they are not true, and not just from my opinion, it’s evident
that they don’t have any justification or sense, so this argument is unavailable. I did a deeper research
and found that, the first 27 cases which 7 of them were pretty serious, were originated in Wuhan, just
as mentioned before presenting a type of pneumonia of unknown etiology, but the particular fact from
it, was that after the 9.692 cases reported, the found one thing in common; it was that all these people
had some kind of link or relationship with the Huanan market.

This market was focused on selling shellfish and live animals, just as this discoverement was known,
health authorities automatically closed the market to the public, but which was the first supplier for this
tragedy?
Several studies were published by the World Health Organization and they demonstrated that it was
brought from a bat through a third animal. Also the document also rules out that the pandemic
originated in a laboratory, although it leaves other hypotheses open and asks for further investigation,
but it denies its possibilities.
They made all these discoveraments thanks to the symptoms found, that were: Abdominal pain,
diarrhea, fever, sore throat, and the most common ones which are: Fatigue, cough, headache, loss of
taste, loss of smell.

It’s important to highlight the fact that all the cases reported outside of China, they all have a common
background with people that traveled to that country or the province of Hubei before the symptoms
could be noticed.

I feel very honor to conclude this presentation by highlighting the fact that during this pandemic we all
got affected, our families got separated, we are now living in conditions we never imagined, and i
know we all want this to finish, so we need to be responsible, because it’s not just your life, it’s a
baby’s life, it’s a sister’s life, it’s a mother’s life, so stay safe, if you know you’re contaminated, don’t go
out, cause you may feel well, but you are not sure if the other one will. The caos may be over, but if
we don’t want it to come back, make awareness and follow the safety restrictions.

Thanks
- Kristel Peralta.