Thread by @mattwridley

Thread on the origin on the virus.

Many media outlets including the @thesundaytimes are speculating about whether the virus leaked from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan (WIV). Please note this is almost certainly the wrong lab to look at.

thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/…

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Although WIV is where the “bat woman” Shi Zhengli worked,

scientificamerican.com/article/how-ch…

and although she initially worried about a leak from her lab,

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and although the biosecurity of the lab was questioned last year,

washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?…

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None the less, there are 3 reasons to think WIV is very unlikely to have leaked the virus.

1.Its SARS-CoV-2 bat virus sample (RaTG13) was from Yunnan, not Hubei: 1000 miles away.

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2.That sequence shows at least 40 years divergence from the human version. It’s too different.

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

3. @PeterDaszak says the RaTG13 sequence was kept at the WIV as data on computer, not as a ‘wet” sample.

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Far more likely as a potential source of the virus, if it leaked from a lab, is the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (WHDC)

nationalreview.com/2020/04/corona…

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This is the lab that was suspected by the two Chinese scientists, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, who published a brief paper about the origins of the virus and then later withdrew it, which said:

sciencetimes.com/articles/25285…

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"Within 280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention(WHCDC). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purposes, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification."

web.archive.org/web/2020021414…

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There are 3 reasons to be take more seriously the possibility of a leak from the WCDC:

1.It is closer to the cluster of early cases around the seafood market.
2.It has a lower biosafety level than the IoV.

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3.It is where Dr Tian Jun-hua worked, who collected hundreds of bats from caves in Hubei province while searching for viruses. See the film he made in 2017:

Up to 155 horseshoe bats from Hubei were used in one experiment.

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“Bats were captured in…villages or caves in Hubei…All animals were anesthetized with ether before surgery, and all efforts were made to minimize suffering. Tissue samples of heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney and brain were collected from bats”
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
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Dr Tian Jun-hua has studied viruses in insects, rodents and bats during his career.

europe.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-12/…

He admits to self-isolating twice after being contaminated by a bat during his work, though this was probably in the field rather than the lab.

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He is a co-author on the paper announcing the existence of SARS-CoV-2, submitted on 7 January:

researchgate.net/publication/33…

None of this proves that the virus escaped from the WCDC lab, and I am not alleging genetic engineering of viruses at either lab.

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But as the vice-president of Taiwan says, there are other reasons to think “the market may not be the origin of this infection” - though it could have amplified it. 10 of the first 42 cases had no association with the market.

telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…

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It is therefore vital that the Chinese government makes Dr Tian Jun-hua available for interview as soon as possible to explain the conditions under which horseshoe bats were kept in his laboratory, where they were caught and what virus sequences they contain.

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