Share this page!

Alina Chan Profile picture
Twitter logo
13 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
COVID mink outbreaks: Netherlands (41+ farms), Denmark (63 farms), Spain, US (Utah, 9 farms; Wisconsin; Michigan)... we're going to have to add a host species feature to covidcg.org once sequences from mink SARS2 isolates are added to @GISAID. independent.co.uk/news/world/eur…
The only troubling part: "The (Danish) government says breeders with non-infected mink will be given 100 per cent compensation, while those with infected animals will receive less as an incentive for farmers to keep the infection out of their stock."
Wouldn't this incentivize farmers to hide mink outbreaks in their farms so that they can receive full compensation? Please reconsider this policy, Denmark!
PSA: dozens of new mink SARS2 genomes from the Netherlands just submitted to @GISAID today. In case anyone else is doing the same analysis as us @shingheizhan would be great to have more scientists looking at the data in parallel.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Alina Chan

Alina Chan Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
14 Oct
"The Guangdong (pangolin CoV) strains, which were isolated or sequenced by different research groups from smuggled pangolins, have 99.8% sequence identity with each other."

I wonder how that could happen!

nature.com/articles/s4157…
According to Google, Xiao et al. @nature has been cited 103 times; Liu et al. @PLOSPathogens has been cited 73x. Both were preprinted in Feb, accepted, and made available by the journals in May. Our preprint finally made available in July - cited 3 times. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
Should I make public the emails and responses from these authors from May and July of this year before the journals have a good wake-up call as to what to do in situations where research integrity has been breached?
Read 7 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
11 Oct
Read the 2nd Yan et al. report. It was frustrating... each statement requires fact-checking to the point where, instead of pointing out the errors, it may be better for someone to write an independent article discussing the circumstantial evidence pointing to lab origins.
The overarching message of Yan's 2nd report is that there has been unscientific behavior surrounding the reporting of SARS2-like CoVs. Based on this, they speculate that these genomes are coordinated fakes to make SARS2 look natural.
Again the report is littered with errors, but I do wonder why there hasn't been international impetus to investigate the source of these SARS2-like viruses. Why not go to the Yunnan mine to look for more RaTG13s? Why not investigate the miners - what actually happened in 2012?
Read 21 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
5 Oct
Beseeching employers in Canada to make work as remote as possible. If your employee is not, e.g., a healthcare worker, requiring in-person interaction, there is no reason why they should be out there at risk + increasing the risk for essential workers.
cbc.ca/news/canada/wo…
I wonder, often, at employers who think IT/admin people must be at the office. You can basically look South to see what happens when people treat this virus like it's not serious. Not everyone has access to (1) regular testing and (2) new therapeutics + a top class medical team.
The question at this point is how many deaths and disabilities your employer needs before they decide to make work remote. You already know cases are rising, that means many undetected cases. And you know people with pre-existing conditions have a fair chance of death/disability.
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
25 Sep
I've been sitting on a major topic that I think the non-scientist public needs a primer on, with particular significance to COVID-19 research.

That topic: Research Misconduct
ori.hhs.gov/definition-mis…

And what to do about papers that are found to have engaged in misconduct.
One of the most notable instances of misconduct was the Surgisphere HCQ papers. @TheLancet eventually decided to retract the paper & commentary because they would be too misleading in their original form. They adopted a "retract and replace" approach... retractionwatch.com/2020/07/10/a-m…
... because the editorial had been written by innocent parties who were not aware of the data issues, @TheLancet published a new editorial to explain what had transpired - in order to rightfully preserve the reputations of scientists who had been misled. retractionwatch.com/2018/03/29/a-n…
Read 17 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
25 Sep
There's some confusion about how new the D614G mutation is. I'm going to use data on @GISAID visualized by @CovidCg to answer this question. The first time it appeared in China was Jan 23, 2020. So this mutation occurred pretty early on in the outbreak before travel restrictions.
When+where did D614G first get detected in Europe? It's not possible to tell using GISAID alone because many countries did not sequence virus isolates and deposit data till later in the pandemic. However, you can see that there are EU countries with D614G even in Jan.
It was only after January that travel restrictions started being sporadically imposed on China by other countries but it was too late because SARS2 (including D614G variants), as we now know, was already widespread. thinkglobalhealth.org/article/travel…
Read 17 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
24 Sep
For COVID-19, countries are getting so desperate that they're running human challenge trials or using vaccines that haven't passed phrase 3. What's the plan for the next pandemic? How will global pathogen sampling from nature generate vaccines that work against emerging threats?
Some countries are in such dire straits that they have made deals to allow Chinese Sinovac to perform phase 3 tests on their citizens. "The company is also planning clinical trials with thousands of volunteers in India, Brazil and Bangladesh." washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…
Other countries are considering giving up their territory or military alliances to ensure that they have priority access to vaccines. ft.com/content/853775…
Read 7 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get email notifications when new thread is out from this Author!

Check out other threads from this Author!

Read all threads by @Ayjchan