Thread by @Ayjchan

Very glad that the paper by @MonaRahalkar and @BahulikarRahul is finally published in a peer-reviewed journal. We need more scientists and journalists looking at possible links between SARS-CoV-2 origins and the 2012 Mojiang miners. frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

I know of experts don't want to consider the miners because it is too far out of, frankly, anyone's field. But if experts don't look at the miners because it is outside their specialization, and journalists don't look at them because of the complex science, then who will?

Apparently, the answer is semi-anonymous users on twitter, who have recently named themselves DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19).

Their findings were described in the Sunday Times (still behind paywall) in July. thetimes.co.uk/article/seven-…

Journalists have been aware of the 2012 Mojiang miners since at least May of this year. The miners were even mentioned in the infamous NIH letter to EcoHealth (see point 5). But not followed up by journalists who covered the NIH-EcoHealth story. wsj.com/articles/nih-p…

The only journalist who followed up on this point was @ianbirrell for the Mail on Sunday: "The National Institutes of Health has asked if Covid-19 was linked to the deaths of three miners eight years ago" dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8…

The other articles that covered the story at the time failed to even mention the point about the miners. Maybe because it was so incomprehensible to a layperson? @WSJ @NatureNews @ScienceMagazine nature.com/articles/d4158… sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/n…

What is this all about? It's about SARS-like cases in 2012, Yunnan, China (3 miners died; 3 survived). These cases led to multiple top pathogen labs in the country repeatedly sampling bats and rodents in that particular mine for human pathogens for years after the incident.

Based on what is published, we know that no pathogen was ever found responsible for these SARS-like cases. But RaTG13, the closest virus (genome) to SARS2 was found in this mine in 2013. This was taken to the WIV in Wuhan and apparently full genome sequenced in 2018.

No further outbreak was detected in 2012. To quote an expert, "if three people died and it was controlled, would we know it? No. This is happening all the time, it's just in remote villages where people die. You bury them and end of the story, right?" nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/0…

2015, WIV collected serum from 218 people in Yunnan, finding 6 had IgG antibodies against SARS-like viruses (based on what they published, it looks like the assay works for both SARS1 and 2). They checked oral and fecal swabs from people for SARS viruses. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

I don't want to keep repeating the same points, so please see these older threads:

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1279755695382986757?s=20

Are you waiting for a person who has decades of infectious diseases research experience, an established career in investigative journalism, and the copious funding+international connections/intelligence to crack open this case?

I know people don't have time for this because it's an election year in the US and crazy shit is happening every week. But maybe after the election, when things calm down, someone should take a look at this.

I don't think such a person exists in the US or many countries' governments. We already know that an underwhelming number of people in politics are scientists (or individuals who value truth above all). Even CEOs of top biotech companies don't need to have science degrees.