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Alina Chan Profile picture
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2 Nov, 5 tweets, 2 min read
“there is still no transparent, independent investigation into the source of the virus. Notoriously allergic to outside scrutiny, China has impeded the effort, while leaders of the ⁦@WHO⁩ , if privately frustrated, have largely ceded control” nytimes.com/2020/11/02/wor…
On the “powerful evidence” suggesting that SARS2 transmitted naturally from animals into humans...
Regarding the closest bat virus genome to SARS2...
I guess we are never going to know where this virus came from since it doesn’t seem possible to organize a real independent investigation. In 10 months, there has been zero evidence of natural spillover, but lots of misleading statements about SARS2 origins in scientific papers.
We cannot rely on the “it looks natural” approach to understand if a virus is fully natural, ie has never passed through a lab. futurehuman.medium.com/how-do-we-know…

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
3 Nov
One question that many people ask me is "how likely is a lab escape vs natural origins of SARS2?"

And everyone complains when I refuse to give some kind of probability estimate. tbh I see this as a trick question because there is no evidence of either scenario at this point.
What we know is that none of the animals from the initially blamed seafood market or even any animals tested in the province of Hubei have been found positive for SARS2. See the interview response from the WIV. sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/t…
Shi Zhengli even says "We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found... any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2. I don't think the spillover from bats to humans occurred in Wuhan or in Hubei Province."
Read 44 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
1 Nov
"People have already endured the pain of lockdowns once. They’re tired of the pandemic, and leaders in some cities and states are even fighting back against federally imposed measures."

vox.com/21514530/europ…
What's happening in Europe?

UK: hospitals "will run out of capacity in weeks"

PM announced a second (4-week) lockdown to prevent a "medical and moral disaster" + "the furlough system paying 80% of employee wages will be extended through November."

bbc.com/news/uk-547639…
France: ">half of the country's intensive care beds are already filled with Covid-19 patients"

Germany: "(Merkel) had wanted to act sooner but had faced opposition from.., regional leaders. “If we wait until the ICUs are full, then it will be too late“"

nbcnews.com/news/world/fra…
Read 9 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
31 Oct
Quote: WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press briefing on Friday that the UN agency was continuing "to establish the origins of the virus to prevent future outbreaks." straitstimes.com/world/europe/f…
"Scientists believe the killer virus jumped from animals to humans, possibly from a market in the city of Wuhan selling exotic animals for meat."

Unclear where this statement came from. @WHO ? But it's in a few articles - no person or organization identified as the source.
It could be helpful for the @WHO to publish the collective affiliations of the international experts it has engaged to conduct the independent investigations into SARS-CoV-2 origins who.int/director-gener…
Read 13 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
29 Oct
Not sure if I'm reading this document right, but it looks like there are many things we should be investigating to see if SARS-CoV-2 has natural or lab origins. nonproliferation.org/op-49-a-guide-…
Let's apply the Investigation Methodology shown in Fig 2 to the current pandemic. A natural origin has not been confirmed; no animal samples from the market or Hubei province have tested positive despite a scattering of pangolin CoV papers from Guangdong and GuangXi province. Image
Despite the lack of evidence for a natural origin, many experts have come out as saying that it is clear that SARS2 has completely natural origins and that lab-based scenarios are implausible. The independent investigation of lab is led by long time funder+collaborator of WIV.
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
29 Oct
If schools, restaurants, shops, bars are to reopen and stay open, we need to widely implement informed measures to reduce the risk of indoor virus transmission - especially during the winter when outdoor options are reduced. english.elpais.com/society/2020-1…
Starting to see people asking "What about Sweden?"

Why not try it out in the USA. Compare covid transmission in schools that comply with these measures vs. schools that have decided not to. After that, calibrate public health measures accordingly.
It's important to note that few people are actually calling for 100% lockdowns.

Many want to re-open with safety measures "regular testing, to contact tracing to identify the source of outbreaks, to reporting school-associated cases publicly, regularly"

npr.org/2020/10/21/925…
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
26 Oct
@AlexBerenson This is a question I've been asking as well. Where was RaTG13's data stored since 2018? Not in a public or password-restricted national database because even other Chinese groups only noticed the 99% match between SARS2 and the btCoV/4991 short sequence published in 2016 on NCBI.
@AlexBerenson Even scientists from the State Key Lab of Virology, Wuhan didn't have access to RaTG13 data (collected 2017-2018). In their Feb 5 paper, they lamented: "the BtCoV/4991 sequence was only partial and thus no comparisons can be made for the rest of genomes." tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
@AlexBerenson Although the WIV publication that first named RaTG13 was put on bioRxiv on Jan 23, the raw data and genome sequence for RaTG13 were only deposited on a public database on Feb 13 and Mar 24, respectively. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN9965…
Read 4 tweets

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