Thread by @Ayjchan

9-page Nov 5, 2020 meeting report: WHO-convened Global Study of the Origins of SARS-CoV-2

What is the @WHO approach to investigating the origins of SARS2? Possibly the biggest mystery of our lifetime.

who.int/publications/m…

The report is dated "31 July 2020" on page 1 so this has been a work in progress for at least 3 months.

Phase I: Wuhan may not have been where the outbreak started; we need to examine the Dec 2019 cases to see if there are links to other parts of China and other countries.

Current knowledge: "the virus has been remarkable stable since it was first reported in Wuhan, with sequences well conserved in different countries, suggesting that the virus was well adapted to human transmission from the moment it was first detected."

Thank you for the validation @WHO You can't imagine the chaos @shingheizhan and I experienced in May this year for using the phrase "well adapted" in our preprint. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

More current knowledge: "Two of the genetically closest known coronaviruses, RaTG13 and RmYN02, were discovered in bat populations in Yunnan province of China"

Did you also know that RaTG13 came from a mine where 6 miners came down with a SARS-like illness in 2012 and 3 died?

I am relieved that the @WHO report did not cite the two pangolin CoV papers with data issues (Xiao et al. @Nature and Liu et al. @PLoSPathogens). Instead, @WHO decided to cite the Proximal Origins correspondence to mention the RBD similarity between the GD pangolin CoV and SARS2.

At least the @WHO current knowledge is honest: "there is no evidence to demonstrate the possible route of transmission from a bat reservoir to human through one or several intermediary animal species"

In other words, no evidence for natural spillover.

On animal reservoirs: "different animal species in regular contacts with humans are susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2 and could serve as intermediate animal host species or could establish new reservoirs for the virus and new sources for spill-over"

On food and surfaces: "Recent outbreaks in markets as well as food processing plants.. have raised questions about the potential role of food products as a vehicle of transmission.. But there is no evidence that contaminated food items may have contributed to transmission."

On the first cases of COVID in Wuhan: "The early cases in Wuhan are thought to have occurred in early December.. little is currently known about how, where and when the virus started circulation in Wuhan. Preliminary studies have not generated credible leads..."

Phase 1 Epidemiological study:

Review hospital records pre-December.

Review disease/mortality trends compared to previous years.

Interview early cases.

Serological studies on banked blood samples collected pre-December.

Major problem: the @WHO team is not allowed to perform this investigation. They only get to review the report generated by Chinese scientists.

More on Phase 1 wrt animals/food products: Activities and traded animals/goods, as well as supply chains pertaining to the Huanan market will be extensively mapped.

"the study will therefore build on existing information and augment, rather than duplicate, ongoing or existing efforts"

That's a nice way of saying that you cannot perform the investigation yourself. You can only build on what China will tell you.

Phase 2. Potential venues of investigation.

Checking more people and animals in other locations that could have been the origin of SARS2.

Basically, this report only has a Phase 1.

On to the best part. Who is on the @WHO international team?

"The final composition of the international team should be agreed by both China and WHO."

I don't even get to pick my peer reviewers. But China gets to pick the @WHO investigation team?

Thanks @WHO I haven't laughed and cried so hard simultaneously for many years.

I'm sad because it looks like the @WHO does not have the power to perform a truly independent investigation. Lab escape was not even mentioned in this report which took them 3 months to write.

This was me in May of this year:

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1259146938534047744

I couldn't resist doing a hot take on the @WHO SARS-CoV-2 origins investigation meeting report, but after I recover from reading this, I will try to generate a list of questions that non-China-approved independent parties can actually investigate without having to go into China.