Thread by @Ayjchan

@washingtonpost Opinion article by their editorial board.
"there are troubling questions in China that must be examined, including whether the coronavirus was inadvertently spread in an accident or spill from the Wuhan Institute of Virology" washingtonpost.com/opinions/globa…

@washingtonpost @PostOpinions I wanted to point out that the @TheLancet commission to identify COVID origins is chaired by the president of @EcoHealthNYC who has a massive conflict of interest wrt the WIV.

https://twitter.com/PeterDaszak/status/1325277221817356288

I have concerns regarding how rigorous and productive @TheLancet 's investigation of lab origins will be. Considering that Dr. Daszak did not even know until recently that the closest full virus to SARS-CoV-2 had been actively sequenced in the WIV between 2017-2018.

And @washingtonpost @PostOpinions re: WHO, "Nothing can be off limits, no possibilities ignored." I agree, but as it currently stands, the WHO origins team will not be allowed to even talk to the index patients or visit Wuhan/the market, not to mention the WIV lab.

So while I agree with the messaging of your opinion that finding the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is 💯critical to preventing future pandemics, I think you may have glossed over some major, possibly unsolvable obstacles to "a credible, impartial investigation".

At this point, I suspect the most likely outcome is not that we will know for sure whether this virus came from a lab or nature - but that we will never know because international investigations have been blocked on multiple fronts, and the most impt evidence is gone/unreliable.

In the absence of a credible investigation into SARS2's origins, we have to collectively operate as if each scenario = true: that SARS2 spilled over from trafficked animals, circulated in people living near bats, and emerged from lab-activities (virus collection/manipulation).

This means stronger (and effective) laws+enforcement against wildlife trafficking/habitat invasion, possibly relocating villages so people don't live in high risk spillover zones, initiating an international moratorium and ban on high risk pathogen sampling+characterization work.