"It is the great riddle of our time: how, when and where did the coronavirus emerge? Even insiders at the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is tasked with finding the answers, are alarmed to discover that China will “call the shots” in providing them."
"The investigation is a collaboration between a WHO team of foreign experts — approved by Beijing from a list submitted by UN member states — and Chinese scientists.

However, there is still no timeline for the international team to enter China..."
"...and no guarantee whom they may interview, what records they will be able to see and whether they will be allowed to visit Wuhan... Instead, the WHO and Beijing have agreed that Chinese researchers will conduct the early stages of the investigation."
"After the virus appeared, Chinese researchers and doctors raised the alert. The response of Communist Party officials was to silence them and order the destruction of laboratory samples while insisting that there was no contagion."
"Chinese scientists then released the genetic sequencing of the virus, only for Beijing to claim credit and be praised by the WHO. So it is hardly surprising that questions have been raised about the investigation."
"What is not mentioned in the terms of reference is any research into the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has a biosecurity laboratory where coronavirus research is undertaken and is just a few miles from the Huanan market."
"A Sunday Times investigation revealed that a coronavirus analysed at the institute had been found in a bat cave where workers died from a mysterious respiratory disease."

"But there seems no prospect that the possibility of a lab mishap will be investigated. The institute’s leadership has insisted that no workers have tested positive, that it did not hold live viruses and that there was no possible link to the cluster of infections."
“I guess the Chinese government might allow Chinese researchers to meet the WIV chiefs as window dressing for the WHO, but don’t expect any serious questioning or foreign involvement,” said a European public health expert who has worked on previous WHO missions.
"Also clearly not up for debate will be any review of the delays and cover-ups in China’s early response. The virus rampaged through Wuhan while the authorities insisted that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission."
China and the WHO “have been doing this dance for 10 months”, said Gostin. “Now this is like going to a murder scene 10 months later when the site has been scrubbed up completely.”

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More from @TheSeeker268

13 Nov
Some interesting Wuhan Institute of Virology tenders from 2020:

1. Competitive negotiation on the procurement of biosafety autoclaves and medical double-door autoclaves by Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (May 13, 2020)

archive.is/w5Lb0
2. Announcement on the transaction of the sewage treatment and upgrading project of the comprehensive experimental research base of virology and biosafety (July 14, 2020)

archive.is/tPimi
3. Announcement on the Transaction of the Security Service Procurement Project in Zhengdian Research Park of Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (September 24, 2020)

archive.is/VLIZX
Read 5 tweets
12 Nov
Some pretty fascinating Wuhan Institute of Virology tenders from 2019:

1. Announcement of Competitive Consultation on Maintenance Project of P3 Laboratory and Laboratory Animal Center in Zhengdian Park, WIV, CAS (March 01, 2019)

archive.is/7eCPU
2. Announcement of the transaction for the renovation project of the hazardous waste treatment system in Zhengdian Park, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (July 31, 2019)

archive.is/3CW03
3. Announcement of winning the bid for the procurement project of the environmental air disinfection system and the scalable automated sample storage management system of Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (August 14, 2019)

archive.is/1nXLD
Read 14 tweets
10 Nov
"The four papers in question are Liu et al., Xiao et al. , Lam et al. and Zhang et al. The two that are currently being investigated by the journal editors are Liu et al and Xiao et al."
"Liu et al. did not publish or share (upon being asked) raw and/or missing data that would allow experts to independently verify their genomic analyses."
"Editors at both Nature and PLoS Pathogens, as well as Professor Stanley Perlman, the editor of Liu et al., have acknowledged in email communications that they are aware of serious issues with these papers and that the journals are investigating them."
Read 4 tweets
8 Nov
Covid-19: would the hypothesis of a virus escaping from a laboratory be finally credible?

francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/…
"An epidemic cannot start naturally in Wuhan. It is not a coherent geographical origin. To explain it, humans have to intervene at one point or another."

Alexandre Hassanin, researcher at the National Museum of Natural History to franceinfo
"The work published for 15 yrs by this institute & in particular the lab of Shi Zhengli consisted in sampling viruses in wildlife in order to try to understand the mechanisms of crossing the species barrier to try to protect yourself from it,” Virologist Etienne Decroly notes.
Read 12 tweets
29 Oct
China lied about it at every step. They lied about its existence, about how it spread, about it having spread, about how many got it, and how many died. They forced doctors to lie, censored research and databases.
Then consider the fact that the Wuhan labs in question were known to be lacking in proper safety protocols and was specifically studying coronaviruses in bats, and the possibility of their transmission to humans.
They sampled, collected, and sequenced SARS-COV-2's closest relative (published till date), and kept it secret for years.
Read 4 tweets
7 Oct
A thread on the origins of COVID-19, and a possible bio-containment failure at one of the Wuhan labs.

I feel there are facts not enough people know about, so I decided to summarise the important & interesting ones in this post.
Like every stellar suspence thriller, it starts with mysterious deaths that needs to be solved.

To solve this puzzle, we must go back to April 2012, in Mojiang county, where six miners contracted a SARS-like pneumonia, and three of them died.

In the same month & year of the outbreak, there was an USAID/PREDICT bat sampling project in Mojiang. (I strongly suspect they were the one's who hired the miners to clean the mineshaft for one of their project.)

Read 36 tweets

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