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Alina Chan Profile picture
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1 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Thread breaking down the newest peer-reviewed study suggesting that COVID was on the West Coast in mid December, 2019.
It's not impossible that SARS-CoV-2 arrived in Europe and the US in Dec 2019, but consider that out of 640 throat swabs from Wuhan patients w influenza-like illness, Oct 2019-Jan 2020, only (9) samples in January tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. nature.com/articles/s4156…
Even in the city where cases were detected in Nov 2019, even when only patients with influenza-like illness are considered (not random blood donors), the virus could only be detected in January 2020 patient samples.
Similar testing of Seattle patients presenting respiratory illness found no SARS-CoV-2 in January 2020.

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
1 Dec
@shingheizhan and I just submitted for peer review our rewritten pangolin CoV manuscript within a mini-review of what we currently know about RaTG13 and the chances of natural spillover in Wuhan. We are hopeful that it gets through this time and will be published in early 2021.
The story about the possible intermediate host and how SARS-CoV-2 spilled over into humans has changed so much over the past year. We were told in Jan that the virus came from wild animals sold at the market. And then in Feb that it was likely pangolins...
All of these trails have fizzled out... leaving no trace of an intermediate host, no clear evidence of natural spillover, while the closest virus relatives are from bats in Yunnan, a thousand miles away from Wuhan city.
Read 5 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
30 Nov
Nothing really surprising in the new Wuhan leaked documents shared by CNN, but I find this sobering:

"The documents show health care officials had no comprehension as to the magnitude of the impending disaster."

cnn.com/2020/11/30/asi…
A month before, one of the first whistleblowers was made to sign a letter on Jan 3, 2020 confessing to spreading rumors and violating the law.
"In the future, doctors will be more afraid to issue early warnings when they find signs of infectious diseases." bbc.com/news/world-asi…
The day after Dr. Li signed the letter, a leading Chinese vaccine developer Sinopharm kicked into high gear manufacturing a covid vaccine on Jan 4; 2 weeks before China confirmed human-to-human transmission.
Thanks @norman7177 @dktatlow for sources.
Read 6 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
27 Nov
“With publication count highly valued, analysis may also be delayed as teams ‘salami slice’ the underlying results into multiple papers.” 🤣
Been in research for 12+ years and can say that the inability to reproduce a considerable amount of work published even in high IF journals has real costs - to scientists' careers, the research ecosystem, and taxpayers who are ultimately paying for the vast majority of research.
Research publishing can be compared to a game of bluff, where the biggest winners are not necessarily the most honest. But in research, there's no reward for calling someone's bluff, which can likely drag you through years of hell, stalling your own career.
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
26 Nov
Great article by @sciencecohen
"Not urgently needing the vaccines at home to fight a virus it has largely quashed, (China) is playing a global game.. using the vaccine to promote the diplomacy of foreign policy objectives."
sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/g…
In-depth discussion of China vs the West's vaccine approaches: which can induce broader immunity, is easier to manufacture and distribute, has the risk of antibody-dependent enhancement of covid, and, importantly, can be readily manufactured locally in other countries...
"crucially for China’s vaccine diplomacy, many.. countries have manufacturers that have produced inactivated virus vaccines for decades.. (those) that cannot access vaccines bankrolled by Warp Speed—especially those that hosted China’s.. trials—might have a more secure vaccine.."
Read 5 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
25 Nov
A lot of interest in the D614G mutation comes from whether it made SARS-CoV-2 significantly more challenging for other countries, including Europe and the US, to stop the spread of the virus compared to when it first emerged in China.
For instance, Malaysia's Health Ministry Director infamously said that the D614G variant is 10x more transmissible.

Even though D614G was also present in China in January. See thread:

news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-1…
Two peer-reviewed papers were just published discussing D614G and whether more transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2 have emerged since late 2019:
cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092…

And nature.com/articles/s4146…
Read 27 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
24 Nov
Also people asking me about this @nytimes article about Dr. Limeng Yan, Steve Bannon & Miles Guo.

My stance has not changed. We need a way for whistleblowers to get out of China without Bannon and Guo standing in their way and damaging their credibility.
nytimes.com/2020/11/20/bus…
My original thread response when Dr. Yan released her first preprint is here: "If there is one thing that this entire saga has made clear - it is that whistleblowers (as it pertains to SARS2) have no obvious safe route of sharing their information."
For those who aren't too familiar with Dr. Yan's story, here is a quick summary:

In Jan 2020, Yan was helping her supervisor to investigate the new covid outbreak. She heard rumors about the dangerous new virus that the Chinese gov was playing down, and blew the whistle...
Read 17 tweets

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