Thread by @Ayjchan

Re-telling of covid's origin story in @guardian today misses key points about the whistleblowers, the seafood market, test kit and vaccine development in China, and publication of the first SARS-CoV-2 genome. I'll add them back into the story... theguardian.com/world/2020/dec…

Dec 30 2019
@guardian "Wuhan municipal health commission had issued an “urgent notice” online, warning all medical facilities to be on the alert"
@BBC Dr. Li Wenliang "sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them about the outbreak" bbc.com/news/world-asi…

@WSJ Dec 31/Jan 1 - Huanan seafood market completely sanitized and shutdown. China CDC collected hundreds of samples from animals at the market and the environment.
wsj.com/articles/china…

Different @BBC article: Jan 1, 2020, "Wuhan Public Security Bureau punishes eight people, including Dr Li Wenliang, for spreading "rumours" about the virus.
bbc.co.uk/news/extra/ews…

@BBC - Jan 2, WIV "maps the genome of the virus but the information is not shared publicly"

@AP - Jan 3, China CDC had the genome of the virus but "held back information about the genome and test designs" and only gave the designs to 3 Shanghai companies.
apnews.com/article/china-…

@BBC article Jan 3 - Dr Li Wenliang signs a confession to "illegal activity" "making false comments" that had "severely disturbed the social order"
bbc.com/news/world-asi…

Jan 4 - Leading Chinese vaccine developer Sinopharm kicked into high gear manufacturing a covid vaccine - still ~2 weeks before China confirmed human-to-human transmission

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1333556347259002880

Jan 5 - Prof Zhang Yongzhen deposited the first SARS-CoV-2 genome on GenBank, but did not publicly release it.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN9089…
time.com/5882918/zhang-…

Jan 10/11 - Professor Edward Holmes called Prof Zhang and asked permission to share the genome publicly.

Jan 12 - The genome was also released publicly by GenBank. Prof Zhang's lab is probed and shut down for rectification.

time.com/5882918/zhang-…

virological.org/t/novel-2019-c…

@businessinsider Jan 14 - @WHO tweets saying "no clear evidence" COVID-19 could spread between humans.

businessinsider.com/who-no-transmi…

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

Jan 13-15 - first COVID-19 cases confirmed in Thailand and Japan.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1335692109060435978

@nytimes Jan 19 - Whistleblower @DrLiMengYAN1 reveals, anonymously, through youtuber Lude, that there is human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus that "the (Chinese) government was playing down."

nytimes.com/2020/11/20/bus…

gnews.org/431644/

@BBC Jan 20 - "China's National Health Commission confirms human-to-human transmission of the virus"

Also, the WIV submits their paper to @Nature describing the new virus as well as a 96% identical bat SARS virus they had collected years ago from Yunnan.

bbc.co.uk/news/extra/ews…

Jan 22 - China CDC director announced that they had “confirmed (SARS-CoV-2) was transmitted via wild animals illegally sold at a seafood market in Wuhan”

Same day, data for pangolin CoV with SARS2-like RBD publicly released @NCBI bioproject PRJNA573298

news.cgtn.com/news/2020-01-2…

Jan 22/23 - Wuhan lockdown announced. Read story by @BBC "came too late to prevent an estimated five million people leaving the city in the run-up to the national holiday (Chinese New Year)"
bbc.co.uk/news/extra/ews…

@WSJ Jan 31 - OIE Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health meeting, privately communicated that none of the animal samples from Huanan Seafood Market tested positive for the virus. "The group recommended a thorough investigation of the wildlife trade in China"

Jan 31 - USA enacts some form of travel ban on China. whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…

I've only walked through some of the key events from Dec 30, 2019 through Jan 31, 2020.

@Guardian article also talks about the Proximal Origins paper and the pangolin CoVs... I recommend my timeline here:

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1320344055230963712

Now, I'm going to dive a bit deeper into what the @guardian article wrote and explain a bit more of the context surrounding some of these facts.

First: "by the time Van Kerkhove saw her email, at least 124 people had fallen ill" theguardian.com/world/2020/dec…

This number of 124 covid cases in Wuhan by end of Dec "was reported by China July 31 but for some reason only posted on the WHO website Nov. 5."

Has that number changed by now? Considering that this is an update from July only made public in November?
sciencespeaksblog.org/2020/11/28/fiv…

2nd, "Yet it is not certain that the virus came out of the market."

Ya, the Chinese CDC director already said as much back in May.

globaltimes.cn/content/118950…

3rd, "Ideally, door-to-door detective work, talking to the first people to fall ill and their families and colleagues, would have begun in Wuhan in January. But the city was in lockdown"

But also China won't let @WHO in to investigate even till today.

“It was an absolute whitewash,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. “But the answer was, that was the best they could negotiate with Xi Jinping.”
nytimes.com/2020/11/02/wor…

4th, @guardian "at that stage China was doing what it needed to do – and what so many countries failed to do. It was stamping out the virus, not looking for the source."

There's not much to investigate origins-wise after 1-2 years + silencing of doctors. inews.co.uk/opinion/china-…

And this wording also seems to suggests that China was not looking for the source of the virus in the early days, which I think is inaccurate. They had collected hundreds of samples from the market by Jan 1, and were collecting detailed information about the index patients.

5th, "On 11 January, however, Chinese scientists handed the world an invaluable clue.. their genetic sequence of the novel virus was published"

Rather unexciting telling of the story of the 1st published SARS2 genome. Lab was shut down for rectification.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1337818120828882945

6th, "Despite the strong genomic trail, excitable China-blaming theories took off on rightwing news websites and social media in April, alleging the virus had been made in the Wuhan Institute of Virology"

What is this strong genomic trail?

Yes, we know the virus ultimately has origins in nature. Everything ultimately has its origins in "nature" (nothing is 100% manmade). But how did a virus with distant ancestors in Yunnan make its way to Wuhan city where there has been zero evidence of SARS-related CoV exposure.

7th, "a bunch of prominent researchers coming together to say this is why we don’t think it’s made in a lab: because you would never make a virus like this and there are too many links to other viruses"

Please see:

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1336487767098978308

8th, "The idea that one person got infected in the lab and spread it to the entire world is the stuff of movies"

Some movies are based on real life events that are stranger than fiction. I look forward to the movie that is going to be made about covid's origins.