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Alina Chan Profile picture
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13 Dec, 5 tweets, 3 min read
On more stories that keep evolving... remember when it was first officially revealed by the WIV that RaTG13, the closest related virus genome to SARS-CoV-2, was actually the same as bat CoV 4991 published in 2016? sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/t…
Turns out it wasn't "some random bat virus that is more distant" - in their Nov 17 @nature addendum, Shi clarified RaTG13 was 1 of 9 SARSrCoVs from a mine where people sickened with severe respiratory disease; "suspected.. infected by an unknown virus."
nature.com/articles/s4158…
So how does this match with what is in the @ScienceMagazine interview Q&A from July?
"I guess you are referring to the bat cave in Tongguan town in Mojiang county of Yunnan Province. To date, none of nearby residents is infected with coronaviruses."

sciencemag.org/sites/default/…
Or @sciam article interviewing Dr. Shi, first published in March, but updated in April. "Although the fungus turned out to be the pathogen that had sickened the miners, she says it would have been only a matter of time before they caught the coronaviruses" scientificamerican.com/article/how-ch…
The story by @emmecola of how RaTG13 was first publicly postulated to be 4991 by @Rossana38510044 here: mygenomix.medium.com/the-origin-of-…

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
14 Dec
Analysis by @edyong209 @TheAtlantic of the impact of the pandemic on how science is done.

I'm reading it from the POV of one of "Thousands of researchers dropped whatever intellectual puzzles had previously consumed their curiosity and began working on the pandemic instead."
People have asked me why I'm so obsessed with understanding the origins of SARS-CoV-2/covid.

My answer: How could I not be?

A virus pops out of nowhere and the entire world is put out of order. This is, hopefully, the pandemic of our lifetime.
Quote: Ebola and Zika each prompted a temporary burst of funding and publications. But “nothing in history was even close to the level of pivoting that’s happening right now,” Madhukar Pai of McGill University told (Ed Yong)... “It hit us at home” theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Read 20 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
12 Dec
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…
Read 30 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
11 Dec
Opinion @DavidQuammen "(spillover) generally happens when we intrude upon bats in their habitats, excavating their guano for fertilizer, capturing them, killing them or transporting them live to markets, or otherwise initiating a disruptive interaction."
nytimes.com/2020/12/11/opi…
It's important to pinpoint what these disruptive interactions are, which could include dozens of scientists sampling viruses in hard-to-reach habitats; see recent interview @DavidQuammen "We were not wearing what they called personal protective equipment.. npr.org/transcripts/80…
.. I asked Alexis, why the hell are we not? And he was just sort of fatalistic about it. He says there are constraints when you're wearing (PPE).. it's my judgment that the danger here is low enough that I'm not wearing a mask.. not recommending.. anybody else wear one either"
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
9 Dec
I was recently asked what I would like to see come out of SARS-CoV-2/covid origins investigations.

I would like to know that, the next time a pandemic like this occurs, the world is better prepared, better informed as to how to determine its origins and prevent future outbreaks.
I'm going to break down 3 key publications that I think relate to covid origins. What were the questions they asked to determine whether SARS-CoV-2 came from nature vs from a lab?

Are these approaches sufficient to prepare us for the next mysterious pandemic?
The 1st is the widely-read Proximal Origins article - a correspondence published in @NatureMedicine on March 17, 2020. How did the authors determine that "SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus"?
nature.com/articles/s4159…
Read 23 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
8 Dec
Estimated 76% Manaus and 29% São Paulo population infected by covid by October.

"These results confirm that, when poorly controlled, COVID-19 can infect a high fraction of the population causing high mortality."

science.sciencemag.org/content/early/…
In Manaus, the >70% attack rate is "above the theoretical herd immunity threshold.. Monitoring.. new cases and.. ratio of local versus imported cases.. vital to understand (how) population immunity might prevent future transmission and the potential need for booster vaccinations"
US has 15M confirmed cases, "probably, at best, diagnosing 1 in 5 cases" - former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, Nov '20.

Rough calculation ~23% US population infected with covid by now + doubling time ~50 days according to @OurWorldInData + Xmas/NYE..

cnbc.com/2020/11/06/dr-…
Read 5 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
8 Dec
New perspectives piece in ⁦@NatureComms
Wonder what all these scientists could be talking about...
⁩“actors may be incentivized to be reckless if they believe they are unlikely to be held accountable for any accidents arising from their actions.” nature.com/articles/s4146…
"A key security challenge involves attribution: determining, in the wake of a human-caused biological event, who was responsible."

Any chance this is about COVID?

nature.com/articles/s4146…
"if an incident occurs.. near laboratories working on the causative agent, there is a greater chance of it being attributed to an accidental release."

Wonder which recent incident occurred near a lab working on the causative agent. nature.com/articles/s4146…
Read 20 tweets

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