Thread by @Ayjchan

More than 83,000 pages of emails FOIA’ed from Ralph Baric by @USRightToKnow

https://twitter.com/garyruskin/status/1338590634383273985

@USRightToKnow sets the context for some of the emails (doc 1, p963) that relate to a discussion by top experts on 3 Feb 2020, convened by NASEM to inform White House OSTP.

Questions I have on top of those raised by @sai_suryan in the USRTK article...

usrtk.org/biohazards-blo…

From the first draft of the letter, where it states the initial view of the experts is that SARS2 genomic data are consistent with natural evolution, there is a footnote (5) saying "possibly add brief explanation that this does not preclude an unintentional release from a lab..."

What was the expert discussion on this point of lab leak? How did it lead to Peter Daszak (in that expert committee) emailing co-signatories of his @thelancet letter, on Feb 6, telling them that this line was in the NASEM letter draft (confidential)...

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1338854228564062209

... without informing them of the footnote that considered whether to explain that this does not preclude an unintentional lab release of SARS-CoV-2. usrtk.org/wp-content/upl…

And later Kristian Andersen (also on the expert committee) et al. publishing in @NatureMedicine "we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible" nature.com/articles/s4159…

Was the author of the first draft of the NASEM (Feb 4) mistaken when they wrote, based on the expert discussion on Feb3, that the letter could possibly incorporate an explanation that unintentional lab release cannot be precluded?

Ultimately, both the statement that the SARS2 genomic data was consistent with natural evolution and the footnote on unintentional lab leak were omitted in the final draft of the NASEM letter to the White House OSTP. nationalacademies.org/news/2020/02/n…

The final draft just says: "additional genomic sequence data from geographically- and temporally-diverse viral samples are needed to determine the origin and evolution of the virus."

No conclusion on whether the origins of SARS-CoV-2 are entirely natural or could be lab-based.

One insight to the possible discussion on lab-based origins is in Dr Stanley Perlman's email (Feb 4) - they had discussed the notorious S1/S2 furin cleavage site (FCS) and whether it had "need" to evolve from virus culturing/passaging in cells.

Interestingly, the group of experts also discussed how to "assess whether virus is evolving to better infect or be transmissible between humans, as occurred during the SARS epidemic". Andersen cautioned against it to avoid "driving fear because most people don't fully understand"

Going to be self-serving here and point out our May preprint @shingheizhan where we did just that: compare SARS2 & SARS1 early evolution in humans
*we experienced a form of open peer review via twitter in May and are updating this analysis.
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Trevor Bedford wrote "there's a lot to consider for both scenarios" - is this about SARS-CoV-2 being 100% natural vs engineered in some way?

Also important to communicate to the lay public that when scientists say "no evidence of X" it doesn't mean that X isn't happening. It just means we don't know, have no evidence yet. So it's important to also understand what has been done to search for such evidence.

But it looks like Andersen disagreed because he later wrote "the data conclusively show that neither (engineering for basic research or nefarious reasons) was done".

Adding "If one of the main purposes of this document is to counter those fringe theories, I think it's very important that we do so strongly and in plain language"

Reminder: the final NASEM letter did not conclude either way if SARS2 has 100% natural or lab-based origins; the top experts discussed whether the FCS had to have evolved in lab culture (& concluded no); 1st draft considered adding explanation that data did not preclude lab leak.

Ralph Baric recommended adding "a strong statement for animal origin" so why didn't he co-sign @TheLancet letter that Daszak drafted and asked him to join on Feb 6?

Within the same day of being asked to co-sign the letter, both Ralph Baric and Linfa Wang's names had been taken off the list of co-signees. See before and after:

When trying to find the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2, the Zhoushan SARS viruses paper was accidentally pulled up. Reminder that the RaTG13 paper was only published on Feb 3: nature.com/articles/s4158…

Before the WIV published RaTG13, the closest known relatives to SARS-CoV-2 aka 2019-nCoV were the Zhoushan viruses; in Lu et al.'s paper, SARS2 & Zhoushan viruses were in Clade 2 vs Sars1 and all other bat SARS-like CoVs were in Clade 3.

However, Baric was aware of RaTG13 (96% genome identity with SARS2) described in the WIV's preprint on Jan 23 (genome would not be released till Mar 24). ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN9965…

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1320347908252831744

By the time @Presa_Diretta interviewed Baric later in the year, Baric had this to say "You can engineer a virus without leaving any trace... The answers you are looking for, however, can only be found in the archives of the Wuhan laboratory." huffingtonpost.it/entry/e-possib…

This is a good time to point out that scientists change their minds when new data emerges. See more of the emails about the NASEM letter...

On Nov 3, David Relman (not part of the experts convened by NASEM) put out this opinion in @PNAS pnas.org/content/117/47…

"Even though strong opinions abound, none of these scenarios can be confidently ruled in or ruled out with currently available facts."

Emphasis on Currently Available Facts.
pnas.org/content/117/47…

Thanks @acritschristoph for bringing up this important point. I want to reinforce that I’m not at all saying that all of these top experts conspired to suppress discussion about possible lab origins of covid. That would be a true conspiracy theory.

https://twitter.com/acritschristoph/status/1339322723139342337