People are asking for a balanced discussion of natural vs lab covid origins. But I haven't seen such a balanced, scientific article. Closest to balanced for me is David Relman's PNAS opinion that we need to find the origins in the interest of every person. pnas.org/content/117/47…
What would a balanced origins discussion even look like? A panel or a team debate?
Regular peer review doesn't work for this kind of hot topic. Closed-door meetings among select scientists doesn't work. News orgs approaching their most trusted scientists also doesn't work.
Both of the official investigations into SARS2 origins by the @WHO and @thelancet have a questionable choice of team membership.
How are we ever going to have a balanced discussion of the origins?
Is it ok to not know where this pandemic came from?
In the absence of a platform to have a balanced origins discussion, we have popular stories on each extreme end.
Even people who started in the middle and just wanted lab origins to be considered eventually get pushed to one end or the other trying to defend a moderate stance.
The part that makes the least sense to me is fighting over who said what first. We are so so far away from knowing the origins.
The internet exists. If needed, we can go back and see who really said it first.
But if something is important, we should all say it again and again.
Although @nicholsonbaker8's article is fantastic, there is not a Baker lab leak hypothesis vs a Proximal Origin natural hypothesis.
There is a lot in between. A lot of questions that need answering. No one needs to die on either hill, especially in a dearth of evidence.
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Maybe some readers are confused what the article is about. It is not proof that sars2/covid came from a lab. If @nicholsonbaker8 had proof that the virus was from a lab, he should’ve been on the @who and @thelancet origins investigation teams. nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Reading many twitter comments in response to the article, it looks like people are outraged by the speculation of what a lab origins scenario could look like, how this could be politicised, and how top virologists are pitted against ‘cranks’ (scientists from adjacent fields).
People have asked why the virus is still improving since it's (pre)adapted for human transmission. Pathogens vs hosts are in a constant arms race. SARS2 got good at infecting humans, but now it's a different game - getting around immune response, sometimes within a patient.
What it means is that each country really needs to step up its game of sequencing SARS2 virus isolates in their cities. Scientists then need to take these sequences and test them to see if they can affect efficacy of antibodies, vaccines, diagnostics. covidcg.org/?tab=global_se…
"Matthew Pottinger, who is President Donald Trump's respected Deputy National Security Adviser, told politicians from around the world.. latest intelligence points to the virus leaking from the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology" dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…
Iain Duncan Smith, former Tory Party leader who attended the meeting: 'I was told the US have an ex-scientist from the laboratory (WIV) in America at the moment,' he said. 'That was what I heard a few weeks ago.
I feel like suddenly all the major news organizations are interested in the origins of SARS2/covid, or were saving these stories up for the 1-year anniversary of the outbreak. bloomberg.com/news/features/…
It's possibly giving the public whiplash. Up till recently (even today), many people likely still thought the virus had come from a wet market in Wuhan through the illegal wildlife trade.
Suddenly, all these stories of obstruction into the investigation of origins are emerging.
The article provides an interesting window into the new Wuhan 'Battle Against Covid-19 Special Exhibition' and the difficulties reporters faced tracking down and talk to vendors from the Huanan seafood market. But they forgot to clarify that one of their heavily cited experts..
Really good story telling by @whippletom and some honestly funny quotes by experts in this @thetimes article about the search for the origins of covid. @shingheizhan and I are very flattered to have been interviewed for this story. thetimes.co.uk/article/how-di…
I like the article & think it gives lab origins fair evaluation:
“Publicly, many extremely senior scientists have opposed this idea. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories.. wrote one group in the Lancet..
Privately, some told The Times it was not so absurd.”
Although would have been good to also highlight the history of that Lancet letter if there was space in the article for it- in terms of Daszak writing it, who agreed to co-sign vs who didn’t agree to, and its connection to the NASEM letter emails mentioned in @thetimes article.
There is a phenomenal amount of content to unpack in this astounding end-of-2020 @APNews article on the origins of SARS-CoV-2/covid. I spent the day thinking about how to go about a thread about their many findings. apnews.com/article/united…
The single line that stuck with me the most:
“It’s pointless to blame anyone for this disease” - Wuhan Huanan seafood market vendor Jiang
"Jiang avoided telling people he worked at Huanan because of the stigma. He criticized the political tussle between China and the U.S."
I agree on this point. I've spent many months not really wanting to be associated with my own twitter account. Not because there's something unscientific about the things I've tweeted, but because of the stigma associated with going against the consensus on covid origins.