Dear @ScienceMagazine, if you are publishing this perspective that SARS2/covid spread via "cold food supplier chains are raising substantial concern"...
This figure in the Perspective.
Pangolins and Cold packaged meat and seafood?
Who peer reviewed this article? What were the peer reviews?
How could the Proximal Origins correspondence be cited in support of this claim: "Evolutionary analyses of viral genomes from bats and pangolins indicate that further adaptions, either in animal hosts or in humans, occurred before the virus caused the COVID-19 pandemic"?
Did the peer reviewers notice that the citations for "Recently, SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were found in human serum samples taken outside of China before the COVID-19 outbreak was detected" have been highly debated and criticized by top scientists globally?
"The current data question the animal origin of SARS-CoV-2 in the seafood market where the early cases were identified in Wuhan, China. Given the finding of SARS-CoV-2 on the surface of imported food packages, contact with contaminated uncooked food could be an important source"
Have we gotten to a point where we are so desperate for any covid information out of Wuhan that we will publish ANYTHING they send us? in Science, Nature, Cell?
Was this the original manuscript they submitted? Or was the first one even more illuminating?
Have you considered the (maybe unlikely) scenario that new evidence could point to a lab origin of this virus? And the type of fallout that scientists, journals, and science communications folks will have to deal with? After endorsing narratives of a natural zoonosis for a year?
I don't think these excuses are going to suffice: 1. The public couldn't handle the nuances of science. 2. Our scientist friends said lab origins were not plausible or mostly conspiracy theories. 3. Who could predict that evidence would emerge pointing to lab origins?
Being totally cynical about this, the rare scientists who have spoken out about plausible lab origins (and been harassed for it) will possibly "benefit" from such evidence, but it will be a very sad day for science and experts. Galvanizing various anti-science movements.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
"WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed “disappointment” that China had yet to finalize permissions for the trip — his most pointed criticism of China to date." washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…
“It has taken them an entire year to negotiate access in any meaningful way in China.. It’s like there was a murder and you go back to the crime scene a year later, after it was scrubbed, and you expect to find something.” - Lawrence Gostin, Georgetown University
At this point, the @WHO could consider sending in psychics...
@razibkhan pointing out serious challenge for science & sci comm: “Spanish television.. reached out to me for comment because so many scientists who off the record would credit the idea of lab escape wouldn’t go on the record. The journalist told me he was quite depressed..”
“.. by the difference in how scientists would talk off-camera and what they were willing to say on the record. It basically made him not trust science at all.”
🎉 @rowanjacobsen “something changed when the Boston Magazine piece that highlighted the theory came out.. I started hearing from friends that really credible and high profile scientists thought that there needed to be an investigation about.. lab escape” gnxp.com/WordPress/2021…
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?
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.