Thread by @Ayjchan

Couple of articles out today about @WHO investigation into covid origins: "it’s very difficult to get the full picture of what has been done.. It makes sense to simply go there, sit all at one table together.” - Fabian Leendertz, microbiologist on the team
wsj.com/articles/who-m…

"There is too little time to do actual science on these trips, says Linfa Wang, an emerging disease specialist.. not part of the team but took part in a similar mission for SARS in 2003.. 'The mission is to improve the communication and increase exchange'"
sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/a…

I felt that these articles re-calibrated my personal expectations for the WHO investigation.

It's become apparent that information has not been shared with the WHO. They're essentially going to Wuhan, physically, to get the info that has existed for months but not been shared...

Is this information important? About the early cases, the market, pre-covid wastewater and patient samples. Yes. It's all important and I wish this information would be shared beyond the @WHO and @TheLancet teams. It should be if we're going to find the origins of covid.

I'm personally looking forward to @WHO report that will be published after their 2-week trip to Wuhan (after 2 weeks in quarantine).

This will also be a test of how much pre-existing data the WHO can obtain from their counterparts in China, and how transparent this process is.

Anyone hoping there would be even the slightest bit of inquiry into lab origins should give up hope now. It's not going to happen on this trip.

Even US media still describes lab origins as "Most scientists reject the conspiracy theory that the virus was concocted there (at WIV)"

Yes. "WHO panel’s biggest problem will be that the Chinese government carefully chooses what it gets to see" - Alexandra Phelan, Georgetown University lawyer who specializes in global health policy.

But outside of China, lab origins are also still treated as conspiracy theories.

You usually don't find answers to questions that you're not asking.

Unless the @WHO team accidentally stumbles upon a definitive piece of evidence pointing to lab leak during their 2-week (chaperoned) visit to Wuhan...

The main reason some scientists keep citing to explain why there is no motivation to look into lab origins - is that there is no hard evidence for lab origins, but, in contrast, a history of natural origins of the majority of past epidemics.

My question is when would this change?

If we fail to pin down epidemics that actually break out from labs and we continually lean on precedents of natural epidemics - when will scientists be able to ever investigate potential lab origins?

Do we need to have a whistleblower from the suspect lab? A leaked notebook describing the exact experiments used to produce or engineer the pathogen?

These are extremely rare and challenging to obtain.

I don't see how this could be a feasible threshold for initiating an investigation into lab origins of outbreaks unless countries are diligently installing spies in each pathogen laboratory around the world.

Meanwhile, to investigate natural origins, there's no threshold. Immediately everyone goes to look for the animal source. Snakes. Pangolins. Mink. Frozen salmon.

It's the lab origins that are almost immediately portrayed as conspiracy theories.

Hit a low point yesterday when someone shared this letter by Devin Nunes to Director of National Intelligence - asking for classified Congressional notification addressing Chinese pathogen research - and the only citation was @nicholsonbaker8 @NYMag piece.

https://twitter.com/SolvingCovid/status/1349180703469154311

For all the billions of dollars invested into pathogen sampling, pathogen surveillance, cutting edge research into pathogens at top labs around the country... we have this letter begging the intelligence community to tell us if they know anything about pathogen research in China.

The world has very properly demonstrated that it cannot investigate lab origins, even when there is good circumstantial evidence to suggest it.

Guess I'll just invest in a lab bunker for SARS3...