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Alina Chan Profile picture
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15 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
"The Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, wanted by the United States on fraud charges, has already been leading a cushy life in her gated, seven-bedroom mansion in Vancouver, out on $8 million in bail and awaiting the outcome of her extradition hearing."
"The tiny flashes of dry wit and glimmering hope that surface in his letters and his conversations with consular officials tell them that he’s still there, somehow.
“He always tells me, ‘I’ve got this day to day. Just get me out,’ ” says Kovrig’s wife
macleans.ca/news/michael-k…
"Nadjibulla & Kovrig met as graduate students at Columbia University.. they were both working at the UN.. Her work with various UN agencies often took her into war zones, and they had an agreement that if anything bad ever happened, he would find a way to get her out."
“The reality is releasing Meng Wanzhou to resolve a short-term problem would endanger thousands of Canadians who travel to China and around the world by letting countries know that a government can have political influence over Canada by randomly arresting Canadians.”

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Alina Chan Profile picture
16 Jan
The US “has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.” state.gov/fact-sheet-act…
This was interesting. When did the pangolin experiments begin? Pre- or post-covid?

“The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins.”
“Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.”

Good timing. The @WHO origins investigation team is in China now.
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
15 Jan
1st time co-authoring an essay for a news site @WSJ Very thankful to @mattwridley for taking me under his wing and also to all of the wonderful experts @Peterfoodsafety @maciekboni @R_H_Ebright @FilippaLentzos @MilesPomper @DavidRelman @robertson_lab

wsj.com/articles/the-w…
... who talked to us about this issue. Our piece is necessarily critical of @WHO investigation in terms of calling for actual steps to look into potential lab origins. But I found that all of the experts we talked to about this had very reasonable and persuasive viewpoints.
@mattwridley and I wanted this piece to be a lot longer, in terms of clearly laying out the points for natural origins vs the points for lab origins in a balanced way, but a lot of that had to be reserved for another time. So please stay tuned for our next article together.
Read 9 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
14 Jan
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...
Read 16 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
13 Jan
For those following the SA variant:
"doubt E484K will render the coronavirus vaccines useless. Rather.. there's a possibility the mutation- on its own or in combination with other mutations- could decrease the efficacy of the vaccine against the variant."
cnn.com/2021/01/12/hea…
Several of my scientist friends have been tirelessly following new mutations arising in the SARS2 virus circulating around the world. They have to continually detect new variants, test them in the lab to see if new mutation combos impact the efficacy of vaccines and antibodies.
This challenge gets worse when spread of covid is larger. @CNN reports it right: "It's not that the coronavirus is such a speedy mutator.. It's that the virus is spreading so quickly around the world, and each time it goes from person to person, it gets another chance to mutate."
Read 6 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
13 Jan
I've been getting many questions about pre-Wuhan covid cases detected around the world. In particular, 2 studies: Barcelona (March 2019) and Italy (Sep 2019); as well as the widely disseminated USA (Dec 2019) study.

I think best to make a single thread discussing all of these.
This is the Barcelona wastewater study that claims that they detected SARS2 genomes "in sewage long before the declaration of COVID-19 cases among the population"
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Important for readers to understand that if you can detect a pathogen in wastewater at a city level, the outbreak has to be quite obvious. It's not like 1 in 100,000 people has covid and you see it in the wastewater.
Read 39 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
10 Jan
WIV Dr Shi ZL's own words: "We have done bat virus surveillance in Hubei Province for many years, but have not found that bats in Wuhan or even the wider Hubei Province carry any coronaviruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-2." sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/t…
Also, WIV and the Huazhong Agricultural University "collected samples of farmed animals and livestock from farms around Wuhan and in other places in Hubei Province. We did not detect any SARSCoV-2 nucleic acids in these samples."
I'm distressed that experts who are criticizing people like me for spreading misinformation - literally calling me a conspiracist and comparing me to QAnon and people who incite violence - are also unintentionally spreading misinformation about covid origins.
Read 7 tweets

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