A few people sending this to me and asking if this is a smoking gun. It isn’t.
WIV’s publications+EcoHealth grants (and Daszak’s tweets) have said as much. Problem is that all of the closest virus genomes to SARS2, eg RaTG13, GD/GX pangolin, RmYN02, only made public post-covid.
Yes, near the end, Daszak speculates you could make a vaccine that works against diverse sars viruses by making a chimeric sars virus (made of parts of different sars viruses). But I don’t think this would’ve been sars2- it doesn’t seem to elicit good antibodies against sars1.
It would be nice if EcoHealth could release all unpublished information they received from WIV while they were subcontracting work from the 5+ year NIH grants to them. What type of research, exactly, had been started/planned but not published?
The @StateDept release weighs on my mind. There is too little to go on. What does it mean WIV was studying mice, bats and pangolins? When were pangolins studied? Pre or post covid? By study do you mean sampling in the wild or actual lab animal experiments?
I’m also interested in whether WIV started using this method of virus isolation: Emerg Microbes Infect 2018 study isolated the Zhoushan sars viruses via intracerebral inoculation of suckling rats when they initially failed to isolate virus from Vero cells ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Discovered this 2018 paper was just corrected this past Christmas (25 Dec 2020), more than 2 years post publication. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
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Possibly the most comprehensive article to date on the origins of covid-19 - whether it arose naturally or possibly from lab/research activities, written by @dctrjack@CNETcnet.com/features/the-h…
Another article from back in Sep 2020 to read for more details about RaTG13 (closest related virus genome to SARS2), inconsistencies in how it was reported by the WIV, and an inaccessible pathogen database at the WIV. minervanett.no/alina-chan-cor…
💫article from May 2020 to understand how common lab accidents are, even at world class facilities, regardless of country.
".. 80% chance of an escape every 12.8 years. And that was in 2012, when such work was far less commonplace than it is now." motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
Worth listening for couple of minutes on new data concerning South African SARS2 variant 20H/501Y.V2 (B.1.351).
Seems that only first wave patients with severe covid, robust response to virus had neutralizing antibodies. But still unclear how lab results translate to real world.
Also, without being able to directly see the data, unclear whether the same patient serum samples could also neutralize the original SARS2 variant or other currently circulating variants.
As of Jan 15, 2021 (sequences deposited into @GISAID), these are the 14 countries where the South African 501Y.V2 variants have been detected.
Visualized on covidcg.org@CovidCg cumulative number of sequences in the B.1.351 lineage by country, over time (by week).
Very diplomatic take on the issue. I don't agree with everything in the thread, but agree that if this was a lab release it is a global problem - too many labs doing the type of work that can lead to accidental outbreaks.
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.
... 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.
"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."