Journalists have been asking what it's like to propose lab origins hypothesis & consistently present the circumstantial evidence for it.
I thought about this and think the analogy of the boy who cried wolf is the best way to explain it to non-scientists. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_W…
The story: "a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his town's flock. When a wolf actually does appear and the boy again calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm and the sheep are eaten by the wolf."
At the very beginning of this pandemic, there were people who cried wolf. These included scientists who said that it could be possible that SARS-CoV-2 had come from a lab. sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/m…
Soon, people appeared, who not only said a wolf was responsible for the missing sheep, but that a werewolf (a bioweapon) was responsible (for the pandemic).
This only provided ammunition to the scientists who had ruled out a wolf (lab origins).
The scientists and people who had said a wolf attack should be investigated, suddenly found themselves grouped with the people who cried WEREWOLF.
Even though we had been saying all along that this was an accident (if from a lab) and not a bioweapon.
This prompted the other side that ruled out wolf attacks to go further, saying there is zero evidence for a wolf attack (even though there is also zero evidence of the sheep just wandering off) and even so far as wolves don't exist (lab safety too good for accidents to occur).
After some time, as evidence failed to emerge that the sheep had just wandered off, folks who thought a wolf attack was simply ludicrous (conspiracy theory) started to soften their stance and say that they had considered a wolf attack (lab leak) plausible all along.
But even though they had begun to endorse the same questions/venues of investigation, they misrepresented the people who had cried wolf (accidental lab leak) earlier - saying that they were in the same bunch as the conspiracy theorists who had cried werewolf (bioweapon).
People in the middle, who have been asking for lab leak hypothesis to be investigated, find themselves between extremes.
The folks who cry werewolf over every single thing.
And folks who said wolf attacks were not plausible in early 2020 but now think should be investigated.
And because of how the media and publishing is set up, only the extremes get published.
It's freaking difficult to get a moderate POV published because it doesn't get all the clicks and it doesn't support either extreme narrative.
The problem, is how to get people (leaders, really) to actually take steps to investigate whether a lab leak was the origin of the covid-19 pandemic, without falling into the trap of being cast as a chaos-monger or misinformation spreader who fuels werewolf(bioweapons)-criers.
We've got people who think it's case closed: sheep wandered off. People who think it's clear an unrestricted werewolf devoured the sheep. People who think it's already so clear that it was a wolf attack that they're only concerned with claiming that they were first to cry wolf...
What this collectively means = no one is actually investigating whether a wolf attack occurred. No one is tracking the wolves.
We're all busy tearing each other apart, over zero evidence for anything.
If we don't get a hold of ourselves, we cannot prevent the next pandemic.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
@razibkhan interviewed me over 🎄 for his new Unsupervised Learning series - got a little emotional at the end revisiting my experience of raising the possibility of covid lab origins which had been and continues to be cast as conspiracy theory. But the search for covid origins..
.. isn’t even close to peaking yet. We haven’t even established a credible independent investigation into the matter. Once that actually happens, we will certainly find out a lot more about where this virus came from.
I am optimistic about this.
I didn’t (and won’t) mention names of absolutely talented, courageous & wise people who supported me during this time. But I’m grateful for the people who know that we need to find the origins of covid and, in the big picture, have a renewed conversation about pathogen research.
I feel that the buzz is growing about studies suggesting covid in Europe, pre-Wuhan.
I told @TheJohnSudworth@BBC "They do not present persuasive scientific evidence that the virus was circulating outside of China before the late 2019 outbreak in Wuhan"
For more details, please see my thread examining the evidence presented in each of those studies claiming to have found covid cases outside of China before late 2019 or 2 separate cases of covid in Nov 2019 in Milan.
tldr these studies often did not or could not validate their findings. There was no coherent hypothesis based in reality that could explain what their little data was showing them.
&Although these studies were largely peer-reviewed, we have no insight to what the reviewers said.
If people really believe that SARS2, the largest pandemic of our lifetime, killing millions and still going strong, came from the wildlife trade- why aren't we doing something real about this?
Why aren't we banning ALL poaching, all wildlife trafficking, all wild animal markets?
Have we collectively decided we can't give up trafficking, hunting, and selling wild animals even in cities where you can import a vast variety of (frozen) meats from around the world (in other words, where bushmeat is not essential) - even at risk of future covid-like pandemics?
I find it incomprehensible. If I thought that another country had given my city a pandemic virus and made us the blame of the world, I would have immediately ceased ALL wildlife trade and frozen food imports coming into the province (or even the country) to avoid a repeat.
Seriously ☄️ reporting by @TheJohnSudworth
“if you line up side-by-side the WHO's Terms of Reference with the Shi Zhengli Science article.. it is clear that the overarching strategic narrative is that the origin of the virus is outside of China." bbc.com/news/world-asi…
@bbc reporting from Wuhan: “Instead of publishing its own evidence.. China appears to be taking an anywhere-but-Wuhan approach, with state media cheerleading the idea that the virus may have arrived in Wuhan on frozen food imports or talking cryptically of ‘multiple origins’”
The idea of multiple origins- that sars2 somehow emerged simultaneously in multiple countries around the world in 2019 - is mind bending.
A pandemic pathogen emerging in humans is already rare. Not to mention the same virus emerging in different places around🌏 at the same time.
Chinese gov “has not said how widely used illicit vaccines are or who has produced them. But a "vast amount" of pigs in China have nonetheless been vaccinated... a sentiment echoed by many other experts.” reuters.com/article/us-chi…
Story speaks to how much biotech has progressed. Based on just a sequence, hundreds, maybe even thousands of labs around the world can now synthesize any pathogen with good or bad intent. You can’t tell which lab made these illicit swine flu vaccines unless you ask the farmers.
And I just heard this isn’t a country specific mindset.
“an intervention could involve treating the entire animal reservoir to reduce viral load using tools such as anti-virals, vaccines, and interfering particles.”
I know twitter is not a safe place. But we need to do something about the harassment of women- especially the few women experts who have the courage to weigh in on challenging topics.