Alina Chan Profile picture
10 Feb, 8 tweets, 3 min read
I want to get a bit serious about the @WHO's dismissal of lab escape as a potential origins of the covid virus.

I'm keen to see their full report. However, the handling of the current pandemic shows that a country can get likely a pass on lab escape (or bioweapons) as long as...
(1) They don't publish their research in real time - this already isn't happening in science, and why would you publish original data/seqs if you were working covertly on pathogens?

(2) They don't give you access to their lab records or data, and tell you they have good safety.
The question is what we're giving up in the future so that we can pretend this pandemic's origin is resolved today.

Do we need another mysterious outbreak in a city with a renowned pathogen lab in the next decade before we get serious about asking what's happening in these labs?
As far as the July 2020 interview with @sciencecohen @ScienceMagazine shows, the SARS research at WIV which had taken place at BL2 and BL3 all these years has been upgraded to actual BL4 post-covid.

It's not going down. It's going up.
sciencemag.org/sites/default/…
And it's going up everywhere. It could be any country with a human pathogen lab in the next epidemic... "with hundreds, maybe even thousands of such labs proliferating around the world, even low-probability events can become relatively common." motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
I'm not even saying that the Covid-19/SARS-CoV-2 virus came from a lab. I'm saying that the bar set for launching a credible investigation into #laborigins is set so high that I can't see how you could launch one unless you already had incontrovertible proof for it.
Problematically, the countries that have the most leverage over international organizations also tend to be the countries investing the most in these types of high risk pathogens research.
You can barely get people vaccinated for one new pathogen. Not to mention a new one every few years, which requires an annually updated vaccine.

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More from @Ayjchan

11 Feb
Dominic Dwyer, a member of the WHO team, on whether the covid virus could've originated from a lab accident: “Now, whether we were shown everything? You can never know. The group wasn’t designed to go and do a forensic examination of lab practice.”
nature.com/articles/d4158…
WHO team chatted w Wuhan scientists, voted if lab origins were likely. This doesn't count as an investigation into #laborigins I hope @WHO knows that. "you don't want to jump to a conclusion based on several hours of conversation with Chinese scientists"
washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…
Jesse Bloom, virologist @fredhutch "surprised to see some members of the team dismiss the accidental lab leak theory while seeming to suggest, without any specific evidence, the possibility that frozen food might have played a role."
washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…
Read 9 tweets
11 Feb
On the recent paper describing new SARS2-like viruses in Thailand, the big takeaways for me:

The closest relatives to SARS2 are still from inside China whether you count it by genome, RdRp, or Spike RBD.

The ones from Thailand don't use human ACE2.

nature.com/articles/s4146…
I think sampling bats for viruses is worthwhile as long as care is taken not to introduce SARS2 from human personnel into wildlife while going on these expeditions.

BUT I don't think that hunting for bat CoVs in SE Asia is going to answer how this pandemic got started in Wuhan.
You're just going further and further away from ground zero. Wuhan (top dot), Kunming, Yunnan, China (middle dot) where the Mojiang miners and RaTG13 was collected, and Chachoengsao, Thailand (bottom dot) where the new bat CoVs were collected. Image
Read 12 tweets
10 Feb
“Daszak responded to reports that the U.S. government wishes to independently verify any findings of the WHO team, by impugning the motives of President Joe Biden and casting aspersions on the integrity of the U.S. intelligence community.” rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-who-covi…
Spot-on analysis by @RogerPielkeJr of why the press conference is problematic for @WHO “A future departure from initial claims.. can easily be seen (and spun) as delegitimizing of the committee’s work. So the origins committee is now effectively locked in to these conclusions..”
Please see the @StateDept response to the @WHO #originsofcovid investigation here state.gov/briefings/depa…
Read 4 tweets
9 Feb
@who going to investigate Covid-19 originating from frozen foods rather than #laborigins because lab leak too unlikely based on what the Wuhan lab personnel told them.
Not too confident that this @who team has much insight to the lab leak hypothesis - the WIV’s SARS research was done at BL2 and BL3 all these years, not BL4. Team could benefit from a lab leak/biosecurity expert weighing in on their report.
So the team says the virus was spreading before the Huanan market but that intermediate host is still the most likely #originsofcovid I’m keen to see the evidence that points to an intermediate host. Also, no mention of pangolins now? #pangolinpapers
Read 42 tweets
7 Feb
Public service: This is now the link to the archived Fact Sheet released by the previous State Department concerning activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that could point to possible #laborigins of the covid-19 virus.
2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-act…
@washingtonpost says "If the U.S. government possesses information to corroborate that statement, it should release it, including declassifying any intelligence." washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
The situation right now, I presume, is that the intelligence cannot be declassified because of endangering the source(s).

In that case, please create a curated list of non-gov people who can see this intelligence. There is a lot at stake.
Read 31 tweets
7 Feb
Been seeing rumors that the Covid-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) has never been isolated before. I'll post links and snapshots of some papers here to show that several different groups in different countries have each isolated the virus.

First is WIV Wuhan China..
nature.com/articles/s4158…
2nd Hong Kong, China (I know same country but different labs). tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
3rd example Guangdong, still China because that's where there was first access to patient samples.
jvi.asm.org/content/94/17/…
Read 19 tweets

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