Thread by @Ayjchan

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…

I was also very surprised to hear this dismissal of #laborigins (in favor of #popsicleorigins) because when @mattwridley and I co-wrote this @WSJ article, we were told...
wsj.com/articles/the-w…?

Was this team equipped with the correct expertise to investigate a lab leak origin of covid-19? Did they follow any protocol to investigate #laborigins properly and independently?

If they were not and did not, then how can they rule out lab origins now?

Please don't tell me this was the investigative process for determining whether your studies (btw not independent but based on evidence from Chinese scientists 1-year post outbreak) could point to whether a lab accident could've been the #originsofcovid

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1359520359964409859

I'm not an expert on how international investigations are done. But does this look like an appropriate protocol for investigating #laborigins to anyone? Was this same protocol used for deciding whether to investigate frozen foods as the origins of the virus? #popsicleorigins

And when the team asked to test blood samples in autumn 2019 around Hubei province, "Chinese authorities said they hadn’t yet obtained necessary permissions to test samples" I guess that's it then. No way to find out when SARS2 started in Wuhan/Hubei.
wsj.com/articles/possi…

I'm having a hard time trying to see what the @WHO and international community got out of this investigation. Did we get any independently verified data?

And now WHO will investigate origins in other countries and frozen🥩 based on what Chinese scientists told them.

Perfect. Great clarification on #originsofcovid investigation by the @WHO in their Member States briefing this morning:

"I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study."

who.int/director-gener…

@WHO essentially obliterated their close to 3 hours long presser in China with a single sentence.

I insist @WHO deliver a similar 3h presser (with Chinese translation) to explain why your statements from inside China require clarification or revision.

who.int/director-gener…

Any credible #COVID19 investigation (independent or not) looking into #popsicleorigins based on zero well-documented frozen🍖-acquired human SARS virus infections, should also be looking into #laborigins based on several well-documented lab-acquired human SARS virus infections.

Public service: today's WHO press meeting to answer questions about #originsofcovid among other topics can be found here.

At around the -57min mark, @DrTedros clarified that while all hypotheses remain open to further study, some are outside the scope of this @WHO #originsofcovid mission.

In response to @washingtonpost question about this scope, Dr Tedros suggests that more experts can be added...

... but there isn't any clarity on whether #laborigins are within the scope and whether @WHO will assemble a new team to investigate it. What they told us at the Chinese presser was that they will not be investigating lab incident hypotheses. who.int/publications/m…

-26min mark @WHO is asked about the 90 possible covid cases in Wuhan in Oct 2019 raised by @WSJ but @MarionKoopmans said it was too late to test for antibodies in these people; investigation must turn to banked blood samples under negotiation with China...
wsj.com/articles/possi…

The seeming disinterest of Chinese authorities in tracking down origins of a virus that 1st broke out in their own city in late 2019 continues to surprise me.

Analyzing banked samples is one of the 1st things to do to figure out when SARS2 emerged. Other countries have done so.

I told @Minervanett @Akselfrids “I find inconceivable that the Chinese government would be unable to obtain permission from its citizens to test early blood samples for traces of Covid-19”
minervanett.no/who-in-turmoil…

"WHO team wasn’t allowed to view the raw underlying data on those retrospective studies, which could allow them to conduct their own analysis on how early and how extensively the virus began to spread in China"
wsj.com/articles/china…

Very interested to understand what the excuse was for not sharing the raw data after all of these international experts had made their way into China after half a year of bartering China-approved team membership and terms of reference.

"No agreement had been reached for China to provide the raw data by the time the WHO team left Wuhan this week, Dr. Dwyer said." 😆

@WHO you really got punk'd.

-22:25 @washingtonpost challenges @WHO #originsofcovid team on their confidence that SARS2 did not leak from a lab in Wuhan. WHO said they were told by Wuhan labs that none had worked with SARS2.

My senses tell me that the Washington Post knows what's up.

Lack of any precedent or independently verified evidence for cold chain transmission of SARS virus hasn’t stopped @WHO #originsofcovid investigation team member Peter Daszak from telling @NPR about #PopsicleOrigins

npr.org/2021/02/12/967…

The chances of a novel virus emerging through cold chain transmission is like a lottery on top of a lottery. You have to win the 1st lottery (natural SARS virus that is super at infecting humans) to play the 2nd lottery (first detected outbreak emerging from frozen packaging).

Transcript of @WHO press conference from yesterday is now available.

In reading this, I don’t have any confidence that this team has demonstrated the appropriate judgment to be investigating lab origins...
who.int/multi-media/de…

One common rationale that some scientists have used to dismiss lab origins is “why wasn’t this virus published by the lab prior to the outbreak?”

I don’t know which reality these scientists live in, but in the reality I live in, scientists often take years and years to publish.

Take RaTG13 for example. It’s the closest related virus genome to SARS2 (96%), collected from a mine in Yunnan China in 2013 after miners sickened with a SARS-like illness. RaTG13 was fully sequenced in 2018. No publication or sharing of its genome until post-covid in 2020.

If covid hadn’t happened, who knows when RaTG13’s genome would’ve been published.

Scientists who are exceedingly well funded or doing work for defence/intelligence/military projects don’t have to publish their discoveries. The money keeps flowing.

Yet, @WHO investigators and several top experts have been saying things like “Usually laboratory researchers who work and discover new viruses would immediately publish their findings; that's common practice around the world, in particular with new, interesting viruses.”

Another common argument against lab origins is that it’s rare to isolate a novel SARS virus; WIV has been searching tens of thousands of animals and humans over the years and has never reported a new human SARS virus.

Well, they didn’t report the 2012 Mojiang miners to the WHO.

So the more accurate stance on this, IMO, is that we have no clue how many human SARS viruses or SARS2-like viruses they’ve found and been studying in labs.

I’m betting WHO did not get access to WIV’s pathogen database.

I find this remark by a WHO team member confused: “out of the large-scale screening exercise three viruses had been obtained”

If you look at WIV publications (public), you can already see that they sequenced many sampled viruses and could create chimera off these sequences...

Isolating a virus may be difficult, but you can just synthesize viruses once you have their sequence - the WIV had 22K+ of these sequences (missing database).

You also don’t need to publish new backbones or genomes in a timely manner or even at all if the project is classified.

A world leading virus institute worth hundreds of millions of dollars- how could they only have 3 SARS viruses in their freezers? Does this make any sense to anyone?

And the kicker: “What we have been told by the different labs in Wuhan that we visited and discussed with is that none of these were working or had the SARS-CoV2 virus in their collections or in their laboratories.”

Because they would’ve told us if they caused a pandemic.

I think the investigation could move along much much faster if we adopted this approach to every hypothesis.

Hey Italy, did you start covid? No

Hey frozen foods suppliers, did you start covid? No

Hey SE Asia, did you start covid? No

Case closed.