Alina Chan Profile picture
14 Feb, 8 tweets, 3 min read
Experts keep telling me how useful it is to have Daszak on the team because he likely knows more about the WIV than the average person, but he's already gotten 2 major things wrong: when RaTG13's genome was sequenced + whether the WIV had bats in the lab.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…
Unfortunately, this approach seems to have influenced the WHO investigation. The team, during a 3-hour press conference in China, dismissed lab leak as "extremely unlikely" based on what Wuhan scientists told them, believing that only 3 SARS viruses have been isolated in the WIV.
I was at first worried that most scientists would just fall in line with the WHO "findings" but I'm glad that experts are speaking up about the lack of rigor in this investigation. Same article in the Mail on Sunday has quotes from several top experts. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…
I told @ianbirrell "The investigation served China’s purposes by delivering precisely the outcome it wanted since the WHO was saying things such as the need to investigate frozen food transmission and suggestions the virus came from another country while ruling out a lab leak."
Same article, @C_Small_ points out that, Nov 2019, WIV filed a patent for "device to treat injuries sustained while working with pathogenic viruses in a biosafety lab" - Why would WIV file a finger tourniquet patent if no lab incidents were occurring?

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…
Did the @WHO team, during the meeting with the WIV, inquire about these patents for bat cages and finger tourniquets? Was the tourniquet patent filed for fun? In that no finger injuries were occurring at the WIV but someone had time to invent and patent a device to address these?
I'm going to check the full report when it arrives to understand whether WHO team asked for details about what animal species were in the lab and when; what pathogen sequences, regardless of host species, the WIV (any of its labs) had access to and when; and the missing database.
“a tool for quickly bundling fingers in a biological safety laboratory”
“slowing down blood circulation and stopping bleeding. Facilitating subsequent disinfection and wound treatment.”

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More from @Ayjchan

14 Feb
Interview of @Peterfoodsafety @WHO #originsofcovid investigation. On lab origins, “this would not be something that this team, or I believe even WHO alone, would be able to move forward on. That would have to be, I believe, a United Nations-wide approach...”
Well, we just heard it (or read it), and I agree with this assessment- if the international community wants an investigation of lab origins, this team and even WHO cannot be the ones investigating. We need a separate, credible, independent investigation into #laborigins of covid.
What are we waiting for?
Lab leak is a plausible hypothesis that should be investigated regardless of how likely or unlikely.
Read 4 tweets
13 Feb
More on the @WHO #originsofcovid investigation...
“disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides” nytimes.com/2021/02/12/wor…
“rules to thwart outbreaks in China meant that the team could not gather with their counterparts for meals and informal talks”

Essentially, there was no chance for private communication.
“Fabian Leendertz, a German.. member of the team.. said the team agreed to include the frozen food theory among its hypotheses “to respect, a bit, the findings” of the Chinese scientists.”

Yes, and now Chinese media are reporting that covid likely originated via imported 🧊🐠
Read 12 tweets
11 Feb
I think, that was a good try @WHO to get actual data from China.

But now that it looks like that's not going to work, we should be setting up independent and credible investigations into the origins.
If @WHO is going to investigate Italy, SE Asia, and #popsicleorigins

We need actual teams that can investigate zoonotic spillover and #laborigins - preferably with international representation and absence of COIs/pre-existing relationships that could discredit investigation.
One major weakness of the WHO investigation was that there was no other ongoing investigation that could hold it accountable or that WHO could use as leverage to force more transparency from China. No, the Lancet investigation headed by Peter Daszak obvs doesn't count.
Read 5 tweets
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 36 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.
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

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