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Alina Chan Profile picture
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15 Feb, 4 tweets, 3 min read
We heard from the @washingtonpost editorial board on the need to investigate #laborigins of covid-19.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/globa…

@WSJ editorial board is now also saying the lab hypothesis is important to investigate!

wsj.com/articles/who-a…
Live @WHO presser courtesy of @guardiannews:


Mike Ryan said WHO #originsofcovid mission didn't and doesn't have powers or mandate to investigate. What they participated in, inside China, was a "collaborative process of discovery."
Oh good, someone asked about the 13 early covid-19 virus genomes from Wuhan!

A few identical sequences were from the same individuals. Some sequences with no links to the market were slightly different.

Clarified! Not different strains.

Good god... going to have to have so many corrections. It wasn't an #originsofcovid investigation according to the WHO, just a collaborative process of discovery.

So many top media thought it was an investigation, but it wasn't.

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Alina Chan Profile picture
16 Feb
On to my more contentious 🧵 of the night.

“It’s very funny that everyone is worrying about preprints given that, collectively, journals are not doing a great job of keeping misinformation out,” Sever (co-founder of medRxiv and bioRxiv) said.
washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
There's been a lot of criticism of preprints since COVID-19 appeared. I've done my fair share too, breaking down preprints (and mostly peer-reviewed articles).

But I think the misinformation tragedy lies in peer-reviewed journals, NOT preprints.
"In the academic world, the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins issued a point-by-point response one week after Yan’s paper appeared on Zenodo"

Why didn't John Hopkins do a point-by-points response to RaTG13 or the #pangolinpapers?
Read 12 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
15 Feb
Dear @WHO since you had a good conversation with Wuhan scientists, did you ask how many bats & coronaviruses they sampled in each province in China & when, & how many wildlife pathogen sequences they obtained from each province?

This is a question other scientists have asked me.
Without these numbers, it's hard to grasp the extent of risk associated with this research.

And I think even @EcoHealthNYC wouldn't know these numbers for each province in China. So I'm surprised that other scientists think I would know😆 My postdoc powers are very limited!
According to @MarionKoopmans the WIV told you they only isolated 3 SARS viruses from their decade+ of very expensive research. But what's the true value of their work? How many animals did they actually sample, and where and when? How many pathogen sequences were discovered?
Read 14 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
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
Alina Chan Profile picture
14 Feb
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…
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
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
Alina Chan Profile picture
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

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