Alina Chan Profile picture
18 Feb, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Some scientists expected this day would come but somehow it's still annoying that it's gotten to a stage where some individuals are infected by 2 or more separate people/events, sometimes resulting in recombination between different SARS2 variants.
newscientist.com/article/226801…
On this topic, one major challenge is getting these new data (raw or assembled genomes) onto public databases ASAP.

I think there's some competition happening among the top databases. This has to stop for the duration of the pandemic. Priority is getting data public ASAP.
It can't be a situation where scientists and developers of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics are learning about new variants from @TheScientistLLC @CNN etc.

Scientists need to have access to these data ASAP so we can optimize all the tools we have to fight this pandemic.
Maybe there needs to be a prize money system where scientists get $1000 for each new variant sequenced in their lab and immediately deposited onto all of the top public databases.
We've been through these cycles before. One lab reports a new strain, media goes nuts over it, is it more transmissible/deadly??, we wait a couple weeks for data to be finally uploaded so other scientists can get to work testing the new variant... we need a new system.
For non-scientists, this situation of scientists finding out about emerging variants of concern from the news, is like a person only finding out on facebook that their family was infected with SARS2 =____= not from a doctor or even the family member themselves. From social media.

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More from @Ayjchan

19 Feb
“Chinese authorities declined to give the WHO team raw data on these cases and potential earlier ones”

Data they saw “could possibly indicate infections as far back as September, said Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO team.” wsj.com/articles/covid…
🌟 by @LawrenceGostin
“Sovereign states will almost certainly resist IPPPR proposals to empower the WHO to enter their territory and gain access to full information.. (eg) inspectorate system like the ones currently in nuclear nonproliferation treaties.”
jamanetwork.com/channels/healt…
The @WHO origins study shows us serious problems in pandemic reporting & tracking. Tho much data exists & more could’ve been found a yr ago, no world organization was granted the power to access and collect such data.

As a result, the world doesn’t even know when covid started.
Read 4 tweets
18 Feb
We can credit the @WHO coordinated exploration with some things: They got into China after 1 year. They got to see what their Chinese counterparts had prepared for them, itinerary and reports. They got to see what their Chinese counterparts would not share with them or answer...
What I would like is if the team can carefully lay out: What they asked. What answers/data they were given or not given. Their hourly itinerary, who was in attendance at each event/meeting, if there was voting (and if there were non-unanimous votes; just numbers, not identity)...
I understand that a summary, full report & pressers are coming but these have to be signed off by ALL members including 50% of the team who are scientists in China.

Can journalists talk to non-Chinese teammates w/o disclosing their identities to get a handle on what happened?
Read 9 tweets
17 Feb
Really good piece in ⁦@NBCNews⁩ by ⁦@KenDilanianNBC⁩ et al.

Questions about how large the covid outbreak was in Wuhan, how early it could’ve started, maybe even Sep 2019 if there were already dozens of unconnected cases in October.. nbcnews.com/health/health-…
Extremely challenging to answer these questions without access to thousands of banked patient samples from Wuhan from fall 2019, and the actual non-aggregated patient records from that time. Not just the 90+ shortlist but thousands of people with pneumonia in Wuhan fall 2019.
Office of Director of National Intelligence: agency "will continue to rigorously examine emerging information.. to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan" nbcnews.com/health/health-…
Read 6 tweets
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
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
15 Feb
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.

Read 4 tweets

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