Thread by @Ayjchan

One fact that I think many scientists and members of the public are not widely aware of is that the original SARS virus - back when it was the only SARS virus known to man - escaped from labs not once but 4 times.

2 of those times from a top Beijing lab.

genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

For those lab escapes of SARS1, "once the alarm was raised about the cases, over 1000 of their close contacts were isolated very quickly"

But would this have stopped a virus like SARS2 that can spread asymptomatically with up to 2 weeks incubation time?
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

In 2004, SARS was the only SARS virus studied in labs - 4 lab escapes.

Fast forward to 2019, there are several dozens (likely 100s) of SARS-like viruses sampled by labs.

After covid, a whole bunch of SARS2-like viruses collected in the past get published.

Other than the fact that SARS1 had already been sequenced prior to the lab escapes, and it was not possible to deny that it had leaked from those labs 4 times, the leaked virus would've looked entirely natural.

No signs of discernible lab manipulation or genetic modification.

1 lab case returned home (Anhui) from lab, 22 Mar 2004; 25 Mar symptoms; 27 Mar train back to Beijing, hospital; 29 Mar diagnosed viral pneumonia; 2 Apr train to Anhui for further treatment; 19 Apr mother died, retrospectively diagnosed as suspected SARS.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

If that had been covid (no to mild symptoms in young person in their 20s), can you tell me when they would've noticed a lab escape and how many people would've been infected by ~1 month or when the first death appears? From a virus that hasn't been reported in the literature?

So when I see experts rushing to rule out lab #originsofcovid, my personal view is that these experts doth protest too much.

It's almost like you cannot bear the thought that virus sampling+research (on steroids) has a measurable risk of producing an outbreak & even a pandemic.

I'm a scientist, but I'm a human first.

If this virus originated from research activities, regardless of intention, our priority is to understand how this happened & stop it from happening again.

Being a scientist by profession isn't going to protect me from the next pandemic.

A lot of people ask me if I think 100% natural origins of covid are possible/should be investigated. Yes, of course, but I don’t have to advocate for that because those investigations are already underway - although also doesn’t seem possible to independently search inside China.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1363527530821660674

Investigations of any of the origins above must be held to the same standard. It’s going to be tough for @WHO to know if aggregate data, even on animal testing, they get from China is accurate. Even if China finds an original animal source of SARS2 in China, would they tell us?