Thread by @Ayjchan

People have been asking me about this article by previous Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Miles Yu in @WSJ

How much of this is objective? Or novel? Could SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 really have come from a lab in Wuhan?

What do we really know, publicly?
wsj.com/articles/china…

On Jan 15, 2021, the previous US State Department released this Facts Sheet on the origins of COVID-19 raising concerns about SARS + other pathogen research at the WIV.

However, it was swiftly archived by the new administration.

2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-act…

On @FaceTheNation ex-Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger said that this had been "scrubbed by every department within every bureau within the State Department, was looked at very carefully by the NSC staff, intelligence officers, HHS"
cbsnews.com/video/former-d…

A recent @NBCNews piece that talked to sources that had seen the actual intelligence showed that there was substantial intelligence not yet released, but one source described the previous State Dept statement as "less than rock solid"

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1362087470305837058

With no sight of the intelligence being (partially) declassified, this exercise is like the parable of blind men describing an elephant. Each person has known or unknown subjective experiences that leads them to interpret the same information differently. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men…

The @WSJ article and the Facts Sheet exert that the Chinese government has been working on dangerous human pathogens and some of this work was done at the WIV in the years preceding COVID.

I hope this doesn't really surprise anyone.

But the crux of the issue is:

What is the "enormous" evidence pointing to COVID-19 originating from a Wuhan lab?

Seriously, what is it?

The @WSJ article points out safety issues had been raised at the WIV, some scientists in China sell lab animals to make side cash, a PLA general had been sent to Wuhan to handle COVID in early 2020, and there had been trash talking about bioweapons targeting specific populations.

Some of this is suspicious but could be interpreted to have less nefarious intent.

Many labs have safety issues. The more pathogen research you do, the more safety issues you have.

The PLA general was sent to Wuhan to make a vaccine. science.sciencemag.org/content/370/65…

This article & others have pointed out that Chinese gov is obstructing a transparent investigation of covid origins.

Does this mean it came from a lab?

They could've watched cases rise from 100K to 1M to 10M to 100M & decided they didn't want to be responsible for any of it.

Even if they found a whole farm of smuggled pangolins in South China with SARS-CoV-2 precursor, maybe they don't want to share that with the international community.

Unfortunately, we're still stuck with zero definitive evidence for any of the different origins hypotheses.

No direct evidence of natural origins. No direct evidence of lab origins. Definitely no direct evidence of #PopsicleOrigins

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