Thread by @Ayjchan

FYI journalists reporting on the @WHO convened COVID-19 origins collaborative process of discovery.

@DrTedros said it is not a WHO study or investigation.

It is an independent study by predominantly non-WHO experts. ~Half of the team is unidentified.
who.int/publications/m…

The WHO-convened team had to work with Chinese counterparts (half of the team) in a collaborative process; they did not have investigatory powers to look into COVID-19 origin hypotheses that their hosts did not want them looking into.

This was reinforced by the leader of the WHO-convened team in a recent @ScienceMagazine interview: sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/p…

I'm bringing this up now because we have no idea when the interim report will be released. There's no deadline for it. No explanation for why it has been delayed.

It's possible that there's some disagreement among the team about more controversial origins #PopsicleOrigins

The first thing we heard from the WHO-convened team about the possibility of COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 originating from frozen foods was as follows (Feb 9, almost 3h long presser): who.int/publications/m…

This resulted in an unsurprising interpretation by Chinese media that "Global experts scrutinize Southeast Asia as their target in tracing origins of coronavirus" and "It's also likely that the virus was transmitted from frozen food, Peter Ben Embarek"
globaltimes.cn/page/202102/12…

Although 9 days later, it was clarified by the WHO-convened team leader that they were only looking at within-China cold chain origins and not international / imported cold chain origins...

The damage was done.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1362471820541231105

This #PopsicleOrigins saga resulted in a series of quotes from different members on the WHO-convened team reflecting a serious non-consensus on this topic.

(I hope they understand that future generations will look upon their signatures on the interim report.)

I think some of the team members understand.

“It’s very difficult to imagine a situation where all this [contaminated] food came to one market in China, and not the biggest one at that, from different countries and it all started from there,” Dedkov said.
ft.com/content/deefc0…

Leendertz, German team member: “If you transport a virus fresh or frozen, the virus is not born from a piece of plastic. It’s about where the virus is from before that. Cold chain is never the source”

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1360397010336182276

I'm not sure that even the Chinese experts/authorities believe in the #PopsicleOrigins hypothesis. According to the WHO-convened team, they didn't bother to track the supply chains to the Huanan seafood market.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1365421589328707585

Apparently, they just left it to the WHO-convened team to do after their visit to Wuhan more than a year post-outbreak.

Not urgent. Finding the source of a killer virus that can shut down your economy and life as we know it.

I don't understand what people are doing with frozen food packaging that a pandemic could've been imagined to originate this way. newscientist.com/article/226759…

Were they perchance making a Lady Gaga-esque dress from frozen meats?

There's not even circumstantial evidence pointing to #PopsicleOrigins None of the frozen meats at the Huanan market tested positive for the virus. There is no well-documented case of a frozen meat-acquired infection by a coronavirus.
nature.com/articles/d4158…

I'd recommend the WHO-convened team to just let go of the #PopsicleOrigins hypothesis in the interim report.

If you're investigating supply chains or SE Asia (or even Europe🤕) as the origins, just say so. No need to say it transmitted via frozen meats.