Share this page!

Alina Chan Profile picture
Twitter logo
3 Mar, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Are there any more densely populated cities with extremely high traffic international airports that we can build more BSL4 labs in?
Just making sure that lab personnel will be able to get from the BSL4 to the nearest very highly visited food village in ~20min via MRT (metro). Image
And the world famous Changi airport in ~25min drive. One of the world's busiest airports by international passenger and cargo traffic... Image
So that in the event of a rare lab-related accident, the BSL4 pathogen has every opportunity it needs to become the next pandemic.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Alina Chan

Alina Chan Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
5 Mar
“based on what we know so far.. the W.H.O. investigation appears to be biased, skewed, and insufficient.. without full transparency and access to the primary data and records, we cannot understand the basis for any of the comments issued so far” nytimes.com/2021/03/04/hea…
... as @R_H_Ebright said, the open letter was released in anticipation of an interim report from the WHO-convened covid-19 origins study team. Our letter was communicated to high levels of @WHO on Tuesday, and we only heard this morning that no interim report is coming after all.
We can talk about the full report when it comes out but should not wait to call for global efforts as @FilippaLentzos described, possibly involving the U.N. General Assembly where all nations are represented and can vote on whether to formally investigate #OriginsofCOVID
Read 11 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
4 Mar
The WHO-convened covid-19 origins study group is scrapping their overdue interim report amid "tensions between Beijing and Washington over the investigation and an appeal from one international group of scientists for a new probe."
wsj.com/articles/who-i…
Many thanks to the experts & scientists who organized the open letter which is the basis of the @WSJ news story.

The letter describes limitations of the WHO-convened global study and what a credible investigation into COVID-19 origins should look like. s.wsj.net/public/resourc…
And also thanks to @WSJ @betswrites @drewhinshaw @JNBPage for staying on this story & doggedly reporting on the origins of covid-19.

I really think this is just the beginning. It is unlikely that the world will just move on and not seek answers to where this pandemic came from.
Read 11 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
2 Mar
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…
Read 16 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
1 Mar
This is a good piece that communicates some of the major misunderstandings held by scientists and experts exploring the origins of SARS2 / COVID-19.
The first major misunderstanding:

Some experts keep saying it took a decade to confirm that SARS1 came from bats.

But in 2003 and 2004, the animal sources of SARS1 were found within 2 months and 1 week, respectively.
So I think these top experts studying the origins are very very confused.

They’re looking for the ancestral origins of SARS2 in bats.

But finding the proximal origins of the virus shouldn’t take a decade.
Read 20 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
27 Feb
Starting to wonder how many virus samples are sitting in freezers waiting to be sequenced.

The newest pangolin CoV in GISAID (EPI_ISL_610156) was collected in Yunnan in 2017. Someone implied that this was proof of the 2019 Guangdong pangolin CoV, but it's quite different...
The Yunnan pangolin CoV sequence is full of gaps, missing front half of the Spike, no RBD to even compare with the SARS2-like RBD in the Guangdong pangolin CoV.

Not sure why anyone would think this Yunnan pangolin CoV is useful to verifying the history of the GD pangolin CoV.
Meanwhile, the Guangdong pangolin CoV authors who haven't provided any of the novel raw data mentioned in their May 2020 @PLOSPathogens paper just released more short sequence fragments for another paper?
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/popset?DbFrom=…
Read 11 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
26 Feb
“scientists expressed surprise and even disbelief that the further investigations, into both the first patient's contact history and the supply chain to the Huanan market that the WHO sought, had apparently not already been performed by China.” cnn.com/2021/02/21/chi…
“specialist Daniel Lucey.. said it was “frankly implausible” that such testing had not been done. “My question is why would it not have been done? It was known to be necessary and it’s in China’s scientific.. public health.. national security interest””
scmp.com/news/china/sci…
This would be like if in Stranger Things, the protagonists all neglected to investigate the local National Laboratory while searching for the inter-dimensional gateway (source of spillover).
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @Ayjchan has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @Ayjchan!

Read all threads by @Ayjchan