Thread by @Ayjchan

“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

We’ve already wasted a year waiting for this collaborative process of discovery to happen, and it’s still unclear what actual verifiable data the WHO-convened team has been given a glimpse of during their 2 week trip in Wuhan.

Again seeing this strange statement that finding SARS2-related viruses in the wild is inconsistent with lab origins @nytimes @jimgorman I think worthwhile to ask the quoted expert(s) exactly how is this inconsistent with lab leak? Many leaked viruses so far are found from nature.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1363570606982246400

It’s possible that some experts are going out of their way to shoot down the most extreme lab origins scenario and forgetting that the most likely lab origins scenario is that of an accidental infection by a natural virus out of tens of thousands collected/studied over the years.

The irony is that searching for more SARS viruses in the wild to “support” SARS2 natural origins is increasing the chances of lab personnel bringing more natural SARS viruses back into cities where they could leak from a lab experiment or infected lab people.

The irony is that, because of the pandemic, more labs around the world are ramping up their human or novel pathogen research and levelling up to BSL4, which increases the chances of a(nother) pandemic resulting from a lab or research-related incident.

And because of the pandemic, we need to additionally worry about accidentally giving SARS2 to wild animal populations during these virus collection expeditions.

Here, straight from the experts who think SARS2 has completely natural origins: journals.plos.org/plospathogens/…

Does it make logical sense that if there’s a real expert-validated peer-reviewed concern that people could accidentally transmit Sars2 to wild animals while in nature (eg while sampling pathogens), that wild animals could also transmit Sars2 to humans during these expeditions?

It’s important to understand how natural viruses can get into densely populated cities and explode into a pandemic.

Was it through the wildlife trade? Farmed animals? Or pathogen research activities - collect, culture, modify?

The resulting prevention strategies differ wildly.