Thread by @Ayjchan

Another @washingtonpost opinion: "whether it caused this pandemic or not, a lab accident could certainly cause the next one. Scientists have been sounding that alarm for some time, well before the current pandemic began."
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

It cites this @WIRED article: "It should be obvious that no one with any connection to either organization (WIV or US partner) can play a formal role in any truly independent investigation into the pandemic’s origins." wired.com/story/if-covid…

I don't know if the @WHO understands what is happening, but in your convened team, at least one of the members is investigating work that he funded and is part of. I don't know who the Chinese half of the WHO-convened study team is.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1370129556431118337?s=20

Ok, back to WaPo, "there’s not even a code of rules that countries are required to follow, only some non-binding guidance from the @WHO When it comes to studying, tampering with or producing new viruses, the international system is the Wild West."

The list of BSL4 labs by @FilippaLentzos @gregkoblentz keeps getting longer. “These kinds of labs are springing up much more frequently,” she says. “There are loads more than there were five years ago, and way, way more than there were 10 years ago.”

"we should at least work toward greater oversight — at the very least, by creating a body that will conduct a more stringent risk-reward assessment while managing dangerous research."

Yea, we don't have that and experts are calling for more virus hunting and experimentation.

I'm a little ticked off that I didn't even know where the BSL4 in Boston was located until just yesterday.

https://twitter.com/greedyapricot/status/1369834476369494016

But you know what? It doesn't matter if it's a dozen stops away by the local metro, or an international flight away - it's coming to your neighborhood if there's an undetected or uncontrolled lab escape.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1369826116001796099

Some countries are famous for their techiness, but with any BSL3/4, it's only a question of WHEN something escapes. Maybe it's 10 years, 100 years or 1k years. If you have dozens of BSL4s...

Please read this factually grounded article by @rowanjacobsen

motherjones.com/politics/2020/…

Many experts, who have judged that COVID-19 could've come from a lab, are trying really hard to start some kind of national or global conversation around the risks of lab pathogens causing outbreaks.

We need to start this convo, with or without knowing where covid came from.

Most scientists who work at these high BSL levels or with potential human pathogens, never envision themselves seeding a pandemic.

It's always someone else who made a mistake.

It's difficult to imagine that getting infected during your research activity can kill millions.

If we don't establish an enforceable international agreement, then I don't see what else governments can do except to install whistleblowers next to every high BSL lab worldwide that is working with replication-competent animal pathogens.

Keeping an eye on hospitals and labs.

Because having a few weeks heads up can inform all kinds of public health actions, e.g., banning travel from a city where a lab pathogen outbreak could've already started.

Instead of waiting until the @WHO calls it a pandemic with the ability to transmit from human-to-human.

Very few scientists look at their work & weigh it against a million lives.

Should I do this experiment, even if there's a super super low chance that a million people will die if it escapes from the lab?

Because it's unthinkable, we just decide it could basically never happen.