Thread by @Ayjchan

The story of the quest for the origins of COVID-19 cannot be told without also telling the stories of the internet sleuths & outsiders who discovered clues and hidden stories of the viruses closely related to SARS2, Yunnan miners sick with pneumonia & a missing pathogen database.

We've seen a series of recent articles by stellar journalists chronicling the year+ of painstaking work by internet sleuths.

There have been lots of mistakes made and public conflicts with virologists on twitter... but their contribution is undeniable.
cnet.com/features/how-t…

See this wonderful piece by @emmecola from December 2020:

"there are many other people, out of the spotlight, who deserve credit. They have been working tirelessly... they share and discuss their findings and, more importantly, they make discoveries."
mygenomix.medium.com/the-origin-of-…

The work of these outsiders, which includes some non-anonymous scientists and data analysts, has had a measurable impact on the scientific discourse on the #OriginsofCOVID

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1334875696552882176

As @mattwridley and I wrote this year, tantalizing details unearthed by internet sleuths spurred news teams and journalists to take on the perilous task of following the trail on the ground in China - mainly, trying to visit the Mojiang mine 🦇🦇🦇
rationaloptimist.com/blog/did-covid…

Well phrased by @ianbirrell "there is no doubt their collective efforts... have been crucial in challenging both China and the scientific establishment to ensure the lab leak theory is properly investigated."
unherd.com/2021/04/the-co…

Without the work done by the DRASTIC team, I don't really know where we would be today with the origins of covid-19.

Because what they have accomplished collectively is not something scientists can do. It's more similar to intelligence gathering.

drasticresearch.org/the-team/

The work of citizen journalists and sleuths, which often comes at great personal cost, is valuable and essential - though many are not qualified experts, are mocked by experts & the public as conspiracy theorists and hooligans, and their motivations are constantly under question.

It is now getting easier to ask the question of whether COVID-19 may have emerged due to a lab incident.

However, it is unlikely that internet sleuths will get the thanks or apologies some of them deserve.

And I'm not saying that all of the internet sleuths have been model citizens on twitter.

Some of these twitter and private exchanges can get very intense, and there is mud slinging from all sides.

As @dctrjack wrote "There have been ugly incidents on Twitter, further complicating genuine debate around the origins question."

There have been false accusations and personal attacks going both ways and every way.
cnet.com/features/how-t…

However. What I've heard from some outsiders working on #OriginsofCOVID (I consider myself an outsider too) is it would help to acknowledge how intimidating & scary it has been for many scientists to publicly say they think a lab leak is plausible.

They don't want that trouble.

That fact is undeniable. Maybe there are a few big shot scientists who have no fear saying controversial things because their jobs, incomes, and reputations are iron-clad (and they never have to undergo the pain of peer review or grant review again).

Numerous journalists and podcasters have been saying this since at least mid-2020. That they talked to lots of scientists who would say all sorts of things about the possibility of a lab leak in private, but refused to go on record publicly. @razibkhan
gnxp.com/WordPress/2021…

https://twitter.com/ianbirrell/status/1346837579740704771

"Because of the HIV manuscript and other poor-quality preprints, says Nielsen, the lab leak “became associated with these sorts of crackpot hypotheses and very (x3) shoddy science.”"

Scientists don't often want to be associated with conspiracy theories.
undark.org/2021/03/17/lab…

I might get struck down by karma for bringing this up again, but...

Even the experts convened to help draft a National Academics of Sciences Engineering Medicine response to the Whitehouse in Feb 2020 decided against bringing up unintentional lab leak.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1339238007614943232

It was only because of confidential emails FOIA'ed by @USRightToKnow that we got to see what the top experts were privately talking about early in the pandemic, about its potential origins, natural or lab.
usrtk.org/biohazards-blo…

Nonetheless, at this point in the quest for the #OriginsofCOVID, my thoughts & those of several DRASTIC members are that a full international forensic investigation is needed.

See our March 5 letter.

This requires experts to enter the fray.
wsj.com/articles/who-i…

In our letter, we wrote that a full investigation must be "multidisciplinary by including epidemiologists, virologists, wildlife experts, public health specialists, forensic investigators, biosafety and biosecurity experts"
s.wsj.net/public/resourc…

The 2nd letter recommended establishing a new international investigation drawing on experts & intelligence worldwide.

This type of work cannot be conducted by internet sleuths, although their help and contributions should be solicited and acknowledged.
nytimes.com/interactive/20…

If we don't get enough trusted experts on board with an investigation of the origins, then it won't be properly and credibly investigated.

The lab leak hypothesis will just be remembered as one of those "unsolved mysteries" and "conspiracy theories" that could've been true.

I was encouraged to see #OriginsofCOVID brought up in the US Senate Intelligence Committee meeting yesterday + the launch of the COVID Commission Planning Group which aims to set the foundation for a National Commission.

Things are getting real. millercenter.org/covidcpg

A year ago it seemed so unlikely that something at this level would even be set up to investigate the origins of the pandemic.

These are solid steps towards (1) changing the public narrative and (2) getting a full, international, credible, and evidence-based investigation going.

For sleuths, this outcome is bittersweet because you've paid the price for voicing what was commonly called a "conspiracy theory" in 2020.

But in order to win (get a true investigation going), experts need to receive the baton that has been till now largely carried by outsiders.

The "must-be-natural" people got to have the #OriginsofCOVID China-WHO not-an-investigation-reported-as-an-investigation study of their dreams.

Why shouldn't there be an actual, official investigation taking into account what sleuths and outsiders have found over the past year?