Believe it not, I'm still slowly working through the China-WHO #OriginsofCOVID report+annex (300pg). Today I noticed that they didn't give specifics on the (suspected) COVID cases at the Wuhan Central Hospital with the 2 most prominent whistleblowers Dr Ai Fen and Dr Li Wenliang.
The patient with earliest covid-19 symptom onset on Dec 8? No idea which Wuhan hospital this person went to.
The original index patient with earliest onset on Dec 1? Excluded. Which Wuhan hospital received this person? What was the exact reason for exclusion?
Please, there needs to be a public peer review of this report by scientist/expert reviewers who take into account both the scientific data (if any of the raw data can even be accessed) as well as the public knowledge around the origins.
You know. Things you can find with google.
What were the international experts recruited by the WHO analyzing if they did not have access to early patient data and info?
The basics: which hospital, when, symptom onset date.
The clusters with bare minimum info described in the Annex do not suffice.
This COVID commission planning group was launched at an opportune moment.
Can your Origins and prevention task force please review the existing info+data surrounding the origins, including (or starting with) the China-WHO report? @Miller_Center
I really like the point Nick made here about being able to express scientific uncertainty.
I don’t think people expected the China-WHO team or experts to know where COVID-19 came from. So hearing some experts proclaim they almost know for sure it was 100% natural is puzzling.
Many news outlets even today continue to report the China-WHO conclusions that a lab origin is extremely unlikely or that the scientific consensus is that the virus was 100% natural. Who exactly constitutes this consensus?
I think this is a major science communication problem.
There are also opinion pieces that the natural origin scenario must be much more likely. But based on what assumptions? That SARS viruses often spillover in Wuhan (untrue)? Vs the lab doing the most SARSrCoV research sitting in the middle of that city for close to 2 decades?
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-…
Worth 2min🎧 CIA Director and Director of National Intelligence say that the US intelligence community is still gathering info on the two #OriginsofCOVID theories around which components have coalesced: it emerged naturally or it was a laboratory accident.
Already seen some pushback on my What Next podcast interview with @slate@marysdesk
If you think lab leak=conspiracy theory, it should trouble you that top intelligence & experts are devoting an enormous amount of energy to investigating this hypothesis.
🚨 Covid Commission Planning Group (Covid CPG) "to prepare the way for a National Covid Commission that can seize this once-in-a-century opportunity to help America—and the world—begin to heal and safeguard our common future from new existential threats." millercenter.org/covidcpg
Covid CPG's 9 task forces include:
1 Origins and prevention
2 Assessment of the danger
3 National readiness
4 Communities at risk
5 State and local readiness
6 Caring for the sick
7 Diagnostics, therapeutics & vaccines
8 Stories of Covid
9 Solving data issues
"The Covid CPG effort is rooted in the belief that the scope of a future commission’s work must be national and international... A nonpartisan National Covid Commission could unite Americans to call upon their knowledge and practical skills across and beyond political parties."
Several scientists are reasonably curious about what the issues are with most prominent papers describing the same Guangdong pangolin CoV that shares a very similar spike RBD with SARS2.
If you're deeply curious about this, you should send an email to @Nature asking them to publish the authors' original response to the manuscript @shingheizhan and I submitted to them last May. We also recommend asking to see the peer reviewer comments. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
Honestly, it's taking a lot of my will power not to just post these publicly so everyone can take a good look.
Statement by the Governments of Australia, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America on #OriginsofCOVID 🇦🇺🇨🇦🇨🇿🇩🇰🇪🇪🇮🇱🇯🇵🇱🇻🇱🇹🇳🇴🇰🇷🇸🇮🇬🇧🇺🇸 state.gov/joint-statemen…
“Asked by about the (China-WHO) report, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said Tuesday it lacked crucial data, and represents a “partial and incomplete picture.””