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Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
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14 May, 10 tweets, 8 min read
1/N
Many non-experts peddle garbage articles from Nicholas Wade defending the conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab.

This shows much of the defense of 'lab leak' isn't based on knowledge, but instead paranoia, etc.

nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covi…

thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or… Image
2/N
For context:
This is not the first time Nicholas Wade said nonsense outside his field of expertise to suit his preferred ideologically-motivated narrative, despite experts correcting him.



sciencemag.org/news/2014/08/g…

cehg.stanford.edu/letter-from-po… Image
3/N
Wade's discussion of the furin cleavage site shows willful ignorance of what's been known about SARS-CoV-2 since at least May 2020.






thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or… Image
4/N
This statement of his is asinine:
"But that seemed not to matter when so much further evidence in support of natural emergence was expected shortly"
thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or…

Wade needs a lesson on how long work in this subject takes.

Image
5/N
1) HIV was well-adapted to humans, with a higher CFR that SARS-CoV-2. Does that mean it escaped from a lab?

2) SARS-CoV-2 adapted to humans during the pandemic [hint: *VARIANTS!* 🤦‍♂️]

3) Adaptations doesn't require a lab.
nature.com/articles/s4159…

thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or… Image
6/N
I've worked with mouse models of human diseases for years. It's like Wade doesn't have the first clue about how they work, their limitations, etc.




thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or… Image
7/N
The symptoms experience *non-specific*, and could easily come from fungi common in caves/mines.

Seriously, this is 1st-year-medical-student-level info. Wade is ignorant. 🙄






thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or…
8/N
Could list many other fabrications / misleading claims in Wade's article. But evidence won't persuade most of those attracted to 'lab leak' conspiracy theories.

It's like baseless paranoia about HIV's origins all over again😑


9/N

I made a thread going through 'lab origin' conspiracy theories one by one almost a year ago...

...Only to find that people are still peddling the same garbage now.

Again, like dealing with other science deniers. 🤦‍♂️



researchgate.net/profile/G_Mich… Image
10/N
It's amazing to me how many non-experts peddled Nicholas Wade's claims as being credible.

A modicum of biological literacy or scientific meta-literacy would have prevented that.

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More from @AtomsksSanakan

Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
23 May
1/V

Quick thread on another reason why I don't trust Vinay Prasad.



I'm an immunologist, and one of the main reasons I first came to Twitter 4 years ago was to debunk vaccine denialism.



2/V

To be blunt, I know more about immunology and vaccines than Prasad. This is not his field of expertise.

The study he cites does not support the claim he made:
science.sciencemag.org/content/371/65…

And the John Snow memo is pretty good:



3/V

There were good reasons for thinking COVID-19 vaccines would induce a better immune response than infection.

I was not the first to point this out (h/t @drjenndowd).




Read 10 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
28 Apr
1/Y

Many criticized the article below co-authored by Jay Bhattacharya, who also co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration.

But I haven't seen a detailed explanation of why the article was wrong + dangerous. So I'll give one here



theprint.in/opinion/majori…
2/Y

It was clear Bhattacharya + others were wrong long before the recent resurgence of COVID-19 in India.
So this is not just "hindsight is 20/20."





archive.is/wxqye#selectio…
[judithcurry.com/2021/01/10/cov…]

3/Y

Imagine the spread of SARS-CoV-2 as an accelerating car.

Some brakes help slow the car, such as masks, social distancing, contract tracing, etc.

But even without brakes, the car will eventually start slowing down on its own; that's herd immunity.

Read 26 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
26 Apr
1/H

There was a recent effort to champion Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) as a non-expert who speaks uncomfortable truths experts don't want to hear.

That's misguided, as we can see by examining how many SARS-CoV-2-infected get hospitalized.

2/H

Some context:

Infection fatality rate, or IFR, is the proportion of people infected with the virus SARS-CoV-2 who die of the disease COVID-19.

Infection hospitalization rate, or IHR, is like IFR, but with COVID-19 hospitalizations instead of deaths

institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an…
3/H

Seroprevalence studies measure antibody levels to estimate the number of infected people.

Dividing COVID-19 hospitalizations by that number of infected people gives a seroprevalence-based IHR.

IHR is good to know.



Read 19 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
11 Apr
1/T

As we get closer to the end of the pandemic, it's worthwhile to look back on false claims that helped make the pandemic worse.

One of these claims was:
COVID-19 is not much of a danger to people outside of nursing homes + other institutions.

2/T

John Ioannidis is a proponent of this claim.

He argued that relatively few SARS-CoV-2-infected people died of the disease COVID-19, outside of nursing homes.

In other words: the infection fatality rate, or IFR, was low outside of nursing homes.

institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an…
3/T

He defended this idea since at least early May 2020. And he continued to defend it in his most recent work:

"in Europe and the Americas (~0.2% among community-dwelling non-institutionalized people)"
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ec…

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Read 10 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
3 Apr
1/U

You may recently have heard that COVID-19 has a fatality rate of ~0.15%, making it akin to a bad flu.

In reality, a more accurate fatality rate would be closer to ~0.6%, as per the WHO.
That's ≥10X worse than seasonal flu, and ~100X worse than the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
2/U

Background:

Infection fatality rate (IFR) is the proportion of people infected with the virus SARS-CoV-2 who die of the disease COVID-19.

IFR for seasonal flu is <0.1%, as per the WHO, among others:
who.int/emergencies/di…



institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an…
3/U

So, following @BallouxFrancois, who in their right mind would claim COVID-19 has an IFR comparable with that of seasonal flu?

Well, I can think of at least 2 people.
You likely know who one of them is. 😉

from 2:27 :
Read 30 tweets
Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
27 Mar
1/J

John Ioannidis published an article defending his low estimate of COVID-19's fatality rate.

It contains so many distortions that I'll try something I've never done on Twitter for a paper:

Go thru distortions page-by-page.

This will take awhile. 😑

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ec… Image
2/J

Some context:

Infection fatality rate, or IFR, is the proportion of people infected with the virus SARS-CoV-2 who die of the disease COVID-19.

There are many IFR estimates, including some from Ioannidis.



institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/an… Image
3/J

Seroprevalence studies (serosurveys) measure antibody levels to estimate the number of infected people.

Dividing COVID-19 deaths by that number of infected people gives a seroprevalence-based IFR.



who.int/bulletin/volum… Image
Read 48 tweets

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