"“These spillovers take years,” Gray says. “It’s not like in the movies. They go through different steps to infect humans.” So far indications are that the chimeric virus has not evolved to transmit efficiently between people."
sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/t…
To find these steps for SARS2, I'd say that getting access to blood samples banked in Chinese cities prior to Dec 2019 is important.

Granting international experts access to the caves and regions in Yunnan, China where SARS2's closest relatives were found is also important.
It's already very surprising that the Chinese government has -still- not performed these basic checks to find the source of SARS2 / COVID-19 and determine when it first emerged in Wuhan.
cnn.com/2021/02/21/chi…
As top expert Daniel Lucey told @SCMPNews
"My question is why would it not have been done? It was known to be necessary and it’s in China’s scientific interest, it’s in their public health interest and it’s in their national security interest"
scmp.com/news/china/sci…
Just a few months earlier, Lucey had told @BBCNews
"They have the capability, they have the resources and they have the motivation, so of course they've done the studies in animals and in humans"
bbc.com/news/world-asi…

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More from @Ayjchan

22 May
Super 🧵 by @kundan_official on recent @Forbes article claiming (but failing) to scientifically debunk the lab leak hypothesis.

One point to discuss in more detail: how should scientists working with pandemic viruses balance academic freedoms with the risk of causing pandemics?
Author @StartsWithABang is worried conspiracy theories could threaten scientific autonomy of select scientists whose work can have catastrophic impact. And rightly points out that we live in a world where gov cannot be depended upon to effectively respond to emerging pathogens.
For instance, the country that is potentially the source of a lab escaped pathogen may not tell other countries what was done with virus X in the lab. And other countries, even after seeing videos of mass death, may think their country is magically immune to pandemics.
Read 9 tweets
22 May
Much needed context on this preprint from the WIV:

1. The WIV had these CoVs & sequences for several years already.

2. If they had told us in Jan 2020, they would’ve revealed not just one (RaTG13) but nine closest relatives to SARS2 in their possession.

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
Remember, in early 2020, there was already all this confusion about what the WIV had been doing with just RaTG13.

Had they sequenced it earlier or post-covid? Had they isolated it?

Was RaTG13 actually btCoV4991, linked to Yunnan miners with severe respiratory disease in 2012?
This is their tree from @Nature - no sign of these 8 most closely related viruses excepting RaTG13 at the time!

Why is this group of scientists so confused about the need to publish, in a timely manner, all relevant data to an emerging killer virus?

nature.com/articles/s4158… Image
Read 11 tweets
21 May
One year ago, any lab-based hypothesis of the #OriginOfCOVID19 was widely reported to be a debunked conspiracy theory propagated by d/misinformants.

Today some scientists are still arguing about how likely/unlikely a lab origin is, but this will no longer stop an investigation.
The CIA director and director of national intelligence are still investigating natural vs lab origins.
There’s a new committee formed by highly respected scientists who are laying the groundwork for a national commission on covid-19. One of its focuses is the origins of covid-19.
Read 7 tweets
20 May
Peter Daszak told @60Minutes @LesleyRStahl "We didn't see any evidence of any false reporting or cover-up in the work that we did in China."

Now he's told @KHN @ArthurAllen202 "There are plenty of reasons to question China’s openness and transparency."
cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-…
March 2020: "you know what a scientific statement is and you know what a political statement is. We had no problem distinguishing between the two."

May 2020: “You can never definitively say that what China is telling us is correct.”
khn.org/news/article/w…
Sorry, 2021 for both - I've lost track of time during the pandemic!
Read 4 tweets
20 May
I’m putting together a primer pack of must-read layperson articles for anyone who’s just getting into the topic of whether SARS-CoV-2 could have come from a lab in Wuhan.

In no order of preference or chronology:
@rowanjacobsen @BostonMagazine
bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/09/0…
The infamous “Lab Leak Hypothesis” by @nicholsonbaker8 in @NYMag

nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Read 14 tweets
19 May
Unique pov by @NathanJRobinson @curaffairs #originsofcovid

"As a citizen of the U.S. whose voting power is supposed to be used to ensure its government acts properly, I found all of a sudden that the question of the virus’s origin had to matter to me."

currentaffairs.org/2021/05/the-st…
"if the virus “did indeed escape from the Wuhan institute, then the NIH will find itself in the terrible position of having funded a disastrous experiment that led to death of more than 3 million worldwide... the more I thought about it, the more disturbed I was."
"One of the claims that I think Wade’s article proves beyond a reasonable doubt is that our understanding of COVID’s origins has been compromised by the involvement of a man named Peter Daszak." 🤣
Read 5 tweets

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