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Alina Chan Profile picture
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22 May, 11 tweets, 6 min read
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…
This particular group of eight SARS2-like viruses has pulled the disappearing act once in a 2019 Infect Genet Evol publication, then again in their 2020 @nature publication, and then again in their 2020 @NatureComms Latinne et al. paper.
All three of the papers and even the preprint fail to mention that the reason why this particular mine in Yunnan had been repeatedly mined for bat viruses - resulting in the discovery of these 9 SARS viruses - is because of a 50% mortality rate SARS-like illness in miners there.
It is only acknowledged in an addendum to the @nature paper:

“We suspected that the patients had been infected by an unknown virus. Therefore, we and other groups sampled animals including bats, rats and musk shrews in or around the cave...”

nature.com/articles/s4158…
“... we detected 293 highly diverse coronaviruses, of which 284 were designated alphacoronaviruses and 9 were designated betacoronaviruses on the basis of partial RdRp sequences. All of the nine betacoronaviruses are SARSr-CoVs.”
Again @franciscodeasis is on this case and thanks to WIV theses unearthed by @TheSeeker268 we have a basis to compare the preprint with.

But until the WIV’s NGS data is made public, there’s not much we can do. Presumably this will happen once the manuscript passes peer review.
Pple asking about WIV database. @washingtonpost reported it, even mentioned the 8 SARS viruses in the WIV preprint. “A second portal of virus databases in China, created by the National Virus Resource Center, affiliated with the WIV, has also gone offline”
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
The thing is, the WIV database was apparently taken offline in Sep 2019, before there should’ve been any hacking attempts or security reasons to take it down. Can someone in touch with Dr Shi please reach out for comment on this? Why September 2019? @rowanjacobsen
🎩 h/t @interne41914499 for doing most of the sleuthing on the database.

It was also reported in @lemondefr in December 2020:

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
23 May
Re-upping this because I have recently made my way through the China-WHO full report and annexes on their Phase I study in Wuhan.

What their report tells me is that this team and this approach is not valuable in driving a credible investigation of the #OriginOfCOVID19
My opinion is that a Phase II joint study conducted under the same terms by the same team would be a monumental waste of time and resources.

By all means they can go ahead with it, but a separate actual investigation(s) are required.
Their approach is not even suitable for investigating natural origins, not to mention lab origins.

For instance, did any of the team members or journalists who read their report relay publicly that they had not visited the Wuhan Central Hospital or reviewed its patient data?
Read 11 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
22 May
The World Health Assembly @WHO is taking place starting Monday.

The Theme:
Ending this pandemic, preventing the next: building together a healthier, safer and fairer world.

To do so, we must find the #OriginOfCOVID19 and prevent it from happening again.

who.int/about/governan…
The world missed its chance to have a proper investigation last year, let’s not waste this year’s opportunity.

@DrTedros said he was ready to deploy new missions to investigate a lab leak as a possible origin of Covid-19.

Please convene a new team.

science.sciencemag.org/content/372/65…
In an earlier open letter from March 4, 2021, a team of interdisciplinary experts (I am in it too!) pointed out the limitations of the current China-WHO study, and suggest actionable and feasible directions for a true investigation of possible lab origins: s.wsj.net/public/resourc…
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
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
Alina Chan Profile picture
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
Alina Chan Profile picture
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
Alina Chan Profile picture
20 May
"“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…
Read 5 tweets

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