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Alina Chan Profile picture
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22 May, 8 tweets, 3 min read
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…
For example, one very straightforward action which literally takes one email to accomplish is for the Wuhan Institute of Virology to share what has been described as an excel database of 22,000+ virus entries (sequences and metadata).
No need to spend 1-2 years wrapping each sequence up into a manuscript please. Just share what you have, given the extreme circumstances of the pandemic, this will go a long way to demonstrate transparency and a will to find the #OriginOfCOVID19
Some other obvious venues of investigation laid out in the March letter:

Allow international experts to conduct confidential interviews, including of early cases, relatives, past & present personnel associated with sites of interest such as markets, hospitals, and laboratories.
If outside experts can talk to people in Wuhan city through secure channels, it will be possible to clear up what was happening in Dec/Jan 2020, e.g., if any live mammals were even sold at the seafood market in 2019, and what happened at Wuhan Central hospital with Dr Ai Fen.
There are routes to investigate outside China to find out what was happening in early days post-outbreak or even before the reported outbreak to see what might have led to SARS2 emerging in Wuhan.

That investigation should commence without delay & solicit help from each country.

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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
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
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…
Read 11 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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