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?
This was the hospital where the 2 most prominent doctor whistleblowers worked. This was also the hospital where some of the earliest cases were detected - the 1st reported test result for bat SARS-like coronavirus.

Yet, there’s no coverage of these details in the team’s report.
Most of the adult ILI analysis was based on a single hospital. And, page 26/120: "It should be noted that no samples from adults were available for testing in the last three weeks of December 2019, so conclusions about SARS-CoV-2 causing ILI in adults in December cannot be made."
Page 23 tells us that most of the cases of SARI reported in the sentinel surveillance in Hubei were in children and based on ONE hospital located OUTSIDE of Wuhan.

How could any of these data (not even accessible btw) tell us about when SARS2 first appeared in Wuhan?
Page 40 tells us that even the death count per region analyzed was sub-sampled. Does Wuhan city and Hubei province not record when each person passes away?
There is no raw data on early cases. Making it difficult to understand if there were clusters or superspreading events leading to higher case counts in different parts of the city.

There is no detail on when case count data had been collected. Had they known this in Jan 2020?
There is so much more to say about this full report (some of it technical) but would result in a 🧵 spanning maybe 20 pages.

I don't understand how journalists with scientific training could confidently report the China-WHO team's conclusions without expressing some skepticism.
Eg the case for #PopsicleOrigins gets even weaker when reading the report.

No animals of foreign origin identified in records, late Dec 2019.

No domestic origin cold chain products between Sep-Dec 2019.

No positive animal samples at all in Wuhan markets and upstream suppliers.
None of the first Covid-19 cases at the Huanan seafood market handled any wildlife meat, frozen or not.

There's no evidence at all of frozen ferret badgers bringing the virus into a Wuhan market, the virus reanimating and infecting its first human victim in the city.

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More from @Ayjchan

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
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…
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
"“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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