1/Z

An annoying thing about many SARS-CoV-2 lab conspiracists is they don't learn a da*n thing, no matter how much it's explained to them.

Example from WSJ, Steven Quay, + Richard Muller:

"The science suggests a Wuhan lab leak"
wsj.com/articles/the-s…
archive.is/MfmLd Image
2/Z

Quay + Muller's 'codon usage' point is not new.

Ex: Bret Weinstein was making the point months ago, and Nicholas Wade did more recently.

It's a favorite talking among the conspiracy theorists.



https://t.co/jGJkNUBui0

thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or… Image
4/Z

Another crucial concept is out-of-frame insertion / frame-shift:

practical-haemostasis.com/Genetics/genet…
genome.gov/genetics-gloss…

It's basic biology, and I learned it as a high school freshman. It's telling how many SARS-CoV-2 lab conspiracists screw up introductory genetics. 🙄 Image
5/Z

So an out-of-frame mutation resulting from copy-choice error, easily explains how one ends up with 2 CGG codons without a lab.

That's been known since at least May *2020.*
Hence why I said the conspiracists learn nothing. 🤦‍♂️



virological.org/t/tackling-rum… Image
6/Z

It's also silly when Quay + Muller say "CGG" is a hallmark of genetic manipulation.

As an immunologist I know it's actually a fairly common sequence often recognized by the immune system and used to clear pathogens.



archive.is/ZFIHa Image
7/Z

Quay + Muller suggest that "the double CGG is suppressed naturally":
archive.is/MfmLd#selectio…

Actually, SARS-CoV-2 kept it in nature. That's not surprising, since it can evade (and likely often disrupt) the immune system.



archive.is/ZFIHa#selectio… Image
8/Z

Out-of-frame introduction of two CGG codons is 1 of many ways in which SARS-CoV-2 looks like a virus that evolved haphazardly in the natural world, as opposed to being intelligently designed by humans

microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/



virological.org/t/tackling-rum… Image
9/Z

This is why copy-choice error (along with codon usage and SARS-CoV-2's furin cleavage site) is 1 of my litmus tests for SARS-CoV-2 lab conspiracists:

If they still screw up on it after May 2020, then they're not credible. 🤷‍♂️



Image
10/Z

Besides:
- Nicholas Wade
- Steven Quay
- Richard Muller
- Bret Weinstein
- Heather Heying
etc., Richard Ebright also peddled the debunked codon talking point.

Yet even Alina Chan knew better.





archive.is/ZFIHa#selectio… Image
11/Z

Evidence won't persuade most SARS-CoV-2 lab conspiracists, anymore than evidence would persuade most HIV conspiracists that HIV evolved naturally from SIV and spread outside of a lab, as opposed to having escaped from scientists' research.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… Image
12/Z

For non-expert conspiracists, it's not about evidence, but instead ideology, etc.



"Pew Research Center survey conducted in March 2020 found that 29% of Americans believed that SARS-CoV-2 was developed intentionally in a lab"
link.springer.com/content/pdf/10… Image
13/Z

Even the scientist Nicholas Wade cited to justify his conspiracism on the furin cleavage site / codon usage, walked his statements back.

Do better next time, David Baltimore.
Don't be another Kary Mullis with Nobel disease.



theguardian.com/world/2021/jun… Image
14/Z

Re: "So an out-of-frame mutation resulting from copy-choice error, easily explains how one ends up with 2 CGG codons without a lab.
That's been known since at least May *2020.*
Hence why I said the conspiracists learn nothing"

Context from @gorskon:
respectfulinsolence.com/2021/06/11/cgg…

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More from @AtomsksSanakan

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
14 May
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
Read 10 tweets
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…
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
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
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
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

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