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Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

Jun 22, 2021 • 24 tweets • 9 min read • Read on X

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On Singapore’s recent delta variant covid cluster: “The cluster’s index case, Case 62873, is an 88-year-old cleaner who worked at Changi Airport Terminal 3. He tested positive on May 5 despite being fully vaccinated.”
channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore…

Another delta cluster in Singapore at a hospital: “A fully vaccinated 46-year-old female nurse at TTSH, or case 62541, became the first case linked to the cluster after she tested positive on Apr 27.”

“In the Delta variant clusters, Prof Leo has seen vaccinated cases with family members who have tested positive. This means it could still be possible for vaccinated people to spread the virus.”

“The experts stressed that new variant strains arise when viruses evolve to adapt and evade human defences”

“Disorganised, half-hearted attempts are exactly the prescription for viral mutants.”

Singapore’s tracking of covid cases is incredible. It’s only when you can clearly follow the chains of transmission that you can understand whether a new variant can infect and be spread by vaccinated individuals (only Pfizer and Moderna in Singapore btw).

The good thing is that full vaccination still confers protection against new variants, even if efficacy is slightly reduced. So it’s very important for people in high risk groups to get vaccinated, especially in places where there are low vax rates and new variants circulating.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1407056624548777988

For example, did any of the fully vaccinated airport workers who still got infected with the Delta end up transmitting it to other people?

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1407056624548777988

In India:
“from his experience, he said patients with “reinfections have not landed in the Intensive Care Unit.”
vice.com/en/article/epn…

@romeo_ph20

Very useful covid tracking app for Singaporean cases
h/t @romeo_ph20
covid.viz.sg

@romeo_ph20

@romeo_ph20 Looking at the Bukit Merah market cluster, you can see (if the data is indeed correct) that some vaccinated people are transmitting covid / SARS2 to other people.

Green = fully vaccinated (pfizer/moderna)
Yellow = 1 dose

The selected (blue) vaccinated person is 23 years old.

@romeo_ph20

@romeo_ph20 The selected vaccinated person in this cluster is 39 years old. A chef working at Changi prison.

36 year old dealer at Marina Bays Sands Casino

18 year old national service man at the Civil Defence Academy

The site also tells you who was asymptomatic or symptomatic when they tested positive for covid-19.
For example, in this mini-cluster of 3 fully vaccinated people, the connector person was asymptomatic.

https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/1404395240136523777

The purpose of getting vaccinated is preventing severe disease/death. And when your community has high vaccination rates, the likelihood of clusters is diminished. This protects the elderly/vulnerable who may not be fully protected even after vaccination.

https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/1404395240136523777

This Covid-tracking app in Singapore is super useful for understanding how transmissible the virus is among vaccinated individuals.
Green = 2 doses
Yellow = 1 dose
The central person is 35 years old. This looks like a workplace cluster. 3 fully vaxed people transmitted to others.

I'm not too worried about vax'ed people being infected because ideally the vaccine would've protective effect. But I'm worried about the people who distrust the healthcare system and refuse to get vax'ed. The virus can spread via vax'ed people. covid.viz.sg

@CovidCg

Wanted to give a shoutout to our own site @CovidCg covidcg.org you can track the lineages and variants in each country over time.

For example, Singapore, delta / B.1.617.2 is shown in light blue.
covidcg.org/?tab=group&gro…

In the USA you can see the % of sequenced SARS-CoV-2 that are the delta / B.1.617.2 / Indian (light blue) have also been growing, displacing the alpha / B.1.1.7 / UK (dark blue) over time. Gamma / P.1 / Brazilian is in green.

Not as striking as the UK. Delta has completely overtaken Alpha.

Plotting similar data for other countries, but measured in counts (like for Singapore above) as opposed to % (US and UK above).

Australia, Japan, S Korea, S Africa.

Another way to use covidcg.org is to plot the new % of sequences that are delta variant per month in each country of interest.

For example, in Singapore, 94% of the June sequences were the delta variant. UK 92%, Australia 60%, Japan 46%, USA 23% etc.

Switching the plot to show the new % of sequences that are the alpha variant per month.

The beta variant.

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

May 14

https://twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1922311187230031976

The soft corruption behind the Proximal Origin letter must be investigated and the authors and their handlers held accountable.

How else will you deter scientists from hiding the involvement of powerful funders in their papers and their "scientific" conclusions?

https://twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1922311187230031976

https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1902056288265367989

Jeremy Farrar, the scientist who orchestrated the Proximal Origin letter was not named as an author or acknowledged. He was the director of the Wellcome Trust and had funded one of the authors.

Farrar is now @WHO chief scientist.

https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1902056288265367989

https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1404546703542439942

@WHO None of these major funders who funded the Proximal Origin authors were acknowledged in the paper although Kristian Andersen privately thanked them for their advice and leadership as they worked on the letter.

https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1404546703542439942

Read 7 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

May 7

The executive order signed on Monday was not a ban or moratorium on risky pathogen research with the potential to cause pandemics.

It was a charge for OSTP and other agency heads to come up with a new policy & strategy for governing and tracking such research in under 180 days.

I do not see any wording in the executive order asking scientists to pause their research if it falls under the definition of dangerous gain-of-function.
whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…

https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1919864978024366213

The executive order is a step in the right direction and I hope that @WHOSTP47 will come up with an improved policy and strategy for pathogen research with catastrophic risks.

But right now, the executive order is not a ban or even a moratorium.

https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1919864978024366213

Read 8 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

Apr 10

Regarding the possibility that Covid may have spread at the Oct 2019 Wuhan military games, my main question is why noone across multiple countries had the presence of mind to collect & store samples from patients till tests were available.

There should be changes going forward.

According to Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness: "Service members were not tested... as testing was not available at this early stage of the pandemic."
freebeacon.com/wp-content/upl…

"athletes noticed that something was amiss in the city of Wuhan.. described it as a “ghost town.”"

"athletes from several countries.. claimed publicly they had contracted what they believed to be covid.. based on their symptoms and how their illnesses spread to their loved ones"
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

Read 13 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

Mar 13

I encourage experts who have insisted on a natural origin of Covid-19 to gracefully change their public stance instead of doubling down on the threadbare evidence for the wet market hypothesis.

You could acknowledge that you initially trusted your colleagues in China/US to tell the truth. But time and time again over the past 5 years, it has been shown that they withheld critical evidence from you and the public:
1⃣The 2018 Defuse proposal
2⃣Low biosafety standards for experiments where live viruses are produced and used in human cell infection studies
3⃣Risky pathogen experiments and surprising gain of function
4⃣Missing pathogen sample database, viruses discovered after 2015 largely not shared with US collaborators
5⃣Closest virus relative that we know of was collected from a mine where people died from suspected SARS-like virus infection

The studies published last month where Wuhan scientists experimented with potentially dangerous pathogens at low biosafety opened your eyes to the level of reckless ambition in their research.

Given these betrayals, it is fully within reason to retract your trust and re-evaluate all the available evidence. Those of you who have access to intelligence could say that the non-public evidence has cast a new light on the public evidence and strengthens the case for a lab origin of Covid-19.

This is better than continuing to argue that you somehow know all the viruses in the Wuhan lab's collection and somehow know they didn't follow through on their 2018 plans to put furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses and study these at low biosafety exactly like they said they would.

For those experts who haven't even looked at the Defuse proposal and its drafts, the Wuhan-US scientists clearly said they were interested in furin cleavage sites at the spike S1/S2 junction, and would insert these into novel SARS-like viruses in the lab (not closely related to the 2003 SARS virus as that would be dangerous). They would test the ability of these SARS-like viruses with inserted cleavage sites to infect human cells and cause pathogenesis in vivo.

The Wuhan lab was regularly synthesizing novel coronavirus genomes without leaving any sign of lab manipulation. They used a protocol with trypsin-supplemented media to retain cleavage sites in the viruses. They did much of the work, including infection experiments in human cells, at BSL-2. Their US collaborator Ralph Baric has repeatedly criticized them for doing the work at low biosafety.

h/t @emilyakopp for FOIA'ing the Defuse proposal drafts.

Some virologists may argue that the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 doesn't look canonical. You should read the citation in the Defuse draft for the computational model used to predict furin cleavage sites. The paper says it doesn't rely on the canonical motif and instead looks at a 20-residue sequence to make its predictions. The PRRAR motif exists in a feline coronavirus, MERS has a PRXXR S1/S2 furin cleavage site, and the RRXR motif is a functional furin cleavage site in numerous other proteins.

Read 13 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

Mar 12

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1899828081075896802

According to Zeit Online, German Chancellery consulted with US Director of National Intelligence in 2023, who said there was nothing to the lab leak hypothesis.

They doubted "Eierköpfe" (egghead) scientists in intelligence knew better than leading virologists around the world.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1899828081075896802

In the US, something similar was happening where scientists in intelligence agencies also assessed a likely lab origin of Covid but were sidelined.

"The dominant view within the intelligence community was clear when... the director of national intelligence, and a couple of her senior analysts, briefed Biden... concluded with “low confidence” that Covid-19 had emerged when the virus leapt from an animal to a human."
wsj.com/politics/natio…

In both cases, government leaders favored the opinions of leading virologists over the scientists working in intelligence. Even though some of the leading virologists were public advocates and funders of "gain-of-function" research of concern with pathogens.

Read 4 tweets