Thread by @Ayjchan

US intelligence should really release what they know and put to bed all the confusion once and for all.

Were there WIV staffers sick with Covid symptoms in Nov 2019? Did one of their wives die? Or is this intelligence not solid?
bloomberg.com/news/features/…

Dr Anderson was a visiting foreign scientist at WIV up to Nov 2019.

But we have this from @evadou @washingtonpost
"[WIV] records mention protocols for disclosing information to foreigners and the sealing of some research reports for up to two decades."
washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…

How many people in total worked at the WIV?

"there is a procedure for reporting symptoms that correspond with the pathogens handled in high-risk containment labs"

But what about BSL2 (not high-risk containment) at which the live SARSrCoV work was performed?

This strange assertion that scientists or virologists in particular are gossipy folk keeps appearing.

But @evadou reported that WIV had "regular confidentiality training sessions" and “confidentiality management when hosting foreigners”.

***when hosting foreigners***

I love gossip, but if I had to sign pledges on the regular about not sharing embarrassing or confidential info with foreigners, I would be very careful.
For example, what's the most salacious gossip anyone outside China has heard from a WIV virologist about the WIV? Any examples?

Gossip aside, I'd like to ask @TheLancet to please explain their process of identifying and resolving conflicts of interest.

I don't understand why you appointed not just Daszak but also Anderson to your Covid-19 origins taskforce if they have such close relationships with WIV.

Furthermore, ~half of the experts on your #OriginsOfCovid task force signed the infamous @TheLancet letter condemning "conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin".

How will they objectively investigate a conspiracy theory?
thelancet.com/journals/lance…

@TheLancet "Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus."

"Stand with our colleagues on the frontline!"

Dr Anderson also co-authored this withdrawn preprint, originally posted August 2020. Before it was withdrawn in March 2021, it had been cited by the China-WHO joint study & other Chinese scientists as evidence for frozen food #PopsicleOrigins of Covid-19.

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Circling back to the idea that no one at WIV was sick in late 2019 during flu season #NeverSick

At an institute with ~1000 personnel, how can no one be sick? I think back to early 2020, many people I know were sick. Pre-covid, it was very normal for sick people to come to work.

This point has been raised by many people, including in the recent @nytimes article: “Zero infection” would mean not a single case among the hundreds of people at the institute, even though a study found that 4.4% of the Wuhan population had been infected.
nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opi…

Does this mean that somehow working at the WIV had the miraculous power of protecting its workers from covid-19 in the middle of an outbreak where they had not known that the virus could by spread by pre-symptomatic victims?