Thread by @Ayjchan

I'm getting requests for comment on the new preprint review on #OriginsOfCovid

This new review is slightly better than the Proximal Origin correspondence (and has a more impressive authorship list) but sticks to the same key points as Proximal Origin.

zenodo.org/record/5075888…

The first author did not disclose his 2014-present Guest Professor position in the Chinese CDC. This was also not disclosed in Proximal Origin. So my understanding is that this appointment was and still is not considered a competing interest.
api.profiles.sydney.edu.au/AcademicProfil…

The preprint ultimately urges a comprehensive investigation of the zoonotic origin of the virus, ideally through collaborative studies. 💯agreed.

But I disagree that "there is substantial body of scientific evidence supporting a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2."

If I can summarize their key points for natural origins and against lab origins:

1. The SARS2 genome could have evolved naturally.

2. Past pandemics have mostly emerged naturally.

3. There was an early Covid-19 cluster at a market selling live animals.

Against lab origins:

1. Past lab escapes usually involved known viruses.

2. We do not know what viruses were in Wuhan labs or what experiments they were doing. But their publications do not suggest that they had or were creating SARS2 in the lab prior to the outbreak.

Due to its similarities to Proximal Origin (reliance on the same key points), I don't want to spend much more time on this review unless I'm called in as a peer reviewer.

But the important point to me is that we must still investigate lab origins.

Many experts in virology and infectious diseases think that a zoonotic origin is more likely. Some of the signatories of the Science letter also have that position.

But they are aware that the less likely scenario could be true and must be investigated.
science.sciencemag.org/content/372/65…

Especially when 4 million lives and counting have been lost.

I think it would be deeply negligent to not properly investigate whether a lab accident might've caused this pandemic (an understatement).

It's difficult to visualize 4 million deaths.

That's about half of NYC's population.

About 70% of Singapore's population.

About the same as Croatia's population.

Evaporated.

The pandemic could have completely natural origins or SARS2 might've emerged due to research fieldwork or lab activities unique to Wuhan.

We need to find out which origin pathway it is. It's not sufficient to guess which is more likely, largely based on precedents and priors.

I know that a lot of people want reassurance right now. You want to know that experts have this covered. That there is a probable natural origin and we can all go back to normal.

Because if this virus did come from a lab, the outcome would be predictably cataclysmic.

But scientists don't have enough info or evidence to provide you with that kind of reassurance.

We only recently realized that the 1977 flu pandemic came from a lab - key information was only published in 2004, close to 3 decades later!
nature.com/articles/nm1141

"Although there is no hard evidence available, the introduction of this 1977 H1N1 virus is now thought to be the result of vaccine trials in the Far East involving the challenge of several thousand military recruits with live H1N1 virus (C.M. Chu, personal communication)."

The #OriginsOfCovid (natural or lab) cannot be answered by scientists alone.

It requires intelligence gathering because we need to know who the earliest patients were, what viruses and experiments were performed in Wuhan labs (these were not published in a timely manner) etc.

It is difficult to ignore the fact that SARS2 was 1st detected so close to THE lab that collects & studies SARSrCoVs.

And that prior to the outbreak, the lab was working with 9 closest relatives to SARS2 at the time. Collected from a mine where miners suffered SARS-like illness.