Thread by @Ayjchan

Just listened to this terrific podcast interview on the #OriginsOfCovid of @KatherineEban @VanityFair by @PeterAttiaMD

Like Eban says, it's one of these stories where you feel like you can't even make this stuff up.
peterattiamd.com/katherineeban2/

@KatherineEban @VanityFair @PeterAttiaMD There's a good discussion in the podcast about the difficulty of finding out who are the few people who know the origin of the virus (have evidence of it) and why finding a whistleblower may take decades or maybe even never. Related story:

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1417482521860730880

I agree with @KatherineEban that the most credible sources on the #OriginsOfCovid are those that are asking for a proper investigation of plausible hypotheses, not the people on either side who insist that the virus is almost certainly natural or almost certainly from a lab.

My stance is unchanged.

May 2020 preprint: "The lack of definitive evidence to verify or rule out adaptation in an intermediate host species, humans, or a laboratory, means that we need to take precautions against each scenario to prevent re-emergence."
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

May 2021 letter in @ScienceMagazine
"We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data."
science.sciencemag.org/content/372/65…

I know a lot of people think I'm an avid advocate for the lab leak theory, and that the pre-adaptation hypothesis is a point in the favor of a lab origin. It is not.

There are natural scenarios that can lead to a pre-adapted/well-adapted virus being detected in Wuhan, Dec 2019.

I have spent the last 1+ year advocating for an investigation of lab origin hypotheses because of an absence of such an investigation and seemingly little motivation in the scientific community to look into what was branded as a conspiracy theory in Feb 2020.

Like Eban says in the podcast, this delay of 1+ year in looking into the origin of Covid-19 may have cost us the answer.

In Feb 2020, it would've been a search for a minor outbreak, knowing its origin would've informed global response.

In July 2021, we're looking for the culprit of a pandemic that has killed 4 million people, infected 200 million, and cost the world tens of trillions.

Knowing the origin can only inform future global mitigation strategies.

The nature and urgency of the question has changed. And so has the calculation of the risks and benefits of answering the question: Where did this virus come from?