This statement by Ian Lipkin in @BulletinAtomic imo is not correct:

"features of SARS-CoV-2... could not have been predicted even had someone wanted to engineer a highly transmissible and pathogenic coronavirus"

It assumes we know what other people know.
thebulletin.org/2021/07/the-kn…
@BulletinAtomic Once we acknowledge that we don't know what other scientists know and have in their toolkit, then we can acknowledge that it is not possible to predict what they would engineer, regardless of intent.
@BulletinAtomic If we can access their databases, lab records, theses (including those that are classified), interview lab personnel under confidential conditions, provide a robust whistleblower channel, then we can talk about knowing what other scientists knew in 2019.
@BulletinAtomic What we do know is some labs were serial passaging in different cell lines to isolate novel viruses, switching out receptor-binding domains/spikes, testing CoVs on human respiratory cells and humanized mice/civet models at BL2 & 3 respectively, and inserting FCSs into CoV spikes.
@BulletinAtomic An analogy is looking at a kitchen without knowing what ingredients or recipes the cooking team is bringing, and trying to predict what will be served later that evening. You could rely on previous dishes they've made but it's not a sure way to know what they'll be cooking.

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More from @Ayjchan

25 Jul
Leaders have to come up with a new protocol for emerging diseases: how scientists communicate vital info to the WHO and the public (important!), how peer reviewed confidentiality should be waived in these crises, and how to keep these systems accountable. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…
What I’m worried about is that this pandemic will drive leaders and scientists in the opposite direction towards less transparency.

What if more scientists start using Protonmail, Signal, and burner phones for future communications regarding emergencies?
The recent FOIAs revealing highly confidential conversations (or redactions) are likely to cause more people to shift to secure, non-FOI’able channels.

If so, this may be the one of the last pandemics/outbreaks we can shed much light on via FOIA.
Read 4 tweets
24 Jul
An interview of Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance from a year ago:

"Daszak says that around 16,000 bats have been sampled and around 100 new SARS-like viruses discovered."

May we please see the data concerning these 100 new SARS-like viruses discovered?
economist.com/science-and-te…
Very next sentence: "In particular, some bats found in China are now known to harbour coronaviruses that seem pre-adapted to infect people."

Did another top expert in the field use the word "pre-adapted"?
We know that not all of these novel SARSrCoVs (and their sequences) are in the public domain.

Even the most recently published RaTG15 was collected in 2015.
Read 5 tweets
22 Jul
New book by the director of Wellcome Trust. @ianbirrell notes that it does not describe the story of the Daszak-orchestrated Lancet letter to "strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin".
#OriginsOfCovid
unherd.com/2021/07/how-sc…
@ianbirrell The book reveals how several top experts in virology and infectious diseases had initially pegged the lab leak hypothesis as the most likely scenario. Ed Holmes was “80% sure this thing had come out of a lab”. Kristian Andersen 60-70%; Andrew Rambaut, Bob Garry not far behind.
Even after the Feb 1 call among international experts, Jeremy Farrar said “On a spectrum if 0 is nature and 100 is release I am honestly at 50... My guess is this will remain grey unless there is access to the Wuhan lab — and I suspect that is unlikely.”
Read 15 tweets
21 Jul
I want to counter the specific idea that the US was secretly outsourcing and funding gain-of-function research while it had been "banned" in the US.

The work was not banned; similar work was and continues to be funded and done by the US & other countries.
Read 9 tweets
20 Jul
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:
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.
Read 10 tweets
20 Jul
Very heated exchange on gain-of-function and #OriginsOfCovid between Rand Paul and Tony Fauci ~50min into today's hearing "The Path Forward: A Federal Perspective on the COVID-19 Response"
An old thread by me that explains why Paul and Fauci are talking past each other on this point of whether NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan:
This is a more recent thread again by me on how the federal definition of GOFROC leaves a lot of wiggle room for interpretation and why, even among scientists, it can be very difficult to agree on what is GOF using the federal definitions.
Read 6 tweets

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