Until 48 hours before we finished the whole mission, we still had no agreement that we would talk about the laboratory part of the report, so it was right up to the end that it was discussed whether it should be included or not, says Peter Embarek.
We did not get to look at laboratory books or documents directly from the laboratory. We got a presentation, and then we talked about and asked the questions we wanted to ask, but we did not get to look at any documentation at all, says Peter Embarek.
"Extremely unlikely" was a compromise
Great mate. Thanks for that!
He himself has thought about why the laboratory theory met so much resistance...
A completely different type of study is needed to move forward on the research related hypothesis:
For info, here is part of a brief but good exchange I had with one of the WHO team members just before the end of of their mission in Wuhan (9th Feb 21), about the importance of keeping the research-related scenarios on the table and the way to explore them.
Daszak did 4 months of detention in 1986 for stealing a TV set, a hi-fi, a statue and some other items, so that he could indulge in his alcohol fuelled ‘fun’ at other people’s expense.
This fraud later managed to get hold of 100s millions of US taxpayers money.
I may be losing track, but it is at least his third retraction.
There is also on expression of concern for one of his papers.
@thackerpd @KatherineEban @emilyakopp
Here is an important reminder to the Kindergarten epidemiologists who aim to compare themselves to John Snow.
Epidemiology 101:
John Snow never considered his map as proving anything. He relied on fortuitous control groups and cases reviews to establish causality
@mvankerkhove
See for instance this image and extract from a recent paper:
Confirmation of the centrality of the Huanan market among early COVID-19 cases
Reply to Stoyan and Chiu (2024) arxiv.org/pdf/2403.05859…
John Snow was not a colourist of maps, sorry.
I know that popular culture has transformed the Broad Street map into a meme, but that is totally wrong and can only hurt the discipline.
@RichardKock6 @JamieMetzl
1/5 It is difficult to be more mistaken than Robert Garry below, when discussing a supposed essential finding of Worobey et al:
@TheJohnSudworth @MichaelWorobey @hfeldwisch
2/5 As a matter of fact, that pattern is exactly the one expected if proximity to the market was used as a criteria when identifying cases (as is amply recorded).
Going further, there is no easy way to explain that pattern otherwise.
Polling must have been done before Oct 2023, so before:
- Key Science erratum for Pekar et al (invalidated their model)
- Peer reviewed paper showing key statistical flaw in Worobey et al
- DEFUSE draft showing planned work at P2 in China and more
3/26 Then we need cumulative numbers to express the results in a natural way:
- For 19% of experts, a research accident is at least 50% likely
- For 44.6% of experts, a research accident is at least 20% likely
- For 61.3% of experts, a research accident is at least 10% likely