Thread by @Ayjchan

This Comment in @Nature sounds a bit like a sales gimmick.

Hurry while sales last!

We are now 1.5 years into the pandemic. It's a bit late to be worrying about a closing window of opportunity.

Brace yourselves for a long and logical thread.
nature.com/articles/d4158…

@Nature (1) It is irrational that the Chinese gov would not have already conducted all these basic follow-up studies suggested by international experts sent by the @WHO

It's almost r*cist to imagine China would need Western scientists to tell it how to track the #OriginsOfCovid

@Nature @WHO Contact tracing of early cases, supply chain surveys & serological surveys are listed as priority. Do they think China, which skilfully traced the origin of the first SARS outbreak despite limited technologies 2 decades ago, hasn't already done these basic follow-up?

@Nature @WHO It's in their own national security interests to figure out where a killer virus popped out from in the middle of Wuhan, a metropolitan city.

Seriously, you think they haven't already tracked it, and that they need WHO to send scientists in to help China?

(2) The authors of this Comment don't seem to have good awareness of why the joint study has lost all credibility and stalled.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1407150789223759874

They even wrote this in the Comment: "The huge burden of preparatory work was shouldered by the team in China"

Do they understand the problem is that all the original patient and covid-19 data is only accessible to the Chinese half of the team?

It's a massive problem that the international members sent by @WHO were only given access to sparse, largely aggregated data.

How can they verify if the analysis is correct if they don't have access to the original data?

@WHO (3) The @WHO convened team emphasizes that it is clear the 174 known December 2019 cases were not likely to be the earliest ones and are "less urgent for understanding origins". Yet, they cite an analysis of these December cases as supporting a zoonotic spillover event.

@WHO Claims of a zoonotic origin in the Holmes et al. paper largely relied on the China-WHO's analysis, which we know is riddled with errors. In essence, the WHO team authors are citing a friendly analysis of their own analysis. It's misleading to not point this out in their comment.

I can't believe not more scientists are calling this out. Have we entered an era of science where this kind of reverse data engineering from pixelated error-full pictures using pathfinder in Adobe Illustrator is acceptable at the best journals?

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1429062218663043078

To dump kerosene on this garbage fire, the Comment says that a new analysis that actually unearths REAL DATA from early 2020 "did not contribute any new information to the origins question".

Hi @WHO team do you understand why you were even sent to China? You were supposed to get data.

You don't get to not get data and turn around and diminish people out here who actually get data.

@WHO (4) "we prioritized understanding the role of labs in the early days of the epidemic, the overall lab biosafety procedures and potential staff illness or absenteeism owing to respiratory disease in the late part of 2019"

Who wrote this? This is pure comedy.

@WHO How is it a priority if you only spent 2-3 hours at the WIV and only 4 out of 313 pages discussed the lab leak hypothesis? And using a header of "conspiracy theories"?

You were shown around the WIV's BSL4 lab when actually all the bat coronavirus research had been conducted at lower biosafety BSL2 and 3. You did not have access to research or personnel records. You did not even ask for access to the WIV's currently missing pathogen database.

Does any single member on the @WHO team consider this process of inquiry sufficient to determine if a pathogen might have leaked from a lab? Would you like to run your methods by some biosafety and biosecurity experts?

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1359892457597652994

@WHO Guys, your team leader, who didn't sign your Comment told everyone what really happened.

With the Chinese counterpart, he had negotiated the inclusion of the lab leak hypothesis in the report under the condition it would not recommend any "studies to further that hypothesis".

He also said a fieldwork accident falls under one of the likely hypotheses of direct transmission from bats to humans. He further expressed concerns about the Wuhan CDC move to a new location...

“We know that when you move a lab, it disturbs everything…That entire procedure is always a disruptive element in the daily work routine of a lab.”

These comments from your team leader contradict the report's conclusion that a lab leak was extremely unlikely.

(5) This joint study approach has proven itself unfit for obtaining actual data or information that can help in the search for even a natural origin of Covid-19.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1425963964425457664

Your report is full of significant errors. It should be taken down immediately for correction before the scientific literature is completely corrupted.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1424177562259972096

Your methods of assessing the likelihoods of Covid-19 origin hypotheses do not meet standards of scientific rigor.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1360397010336182276

In your comment, you mentioned 76,000 patient cases reviewed but failed to detail that these were cut down on the Chinese side to only 92 individuals, who were only followed up with in Jan *2021*. Unsurprisingly, this led to a total of zero new early cases being identified.

Not only that, but you also didn't have case information from one of the central hospitals that first identified Covid-19!

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1383883360926240774

Conclusion: I'm not worried about "adding several months of delay" renegotiating terms of the joint study and appointing a new team.

This team should take those months to reflect on what they did and why they're even on this joint study.

I am certain a credible investigation will happen with or w/o @WHO. In this digital age where almost everything is recorded, it is only a matter of time before the origin of the virus is determined. The question is how much theater we have to endure until the answer is revealed.

@WHO Btw this happened in early 2020. Farms in south China that supplied Wuhan with wild animals were shutdown WITHOUT testing.

If the authorities suspected these farms as SARS2's origin, why didn't they collect any samples for testing?

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1416194351760166913

@WHO Could've answered everyone's questions about whether SARS-CoV-2 came from wild animals caught or farmed in South China (the SARS-related coronavirus spillover hotspot in China) an entire year ago.

No interest in knowing? Or they already know where this virus came from?

@WHO The sad part is we already knew about this extreme disinterest in finding the origin of Covid-19 from their February 2021 press conference in Wuhan.

No apparent urgency in testing their own banked blood donations or patient samples for signs of SARS2.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1359893607474429953

@WHO But in the first SARS outbreak, these contact tracing efforts and animal/human tests for the virus had largely been done by May of that year - only 2 months after the virus was first isolated.

For more details please read the first section of: ayjchan.medium.com/a-response-to-…

There's no technological reason why finding the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 should take years. It's well within the capabilities of a country with top virologists to quickly find the source of a bat virus from South China emerging in Wuhan.

It was 2019. Not the 1900s or 1800s.

But if some experts insist that tracking the #OriginsOfCovid is as difficult as finding the origins of viruses that emerged in the middle of nowhere land from the times of our great grandparents...

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1416193294657232899

Some folks suffer a major misunderstanding that finding the origin of covid-19 requires sampling thousands of bat. It doesn’t. That’s not the proximal origin.

And even if you did want to sample some bats, I recommend starting in the Mojiang mine.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1371185930510405636

What is the Mojiang mine?

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1425799334797402119