[Worobey] would like to see the scientific and intelligence communities collaborate on the problem. "I would hope and assume that this 90-day sprint is going to turn into a nice long jog where there could be some back-and-forth."
3/4 Crucial point US IC elements agree on:
"China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged".
So could we *please* collectively move on from claim that WIV database removal in Sept 2019 was part of a cover-up/conspiracy?
4/4 That idea is DIRECTLY AT ODDS with the scientific evidence we have generated that the Wuhan outbreak began no earlier than Oct 2019.
1: I want to follow up the thread below with some additional clarification of why we hypothesize that there may be no real #SARSCoV2 genomes transitional between lineages A and B.
2: @daoyu15 has written a thread asserting that we "toss any genomes that don't fit your conclusions away". I'm afraid this is incorrect on multiple counts.
3: What we show is that many of the putatively transitional genomes bear obvious evidence of being artefacts - probably due to bioinformatic pipelines, rather than sequencing errors per se. (Issues like calling a site with poor coverage to be the base of a reference genome.)
3: To explain, let me introduce you to 'lineage A' and 'lineage B', aka 'clade II' and 'clade I', respectively, in this paper by Zhang et al. These lineages co-circulated in China during the early days of the pandemic, and they differ at two key sites.
The study, led by Dr. Elisabetta Tanzi, also includes heavy-hitters of molecular evolution @sergeilkp and Sudhir Kumar. I greatly admire both but respectfully disagree with their conclusions here and feel it is important to explain why. 2/
Dr. Tanzi led an earlier study claiming to find evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in a boy in Northern Italy who presented with measles symptoms in Nov 2019. 3/
Here I explain why I (continue to) think that a zoonotic origin of SARS-CoV-2 is more likely than a lab leak scenario - even though I signed 'The Science Letter'. 1/