If indeed the FBI is the only agency willing to tote the lab escape line on the origin of COVID, it's worth reviewing all the ways they screwed up the investigation of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, and misled the public about that investigation. pbs.org/wgbh/frontline…
I mean, in the naughties, the FBI realized they lacked expertise in microbiological investigations. They turned to the Army’s biowarfare lab for advice. A while later, the exact expert who they first turned to at USAMRIID, was the guy they fingered as the murderer.
First they let op-ed columnists and political pressure manipulate them into blaming another guy, a virologist (!) who ultimately sued and got a $5.6 million settlement out of their harassment and false accusations. (He now touts hydroxychloroquine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Anyway, they tried to concoct new scientific tools to identify the lineage of anthrax used in the attacks. Years later, a review by the National Academy of Sciences found that the technique didn’t work. Empirically, they got inconsistent results from retests of the same samples.
They also failed to standardize how samples were obtained, rendering results unreliable.
So, having barked way up the wrong tree, they wound up focusing on the USAMRIID vaccine scientist they first turned to for guidance. They used selective records from his lab to suggest he worked unusual hours, when a fuller review found he always worked long hours, and…
…and the extra time they claimed he spent couldn’t have been sufficient to accomplish what the FBI claims he did. They also searched his basement and found ladies’ underwear, which somehow was pertinent to his supposed campaign of bioterrorism.
Anyway, they hounded him into committing suicide. Then days later made their allegations public. Reviews by the NAS, GAO, and journalists poked enormous holes in the case. So most likely the FBI spent nearly a decade and maybe billions of dollars, and never solved the case.
Embarrassing!
So what have we learned? The FBI lacks internal expertise on microbiology, and is predisposed to go beyond the data and accuse insiders based on scant and flawed evidence.

So yeah, curious how they came to “moderate” confidence that COVID was a lab escape.

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More from @JoshRosenau

30 Aug
This is an interesting up ultimately misleading analogy by Chan. Misleading, alas, in ways she knows are misleading. A virus is not a butterfly. A virus collection is not a butterfly aviary.
Rearing butterflies in a greenhouse is actually quite rare. Some species must undergo long migrations, or have a complex mutualism with one or more host plants, or with other insects (and other critters). Most butterfly houses use the same set of fairly tractable species.
Viruses *require* a host to survive. Often a really specific host. And the host and the virus evolve together over time, and viruses cross over. So such a menagerie would be incredibly complex to maintain, and ineffective at its main goal of cataloging viral diversity.
Read 12 tweets
27 Aug
The areas of disagreement in the IC will surely generate more discussion, but important to emphasize the common ground among intelligence agencies’ assessment of #OriginsOfCovid. This should reasonably bracket future discussions. odni.gov/index.php/news…
✅ Emergence no later than November.
✅ First outbreak in December.
❌ Not genetically engineered.
❌ Not a bioweapon.
❌ No prior knowledge by officials of its emergence.

I suppose that doesn’t rule out knowledge between emergence and the first outbreak.
This rules out the idea, circulating in the weirder corners of “lab leak” world, that the Military World Games were the site of an outbreak in October-November 2019.
Read 9 tweets
26 Aug
This is why bench biologists should spend some time doing field biology. We’re still discovering new species of bats. Every year. In Southeast Asia. The idea that we could quickly survey THE ENTIRE VIROME OF EVERY SPECIES IN THE REGION is batshit stupid.
L O L

They already sampled that cave. If SARS-CoV-2 were there, there’s zero reason not to have said so.

OTOH, there are a *lot* of caves and hollow trees across Southeast Asia. Most never sampled. The closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 was found in a botanical garden!
The proximal origin may not require sampling every virome of every bat in SE Asia, but is no easier. If the proximal source is bush meat, just test the virome of…every wild animal in…Asia? Or tracking down every illegal meat trader for a truthful account of their sourcing.
Read 6 tweets
6 Jul
If #LabLeak #OriginsOfCovid types were smart, they’d take this as a win. thelancet.com/journals/lance…
This is just objectively true. I know the #LabLeakTheorytypes really want the facts to show something else, but right now they’re arguing about what’s possible, not what we know.
And facts don’t care about your feelings. Lab leak loons have succeeded in creating the debate they wanted, but not in producing the substance to keep it going. There’s no data and no plausible hypothesis.
Read 4 tweets
5 Jul
Well this is definitely a sign that #LabLeak discourse is healthy and responsible and not an obvious trolling operation with no goal but to interfere with science.
It’s just about ethics in science journalism, IYKWIMAITYD.
wHY d0nT seyeuhntests tAkE uZ zEriosLeeeeeeeee? we’re just gamifying trolling them and getting them to block us.
Read 5 tweets
5 Jul
Come and take a walk with me Through this green and growing land.
Walk through the meadows and the mountains and the sand.
Walk through the valleys and the rivers and the plains.
Walk through the sun and walk through the rain.

1/
Here is a land full of power and glory,
Beauty that words cannot recall.
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom,
Her glory shall rest on us all, on us all.

2/
From Colorado, Kansas, and the Carolinas too;
Virginia and Alaska, from the old to the new;
Texas and Ohio and the California shore,
Tell me, who could ask for more?

3/
Read 5 tweets

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