The people filing patents at the Wuhan Institute of Virology don't seem to be aware that experts outside of China are still trying to pretend no bats were being bred at the WIV.

h/t @C_Small_
patents.google.com/patent/CN11220…
"The invention aims to provide an artificial breeding method of wild bat predators.. wild bat predators are artificially domesticated, bred and passaged to establish an artificial breeding group, thereby providing a brand-new model experimental animal for scientific research."
Is there sufficient detail in the WIV bat breeding patent? @sciencecohen

"Wang also discounts reports that WIV has live bats."
science.org/content/articl…
@sciencecohen Animal models in the lab are utilized, even if they are not the same host you derived a virus from, because it's the best you've got.

Last summer, this German team infected a fruit bat Rousettus aegyptiacus with SARS2 and showed bat-to-bat transmission.
thelancet.com/journals/lanmi…
@sciencecohen The scientists warned "bats are at risk of being infected anthropozoonotically by SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, during the pandemic, all contact with bats (eg, during research programmes or ecological analyses), should be avoided."

Virus hunters could introduce SARS2 to bat reservoirs.
I hope that the significance of this risk is not lost on scientists.

Since we don't even know if the virus is natural in origin, we don't want to be giving it to animals in nature. Although it's arguably too late now. aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/…

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More from @Ayjchan

10 Sep
Thorough analysis by ⁦@theintercept⁩ ⁦@fastlerner⁩ ⁦@MaraHvistendahl⁩ ⁦@maiahibbett

“The real question is whether or not research has the potential to create or facilitate the selection of viruses that might infect humans.” theintercept.com/2021/09/09/cov…
“All but two of the scientists consulted agreed that, whatever title it is given, the newly public experiment raised serious concerns about the safety and oversight of federally funded research.”
Although the study describing 4991/RaTG13 for the first time and Latinne et al.’s paper were described as having been funded by the EHA grant, I didn’t see even a glimpse of the 9 Mojiang mine SARSrCoVs throughout the 900+ pages of text, phylogenetic trees and other figures.
Read 4 tweets
7 Sep
"More than 900 pages of materials related to US.-funded coronavirus research in China were released following a FOIA lawsuit by The Intercept."

Piping hot piece by @fastlerner and @MaraHvistendahl @theintercept
theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new…
@fastlerner @MaraHvistendahl @theintercept “they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten—and they kept records of everyone who got bitten. Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?”
Read 5 tweets
7 Sep
On the new US pandemic preparedness plan...

One of the goals is to: Prevent laboratory accidents and deter bioweapons development.

whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…
"There are compelling reasons to expect that the frequency [of outbreaks] will increase.. laboratories around the world handling dangerous pathogens is growing in part as a response to increasing pandemic risk, boosting the likelihood that a contagious pathogen could be released"
The old ways by which infectious diseases emerge have not suddenly disappeared. As the plan notes, there are now increased zoonotic transmissions from animals driven by human population growth, climate change & habitat loss.

But there are also new ways: lab release, bioweapons.
Read 7 tweets
5 Sep
Going up against experts who believe in a natural origin is tough because their field expertise & seniority are often enough to convince non-scientists of a particular argument.

Many who can’t understand the science put their trust in established experts. This is reasonable.
But what’s even tougher is dealing with the small anti-science crowd that believes in a lab origin and is out to get scientists. As a result even true experts who want an investigation of lab origins are painted with a broad brush as unscientific or even responsible for violence.
If you see anonymous people attacking scientists, regardless of which side, I urge you to ask them to stop or report them. These attacks distract from the scientific issue at hand and make it more difficult to hold scientists and leaders accountable.
Read 10 tweets
4 Sep
“Altos is luring university professors by offering sports-star salaries of $1 million a year or more, plus equity, as well as freedom from the hassle of applying for grants.”

This is a dream scenario for many scientists. technologyreview.com/2021/09/04/103…
If there’s this much money, please set up a department to reproduce key works in the aging field.

If you quickly show which research are reproducible, you will move the whole field forward by decades. That’s a guaranteed way to save scientists from wasting time chasing deadends.
Non-scientists have no idea how much 🧠⏳💸 (100s of mil) are wasted, redundantly, by scientists worldwide each trying to reproduce top publications.

I can’t think of a surer way to accelerate science than to rapidly reveal which studies are reproducible.
vox.com/future-perfect…
Read 5 tweets
3 Sep
Using covidcg.org to keep tabs on the Delta sublineages in North America.

Orange is AY.4, light blue is AY.3, pink is AY.12, dark blue is AY.25.
This is the cumulative % of sequences that are AY.4 in each country in North America over time (past 3 months). Visualized using the Compare Locations feature on covidcg.org
Similar plots for other Delta sublineages here:
Read 4 tweets

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