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Alina Chan Profile picture
@Ayjchan
Sep 28, 2021 • 11 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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Virologists claiming SARS-CoV-2 spilled over at multiple markets are, imo, unintentionally, participating in a disinformation campaign.

It has been repeatedly clarified that the market the earliest "known" covid case visited was a Walmart-equivalent RT-mart. Not a wet market.
Please see page 38 of the China-WHO annexes.

This superstore market that the first case was brutally exposed to was *GASP* in the same district as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
who.int/docs/default-s…
Yet, journalists are still reporting misinformed experts as saying that they're stunned that a lab escape virus would make its way to a market/superstore.

Do some scientists no longer buy their own groceries? How do you expect Wuhan scientists to get food to cook and eat?
If experts continue to be stunned by why so many early cases were linked to markets, please take a good look at the criteria used to identify early cases in December 2019/early January 2020.

Page 161 China-WHO joint study annexes.
At the time, a superspreading event had occurred at Huanan Seafood Market. Unsurprisingly, investigators raced to track cases linked to Huanan. Without a link to the Huanan market, cases were only considered if they exhibited 3 severe pneumonia symptoms - favoring the elderly.
This is corroborated by the map (has errors!) of December 2019 cases in Wuhan. The home addresses of patients colocalizes with where the elderly were concentrated in Wuhan.
ayjchan.medium.com/a-response-to-…
Compare left (figure from Holmes et al. preprint, they didn't have access to data so used Adobe Illustrator to reverse engineer China-WHO figure) and right (population density in b, elderly density in e).
From the reports of the earliest Covid cases in Wuhan, it's straightforward that what we were seeing were not the earliest cases. Even WHO said so to the Washington Post...
"WHO spokesman, said.. the question of where the first-known patient lived relative to the river was not relevant to competing hypotheses about the origin of the virus.. because “the current first known patient is most probably not the first case.”"
washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…
I look forward to debunking the multi-market myth on the AAAS panel in ~36 hours.
I'll try and muster my best facepalm.

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
Apr 10
Regarding the possibility that Covid may have spread at the Oct 2019 Wuhan military games, my main question is why noone across multiple countries had the presence of mind to collect & store samples from patients till tests were available.

There should be changes going forward.
According to Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness: "Service members were not tested... as testing was not available at this early stage of the pandemic."
freebeacon.com/wp-content/upl…
"athletes noticed that something was amiss in the city of Wuhan.. described it as a “ghost town.”"

"athletes from several countries.. claimed publicly they had contracted what they believed to be covid.. based on their symptoms and how their illnesses spread to their loved ones"
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 13 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Mar 13
I encourage experts who have insisted on a natural origin of Covid-19 to gracefully change their public stance instead of doubling down on the threadbare evidence for the wet market hypothesis.

You could acknowledge that you initially trusted your colleagues in China/US to tell the truth. But time and time again over the past 5 years, it has been shown that they withheld critical evidence from you and the public:
1⃣The 2018 Defuse proposal
2⃣Low biosafety standards for experiments where live viruses are produced and used in human cell infection studies
3⃣Risky pathogen experiments and surprising gain of function
4⃣Missing pathogen sample database, viruses discovered after 2015 largely not shared with US collaborators
5⃣Closest virus relative that we know of was collected from a mine where people died from suspected SARS-like virus infection

The studies published last month where Wuhan scientists experimented with potentially dangerous pathogens at low biosafety opened your eyes to the level of reckless ambition in their research.

Given these betrayals, it is fully within reason to retract your trust and re-evaluate all the available evidence. Those of you who have access to intelligence could say that the non-public evidence has cast a new light on the public evidence and strengthens the case for a lab origin of Covid-19.

This is better than continuing to argue that you somehow know all the viruses in the Wuhan lab's collection and somehow know they didn't follow through on their 2018 plans to put furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses and study these at low biosafety exactly like they said they would.
For those experts who haven't even looked at the Defuse proposal and its drafts, the Wuhan-US scientists clearly said they were interested in furin cleavage sites at the spike S1/S2 junction, and would insert these into novel SARS-like viruses in the lab (not closely related to the 2003 SARS virus as that would be dangerous). They would test the ability of these SARS-like viruses with inserted cleavage sites to infect human cells and cause pathogenesis in vivo.

The Wuhan lab was regularly synthesizing novel coronavirus genomes without leaving any sign of lab manipulation. They used a protocol with trypsin-supplemented media to retain cleavage sites in the viruses. They did much of the work, including infection experiments in human cells, at BSL-2. Their US collaborator Ralph Baric has repeatedly criticized them for doing the work at low biosafety.

h/t @emilyakopp for FOIA'ing the Defuse proposal drafts.Image
Image
Some virologists may argue that the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 doesn't look canonical. You should read the citation in the Defuse draft for the computational model used to predict furin cleavage sites. The paper says it doesn't rely on the canonical motif and instead looks at a 20-residue sequence to make its predictions. The PRRAR motif exists in a feline coronavirus, MERS has a PRXXR S1/S2 furin cleavage site, and the RRXR motif is a functional furin cleavage site in numerous other proteins.
Read 13 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Mar 12
According to Zeit Online, German Chancellery consulted with US Director of National Intelligence in 2023, who said there was nothing to the lab leak hypothesis.

They doubted "Eierköpfe" (egghead) scientists in intelligence knew better than leading virologists around the world.
In the US, something similar was happening where scientists in intelligence agencies also assessed a likely lab origin of Covid but were sidelined.

"The dominant view within the intelligence community was clear when... the director of national intelligence, and a couple of her senior analysts, briefed Biden... concluded with “low confidence” that Covid-19 had emerged when the virus leapt from an animal to a human."
wsj.com/politics/natio…
In both cases, government leaders favored the opinions of leading virologists over the scientists working in intelligence. Even though some of the leading virologists were public advocates and funders of "gain-of-function" research of concern with pathogens.
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Mar 12
German intelligence now assesses a 80-95% likelihood of a lab origin of Covid-19. Image
Image
Links:
nzz.ch/international/…
berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesell…
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Mar 9
I am not 100% convinced Covid came from a lab. I still think there is a small chance the virus emerged in Wuhan without the help of research activities. However, this would mean:

1⃣ The Wuhan-US scientists' entire framework about the spillover risks of SARS-like viruses, building on research and data collected over more than a decade, was incorrect.

2⃣ A highly transmissible, super stealthy virus well adapted for causing uncontrollable outbreaks in multiple animal species left zero trace of its origin in the wildlife or fur farms of China/SE Asia after emerging in only Wuhan out of 1000s of other populous cities.

3⃣ Out of all possible viruses to cause a pandemic and all times for a pandemic to occur, it was an unprecedented SARS-like virus with a novel furin cleavage site, matching the description of a 2018 US-Wuhan research proposal, emerging in Wuhan where scientists worked with such viruses at low biosafety, less than 2 years after said proposal was drafted.

It's not impossible that leading experts were completely mistaken about the exceedingly low odds of such viruses emerging in Wuhan.

It's not impossible that, in 2019, nature churned out a virus matching the scientists' 2018 research plans and that virus emerged in only Wuhan of all places.

But you'd have to be very motivated to believe Covid-19 emerged naturally.
We are unlikely to reach 100% certainty unless a whistleblower appears or the Chinese authorities one day assess that it is in their interest to share the truth.

I am still hopeful that this will happen one day. I believe in human courage.
Before that day, there are several routes of investigation that remain to be explored by the US gov.

Conducting a rigorous, credible investigation of Covid origins can unearth more key evidence while also informing the implementation of new measures to prevent lab pandemics.
Read 5 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Mar 8
Top journals have the power to set global biosafety standards.

It's a problem that they do not see this as their moral responsibility. By publishing & celebrating risky research done at questionable biosafety, they incentivize the 'work fast break things' model of research.
I've given up on journals taking the initiative to be responsible members of the scientific community.

It is up to the U.S. government to tell them to behave responsibly or do business elsewhere.
I would love to be corrected if any top journal can show us that fostering a culture of accountability, scientific integrity, and 'do no harm' is one of their measurable goals as an organization & a strict criteria for decision-making regarding what research/groups to publish.
Read 6 tweets

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