Thread by @Biol4Ever

I am quite surprised by @angie_rasmussen's comment yesterday at the 7 Oct BMJ webinar
(video: and webpage: bmj.com/covid-19-webin…)
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First, the "Calisher paper" should rather be named the "Daszak paper" as it was found out afterwards by @USRTK that Daszak was the lead author or coordinator of the effort, although he didn't appear as first author - usrtk.org/biohazards-blo…
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This Lancet paper stated: "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
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This was shocking to many of us who use the scientific method to confront arguments, as there was no strong evidence at the time to discard a possible lab accident.
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We wrote to The Lancet asking them for an open discussion. The Lancet rejected our request.
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disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/we-can-speak…

Several rebuttal Letters were sent by various scientists to diverse scientific journals in 2020 and early 2021 to challenge the exclusive focus on the zoonosis hypothesis. None were accepted.
More details here: normalesup.org/~vorgogoz/arti…
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Meanwhile .@angie_rasmussen participated in several articles dismissing "the lab leak theory" (as she calls it on Twitter). This one in @NatureMedicine uses particularly fallacious arguments:
nature.com/articles/s4159…
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-> she combines all "lab leak theories" into one category: "contradictory and sometimes outright ridiculous conspiracy theories that spread faster than the virus itself", "laboratory accident or was intentionally engineered" "Bill Gates, the CCP & 5G wireless network"
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-> her arguments cannot exclude a possible lab accident with a natural sample collected by researchers.
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As explained in our 3rd open letter, several lab-related accident scenarios are possible:
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researchgate.net/publication/35…

There is also a lot to say about the "Critical review" that @angie_rasmussen co-authored in @CellCellPress : biases, cherry-picking, errors.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
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There are issues with Figure 1

https://twitter.com/Drinkwater5Reed/status/1428772330034143237?s=20

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@Ayjchan wrote a very good response to Holmes et al "Critical review" in @Medium
ayjchan.medium.com/a-response-to-…
I hope that other articles will be published to challenge the @CellCellPress "Critical review".
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And now on 7 Oct 2021, @angie_rasmussen wrote: "Nobody credible has dismissed the possibility of laboratory origin.".
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Well, you @angie_rasmussen participated in shutting down the debate in the scientific community and made it very difficult for scientists to argue that we still need more evidence before concluding that the virus is fully natural.
theconversation.com/covid-19-why-t…
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If you really believe that "Nobody credible has dismissed the possibility of laboratory origin", you should have supported @DrTedros who repeatedly asked for a credible investigation and to follow the science.

who.int/news/item/30-0…
who.int/fr/news/item/2…
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.@R_H_Ebright mentioned the possibility of a lab accident in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020 in @ScienceMagazine

science.org/content/articl…
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yet some scientists (including you @angie_rasmussen) were very powerful at closing the debate.
At least there are now 2 papers published in top scientific journals which note that we still don't know whether the virus has a lab accidental or a fully natural origin.
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The first one in 14 May 2021 in @ScienceMagazine by @jbloom_lab et al.
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
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The second one in 17 Sept 2021 in @TheLancet by van Helden et al.
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
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Such articles should have been published in the early days of the pandemic, but it took more than a year. This is not acceptable. Let's hope that these problems with scientific publishing will now be fixed.
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.@andyaschmidt @bertahidalgo @DrKatEpi @timothysheahan & others:
please read ⤵️
nature.com/articles/s4159…

& ask yourself: what does this paper do with the lab accident hypothesis? And does it propose a thorough investigation of all hypotheses?