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Alina Chan Profile picture
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21 Oct, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Hi ⁦@carlzimmer⁩ ⁦@benjmueller⁩ @nytimes you missed the part of the year 5 report where the WIV/EcoHealth performed GOFROC using MERS, a recognized human pathogen. nytimes.com/2021/10/21/sci…
How can this type of work not be flagged as gain-of-function research of concern?

Knowing what they knew in 2018, there was a reasonable expectation that this type of experiment could enhance the pathogenicity of MERS in humanized animal models and therefore humans.
“But direct evidence for those theories has yet to emerge.”

That’s right. The only thing missing for a lab #OriginOfCovid now is direct evidence.
“Mr. Kessler, the EcoHealth spokesman, said that no coronaviruses studied by the group were genetically similar enough to the virus behind Covid-19 to have played a role in the beginning of the pandemic.”

No more trust. Only verify.
Where is the data describing the 180 novel SARS-like viruses EcoHealth claimed to have sequences for in early 2018?
How can we take the word of an organization that doesn’t even remember what they sent to the NIH one month ago?

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
24 Oct
Looks like @voxdotcom might need to quietly edit its articles again in one year…

Have your #OriginOfCovid reporters been paying any attention to the FOIA’ed and leaked EcoHealth-WIV research proposals and reports in the past 2 months?
This happened not even half a year ago. #LessonsNotLearned @voxdotcom
Let me help to suggest the edits one year in advance.

“SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, wasn’t intentionally created in a lab.”

Correct to:

“Scientists cannot determine whether SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was created in a lab.”
Read 11 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
24 Oct
It makes less and less sense that the WIV didn’t even mention the unique furin cleavage site insertion when they described SARS2 for the first time in their @Nature paper. They had a pipeline for looking for these cleavage sites in rare novel SARSrCoVs. H/t @canardbruno @ydeigin
More recent discussion here:
Before we knew WIV and collaborators had plans to insert novel cleavage sites into novel SARSrCoVs, we were comparing the WIV paper to other first papers on SARS2.

Now that we know WIV was aware and on the lookout for these functional cleavage sites, that comparison is moot.
Read 7 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
23 Oct
A series of conspiracy theories, according to Peter Daszak, becoming plausible hypotheses to be investigated...

June 2020, on TWiV, 1:07:00 mark Daszak says "there is no evidence that it escaped from a lab.. this is a classic conspiracy theory"
Also in June 2020 "Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab" by Peter Daszak in @guardian
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
One month earlier, May 2020, Daszak says a furin cleavage site insertion is a conspiracy theory.

Despite having been the PI that submitted a proposal to DARPA in early 2018 proposing the insertion of novel cleavage sites into novel SARS-like viruses. Image
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
22 Oct
“It’s just another chapter in a sad tale of inadequate oversight, disregard for risk, and insensitivity to the importance of transparency,” said Stanford microbiologist Dr. David Relman. vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/n…
Now more than ever we need to see what is under these redactions in an email conversation about the #OriginOfCovid among top scientists in early 2020.

What did they know about work done in Wuhan at the time?
I told @KatherineEban @VanityFair
“They funded research internationally to help study novel pathogens and prevent against them. But they had no way to know what viruses had been collected, what experiments had been conducted, and what accidents might have occurred.”
Read 12 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
21 Oct
On the EcoHealth+WIV report, I told @theintercept
"one of their chimeric SARS-like viruses caused more severe disease in a humanized animal model than the original virus. After seeing that.. why did they do similar work using the MERS human pathogen?”
theintercept.com/2021/10/21/vir…
@theintercept In August 2021, the EcoHealth Alliance submits the 2019 report to the NIH, 2 years late, detailing the chimeric MERS-CoV work.

In September 2021, the EcoHealth Alliance told @theintercept “The MERS work proposed in the grant is suggested as an alternative and was not undertaken”
Has this middleman organization completely broken down? What is happening in there?
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
21 Oct
From August 2020:

“At the time that [NIH to EcoHealth] grant was revoked, conspiracy theories suggested the virus may have emerged from the Wuhan lab. As NPR has reported, many scientists who study viruses called that scenario nearly impossible.” npr.org/sections/goats…
Bringing this up because “EcoHealth Alliance is one of 11 institutions and research teams receiving grants from NIH, announced [August 2020], to establish the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases.”

EcoHealth is still being funded by NIH to do more virus hunting.
I’m not saying these programs should be defunded but that they should at least be subject to a higher level of accountability and transparent reporting (open access to emerging data) to prevent against worst case scenarios.
Read 4 tweets

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