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22 Oct, 20 tweets, 9 min read
Please send your feedback to SAGO@who.int before the 27th Oct.

When it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck - it must be a duck.
So personally I will be asking for some ducks to be removed and replaced with independent experts in biosafety and biosecurity.
In my judgement:

Duck #1: Marion Koopmans

"Lab in Wuhan is a ‘Debunked Theory’ just like meteorites or snakes"

21 Feb 20, KNAW-symposium, ‘From spillover to global threat: science in action’, moderator Ron Fouchier.

knaw.nl/nl/actueel/nie…
‘Not a grain of evidence’:

'What else would you do? [--] Apart from - you know - an audit: open the book, open the freezer, show everything which is an inspection - that is a very different mechanism.

***I have my doubts that this would yield anything new.***’
First group listed on the Erasmus Viroscience “Collaborators” webpage is EcoHealth Alliance.

"The Department of Virology is closely involved in the EcoHealth Alliance"
web.archive.org/web/2021091402…
With such pre-formed opinions Marion, is a favourite of Chinese media which have been involved in di-information.

She is particularly well liked by Dr Yungui Yang, the Chinese member of SAGO:
news.cgtn.com/news/2021-09-0…
And she is dead set to keep implementing the agenda of the WHO-China mission, which calls for rejecting any research-related accident:
Duck #2: Kathrin Summermatter

One of the only 2 candidates with biosafety experience (out of 26!).

She is a rarity - a biosafety experts that has been constantly calling a possible lab-related origin a 'classic conspiracy theory':

headtopics-com.translate.goog/ch/stammt-das-…
Going as far as saying that in any case a lab-acquired infection is fine, because lab workers are well trained and would immediately be isolated.

In doing so, she ignores the first 2 (out of 4) SARS primary cases in Beijing in 2004: NOT detected.
Great!

bit.ly/2ZwQo4V
She has been constantly praising the safety of Chinese labs, implying that such an accident is impossible:
Which show how blind she is, as Chinese experts themselves have decried the structural biosafety issues in their labs: lack of qualified people, lack of funding (sometime no maintenance budget!), poor processes, lack of supervision, etc.

Yuan Zhiming of the WIV (Oct 2019):
Yang Zhanqiu of Wuhan University (Feb 2020):

"Lab trash can contain man-made viruses, bacteria or microbes with a potentially deadly impact [--].
Some researchers discharge laboratory materials into the sewer after experiments without a specific biological disposal mechanism”
‘Notice on Strengthening the Biosafety Management of Pathogenic Microorganism Laboratories’ (9th Feb 2020)

"some ‘problems and risks’ still remain"
then it list many shortcomings, including unauthorised lab activities, improper storage and disposal, etc:
bit.ly/2XHKUas
Duck #3: Supaporn Wacharapluesadee ('Chu').

Supaporn has been extremely close to Pater Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance since she was picked up by Callahan as the main DARPA asset in Thailand as early as 2004.
siliconicarus.org/2020/07/31/dar…
Since then she has worked very closely with Peter Daszak, Olival & Epstein of EHA - showing herself as a very reliable anchor for their work in Thailand - funded via DARPA and NIH.

Her whole career was defined by her allegiance to EHA and Callahan.
virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…
Supaporn is a subcontractor on NIH grant U01-AI151787 for $107 million USD in 2020-25.

Her team at Chulalongkorn University is to receive USD 1.07 million under that grant.

She has a obvious conflict reviewing the actions of her long time funder, EHA.
documentcloud.org/documents/2105…
She also did the bat guano epiphany paper of 2013 with Olival and Epstein from EcoHealth Alliance - a few months after the Mojiang’s workers deaths, using old DARPA samples and DARPA PREDICT funding, and never mentioning Mojiang.

Serendipity.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/artic…
And she was back with Linfa Wang (who never disclosed DEFUSE) in a Nature paper about bat and pangolin BatCoVs similar to SARS-CoV-2 in Feb 2021, just when the WHO team was in Wuhan.
nature.com/articles/s4146…

Fortuitous timing.

(Unfortunately the pangolins have been debunked)
Anyway that is my list of top ducks.

Please check the SAGO list, reach your own conclusions, and send your feedback to SAGO@who.int before the 27th Oct.

And please ask for more biosafety and biosecurity experts to be included.
who.int/news-room/arti…
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More from @gdemaneuf

Gilles Demaneuf Profile picture
23 Oct
A very good article by Simon Wain-Hobson in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a newspaper of reference in Germany:

faz.net/aktuell/wissen…
"Nothing goes right all the time. So it is in research labs. Despite sophisticated safety installations and strict rules in virology labs accidents and leaks happen. Indeed, they are underreported." Image
"The virologists doing this work said it would help them predict the next pandemic virus. Armed with this insight, they claimed it would be possible to develop preventive vaccines and drugs that could be frozen and stored."

"Sadly, it’s a pipedream."
Read 7 tweets
Gilles Demaneuf Profile picture
23 Oct
Who would have thought so?
"African diplomats are becoming exasperated by China's demands for diplomatic support on every issue from Covid-19's origins to the human rights of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province,.."
"..whether it's in the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, diplomatic sources told Africa Confidential."

"Chinese diplomats email, text and call their African counterparts directly to get them to sign joint letters, support motions and other measures.."
Read 7 tweets
Gilles Demaneuf Profile picture
23 Oct
Angela Rasmussen:

“Withholding data from the government agency that funds your work with taxpayer dollars does not engender trust. Federal research grants are not an entitlement."
plus.cq.com/shareExternal/…
"Failing to comply with oversight measures put into place largely for safety reasons is inexcusable. I’m not going to sit idly by while [EHA] inaction allows unqualified grifters and opportunists free reign to disparage my entire profession, ultimately making everyone less safe"
Jaime Yassif (@JaimeYassif), senior fellow for global biological policy and programs:

"I would have flagged this project.
Looking at the experiment of concern that's highlighted in the letter, it appears to me as gain-of-function research, even before the 'one log' requirement."
Read 5 tweets
Gilles Demaneuf Profile picture
22 Oct
Nothing surprising here.

EcoHealth Alliance conducted risky experiments on MERS virus in China interc.pt/2Z8hmmL by @fastlerner, @maiahibbett
If you check the research directions over the last few years, in Wuhan (WIV, WIBP), Beijing and in collaboration with the US (inc. Baric's lab), vaccines and antiviral therapies (such as mABs) against MERS and SARS-type viruses were all the rage.

See:
bit.ly/3nz0vCb
From there, being surprised that Chinese scientists could have changed the receptor binding site on MERS is just like being surprised that trucks are travelling down a motorway that has just been built.

All the research leads to that.
Read 4 tweets
Gilles Demaneuf Profile picture
21 Oct
The whole CTR (Cooperative Threat Reduction) philosophy of Callahan was to use cooperation at the scientists level, where cooperation at government level was elusive.

Callahan started the Prophecy program at DARPA (he was their portfolio manager from 2002 to 2012).
The CTR strategy (renamed BEP) was rolled out to DURC research in Asia.

For instance he picked up Supaporn and funded most of her research with EcoHealth Alliance in Thailand (BAA grants).
Funds went to Laos too via the Naval Medical Research Centre Asia.
bepstate.net/about-us/
The same strategy was effectively applied to China, especially after they started working on their P4 with France (against better advice from the US).

In China the NIH stepped in with its R01 grants to EHA.

Here is Callahan on the CTR approach to China.
politico.com/news/magazine/…
Read 6 tweets
Gilles Demaneuf Profile picture
19 Oct
Oh Marion, what would we do without you?

You had a good time calling the research-related hypothesis 'Debunked' at the KNAW-symposium in Dec 20.

Alongside meteorite (!), snakes and some other flotsam.
You had been working for a while with your the Chinese side of the WHO-Team (remote work started around Oct-Nov 20) and you were already pretty clear on your convictions.

You made the same claims in June 21, adding that there was no point going further:
You were also very dismissive of any criticism, and fully in line on this with a now very compromised Peter Daszak, who at the time was hiding DEFUSE:
Read 10 tweets

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