Thread by @Ayjchan

Even if you don't think that @WHO or SAGO will be effective at finding the #OriginOfCovid it is in all of our interests that SAGO at least be set up to be balanced, representative of diverse expertise, and free of conflicts of interest.
researchgate.net/publication/35…

@WHO In our letter, we note that there are far too few nominees with backgrounds in biosafety,biosecurity, or forensics (we counted only 2 out of 26) - skills that are critical for realizing SAGO’s mission.

This will fundamentally harm SAGO’s credibility, and the credibility of the WHO by extension. To function optimally, SAGO will require a team able to fairly and credibly examine all pandemic origin hypotheses, both now and in the future.

We call on @WHO to remove 3 specific nominees from the final SAGO team and to add at least 3 additional experts with a background in biosafety, biosecurity or forensics.

@WHO My personal take is that, in the nightmare scenario where another pandemic starts in a city with a lab experimenting on the same type of viruses in the next 2 years, the currently imbalanced SAGO team should not have the power to decide how to track that novel pathogen's origin.

@WHO We cannot have a @WHO team so incentivized to find a natural origin, and debunk lab origin hypotheses, to investigate our current and future outbreaks.

If you agree that the current SAGO team is not appropriate for the #OriginOfCovid investigation and future outbreak investigations, please help to amplify our open letter to the @WHO
researchgate.net/publication/35…