Tweet

Alina Chan

29 Oct, 11 tweets, 4 min read

Half the people on my twitter feed are talking about this DNI Updated Assessment on COVID-19 Origins.

BUT "This assessment is based on information through August 2021."

Come on. No. Come back with an assessment based on info through Oct 2021.
dni.gov/files/ODNI/doc…

@fastlerner

Do you know what has happened in September/October 2021 alone?
h/t @fastlerner @maiahibbett @MaraHvistendahl @theintercept

theintercept.com/2021/09/09/cov…

theintercept.com/2021/09/23/cor…

theintercept.com/2021/10/01/nih…

theintercept.com/2021/10/21/vir…

I guess I'm glad that they at least clarified:

"All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident."

This will prevent some unintelligent people from claiming that the DNI ruled out lab origins.

"This suggests that SARS-CoV-2 or a progenitor virus could have acquired its FCS through natural recombination with another virus."

I beg you to talk to Jack Nunberg, Gary Whittaker, David Baltimore, all renown virologists, 2 of which have put FCSs into the spike of SARS1.

Were there any genetic signatures when an FCS was inserted into the spike of SARS1?

"IC analysts do not have higher confidence that SARS- CoV-2 was not genetically engineered because some genetic engineering techniques can make modifications difficult to identify and we have gaps in our knowledge of naturally occurring coronaviruses."

"IC analysts consider an exposure that occurs during animal sampling activity that supports biological research to be a laboratory-associated incident and not natural contact."

"These analysts assess that WIV’s activities in early 2020 related to SARS-CoV-2 are a strong indicator that the WIV lacked foreknowledge of the virus."

Even if SARS2 escaped from a lab, it doesn't mean the WIV had foreknowledge of the escape and would trumpet this to the world.

"They also see the potential that a laboratory worker inadvertently was infected while collecting unknown animal specimens to be less likely than an infection occurring through numerous hunters, farmers, merchants"

Read the EcoHealth proposals please.

"China’s infectious disease surveillance system would not have been able to detect the SARS-CoV-2 exposure as quickly as a suspected exposure in a laboratory setting."

Guys, this virus can spread asymptomatically. The first infected lab person(s) may not have known.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1368183528463212550

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1368183528463212550

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

31 Oct

Of all the viruses that could’ve started a pandemic in city with a lab experimenting on novel pandemic potential SARS-like viruses with novel cleavage sites, it was a novel SARS-like virus with a novel cleavage site.

Of all the cities this novel SARS-like virus with a novel cleavage site could’ve started a pandemic in, it was a city with a lab experimenting with novel pandemic potential SARS-like viruses with novel cleavage sites.

@rowanjacobsen

Borrowing @rowanjacobsen’s words:

“Despite 15 years of coronavirus hunting and testing by the WIV, it was helpless to prevent a pandemic in its own backyard. If that's a coincidence, it's one of the great ironies of history.”

newsweek.com/humans-not-ani…

Read 4 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

31 Oct

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1426678122792038405

I continue to be surprised that the fact covid-19 caught Wuhan scientists by surprise is considered a point for natural origin.

Consider when SARS1 escaped a Beijing lab in 2004 it took a month before the outbreak was detected. Everyone was surprised. Including the scientists.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1426678122792038405

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1358553053599854592

Every time SARS1 escaped from a lab it was a surprise. Only in one case could they trace the escape to a specific accident in the lab - a BSL4 highest biosafety level lab.

There was no foreknowledge of the escape by scientists or authorities.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1358553053599854592

The only reason why the SARS1 escape from a BSL4 even came to light was that the researcher’s dad threatened to kill himself if his son didn’t go to hospital for treatment.

The researcher had traveled to a different country for a meeting. People on the plane were not notified.

Read 5 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

30 Oct

“It comes just days before Anthony Fauci, the head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies to Congress, where he is likely to be grilled on why he approved a $600,000 grant that was used for risky coronavirus research” ft.com/content/5e20cb…

I’m almost 100% sure all the wrong questions are going to be asked again, leading to zero new progress or insight into what research was conducted on novel SARS-like viruses.

Please no more holding up 3D models of the spike or pieces of paper showing alignments.

No more arguing about gain of function - these arguments are super unproductive because people aren’t using the same definitions.

Read 11 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

29 Oct

3 takeaways from the recently released EcoHealth grant proposals & reports:

1. By March 2018, they had a roadmap for detecting & inserting novel rare (furin) cleavage sites into novel low risk SARS-like viruses.

2. By 2019, chimeric human pathogen MERS-CoV research was ongoing.

3. Several groups of people were aware of either one or both of the points above and decided not to say anything about it for close to 2 years since SARS2 emerged in Wuhan.

2 urgent things need to be done now:

1. All EcoHealth+collaborator communications, docs, data related to SARS-like viruses must be made public/investigated by a credible team

2. A new moratorium & overhaul of framework+oversight structure on pandemic potential pathogen research

Read 4 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

29 Oct

Where would we be today without all the outsiders, independent analysts and internet sleuths who, month after month, showed that the EcoHealth/Daszak was spreading misinformation about bat coronavirus research in Wuhan? wsj.com/articles/coron…

@WHO

Were any scientific leaders holding EcoHealth/Daszak accountable?

The community was largely silent even as Daszak was appointed to the @WHO and @TheLancet #OriginOfCovid teams.

Many scientists and science journalists in the public eye continued to cast the lab origin hypothesis as a conspiracy theory and take EcoHealth/Daszak’s word without question for most of 2020+2021.

Read 9 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

28 Oct

Step 1 Conduct risky MERS chimera research

Step 2 fail to report results for 2 years

Step 3 when asked by journalists, tell them you didn’t actually do it

Step 4 when journalists discover you did do it, blame the spokesperson science.org/content/articl…

The chimeric SARS-like viruses also did not look enhanced in cells, but when in humanized 🐁 revealed 10,000x higher viral loads & enhanced severity of disease.

EcoHealth showed results that the chimeric MERS virus looked similar to MERS in cells, but what about in humanized 🐁?