Essentially, the local wildlife trade was dwindling in South China (back in 2016), forcing Wuhan scientists to travel to or seek novel pathogen samples from 7 neighboring countries.
In 2016, they proposed collecting about 2,300 of these high risk pathogen host animal samples in China and SE Asia.
May we see the full data and databases resulting from these studies for which testing was partially funded by the NIH or NIAID?
Another possibly important point, all the human pathogen surveillance work had been shifted to Wuhan University for the last half of the 2014-2019 EcoHealth-WIV grant. Meaning that thousands of samples from high risk human populations would've been sent also to Wuhan.
Pages 224-225. Since it's approaching 5 years now (from 2016), according to protocol, the original data and electronic files describing high-risk human samples will begin to be permanently deleted.
Went to read @gdemaneuf’s earlier thread on the same emails and realized that most of these samples from high risk animals in SE Asia must mostly be unpublished because the latest EcoHealth-WIV batch of data only described viruses sampled up to 2015.
I find it very unlikely that the EcoHealth Alliance was acting as an undercover intelligence collecting agency. Unless somehow the sheer amount of incompetence and gaslighting we’ve witnessed is their cover.
No pathogen database. Key information, documents, and emails withheld.
These FOIA’ed communications reveal an extremely relaxed approach to ensuring accessibility to samples and data.
Let’s send all of the thousands of pathogen samples from 8 countries to Wuhan! They won’t get tested anywhere else so no one will know what was even sent to China.
For this reason, I also don’t have the view that EcoHealth was an organization bent on DURC or bioweapons. The communications suggest their trust in the WIV was complete. The level of insight and oversight could hardly be lower.
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Accidentally swore and got bleeped on my live interview with On Point @MeghnaWBUR while discussing why lab #OriginOfCovid must be investigated and why scientists must not lie or obfuscate the truth for political reasons. wbur.org/onpoint/2024/0…
@MeghnaWBUR Meghna did an excellent job putting the arguments of natural #OriginOfCovid proponents to me so I could refute them directly in the interview.
The scientific evidence does not support a double spillover of the virus at the Wuhan market.
I respect Dr Fauci's decades of service in gov. Being in charge during a pandemic is no small challenge & no one can lead for so long without making mistakes. However, it needs to be said that Dr Fauci has not surrounded himself with wise & honest people regarding #OriginOfCovid
These are the virologists & experts he trusted on #OriginOfCovid
In their private messages in early 2020, they mocked other virologists for not being able to predict their own lab leaks & misled a @nytimes journalist asking about a potential lab origin.
Dr Bob Garry admitted we don't know what viruses were studied in Wuhan labs. The papers he cited in support of natural #OriginOfCovid have been thoroughly refuted (see below).
A research-related #OriginOfCovid is plausible and even considered more likely by some experts and US intelligence agencies. goodjudgment.com/wp-content/upl…
Available data on early cases & market samples do not distinguish between a superspreader event versus spillover.
Even Dr Ralph Baric who collaborated with Wuhan scientists said the “market was a conduit for expansion of the disease. Is that where it started? I don’t think so.”
@COVIDSelect Baric said he forgot about the Defuse proposal & did not mention it at the Feb 1 call.
I believe Baric sharing Defuse would've prevented the publication of Proximal Origin and the use of it to dismiss a lab #OriginOfCovid in US gov and to the public.
@COVIDSelect Baric also could've told them at the Feb 1 meeting that novel SARS-like viruses were being used in infection experiments at BSL2 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology aka the Wild West according to Jeremy Farrar.
Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance testified he didn't know Wuhan Institute of Virology bred 🦇, studied pangolin samples, engineered viruses without leaving a trace, and continued to collect viruses after 2015.
So how does he know they didn't cause Covid?
Daszak said he didn't know if WIV had started experiments described in the Defuse proposal and 🚨had not even asked them🚨.
He only had virus sequences from samples collected up to 2015. He believed that the WIV would've shared more sequences from 2016-2019 if they had them.
Reminder: EcoHealth Alliance still has not shared the sequences for the WIV's 220 SARS-CoV-1-like viruses (2022 interview) or 180 unique SARS-like viruses in their prior work not yet characterized for spillover potential (2018 proposal).
Those dismissing a lab #OriginOfCovid have had to make numerous concessions over the past 4 years.
We now know Wuhan scientists conducted risky experiments with novel SARS-like viruses at low biosafety & planned in 2018 to create viruses with the traits of the Covid-19 virus.
We also know the data on early cases & Huanan market shared by Chinese scientists do not shed light on #OriginOfCovid
Proponents of natural origin continue to argue that it is the totality of evidence that supports their hypothesis but this could be said for lab origin as well.
The latest defense for a natural #OriginOfCovid is that, if a lab leak had occurred, the Wuhan scientists would have acted all suspicious and essentially given the game away, thereby putting themselves, their colleagues & their families in immediate and deadly peril.