Tweet

Alina Chan

4 Dec, 9 tweets, 3 min read

"Deep in the underbelly of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, freezers.. store bat tissue from around the world, dating back to the late 1980s."

Toronto, please create a local wildlife trade so that there is some ambiguity in case a lab leak occurs.
cbc.ca/newsinteractiv…

You won't need much. Something on the order of 10 civet cats a month will ensure that an adequate number of top virologists will express near certainty that any novel virus must have come from the local food market instead of your lab with thousands of diverse pathogen samples.

"amassed roughly 15,000 bat specimens from 400 different species...

the technique also preserves whatever viruses are hiding in the mammals...

And bats carry a lot of viruses...

... the viruses they carry can sometimes ravage humans."

Enough said.

Make sure to locate your wildlife market smack in the middle of all the metro and transit intersections, surrounded by local hospitals and elderly care homes.

Just like the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan.

That way if an outbreak happens, scientists can blame it on the market.

I'm onboard with a global virus database as long as you make sure the data doesn't vanish when pandemics and outbreaks actually occur.

The previous program PREDICT depended upon host governments to approve data for public release. That means some govs could decide to hoard data.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1284904097448067074

If you're investing $1 billion, you should at least make sure ALL data is deposited into an internationally managed repository where all changes are tracked. Sequencing data should be automatically uploaded to avoid sample history confusion #LessonsLearnt

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1284904097448067074

While you're at it, build the market so that its retail space is at least as large as a soccer stadium. Then no matter where there are infectious diseases cases in the market, you can safely say that the cases are on the side where the 10 civets were sold.

As a backup, as no market animal samples will be found to have any trace of virus, make sure to import 🦞 from Maine and 🐟 from the Faroe Islands - this will help you to propose a frozen foods / cold chain origin of a novel outbreak #PopsicleOrigins

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1466568413753450496

Jokes aside, why is it so hard for people to understand that the risks are not worth taking?

No matter how brilliant the scientist, someone can get infected by a natural virus collected by the lab and just walk out the door into a densely populated city.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1466568413753450496

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

6 Dec

@AshleyRindsberg

Thorough analysis by ⁦⁦@AshleyRindsberg⁩ ⁦@tabletmag⁩

“the false narrative around the pandemic’s origins represented a tipping point—a comprehensive failure in journalistic quality and mores in a time of national emergency” tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

Many good lines in this article:

“For Daszak, The Lancet letter was only the opening salvo in a yearlong media campaign in which the EcoHealth Alliance head would become an Ahmed Chalabi-like presence, leading the media with claims of evidence of zoonotic spillover.”

“these formed what we might call Daszak’s triangle, a mental model that made lab leak a social and political impossibility for anyone who did not want to be branded as an anti-science, right-wing xenophobe.”

Read 9 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

5 Dec

2 straightforward reasons why I don't think a lab origin of Omicron is on the table.

1. Afaik there's no lab in Africa doing serial passaging of SARS2.

2. There're thousands of people (and potentially animals) infected in the region so it is unsurprising new variants emerge.

These are the same reasons that make a good case for a lab #OriginOfCovid

1. There are scientists in Wuhan conducting exactly the type of research that could've led to the emergence of SARS2.

2. There wasn't evidence of SARS-like viruses circulating in Wuhan prior to Covid-19.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1467484165213990920

If we don't want to keep being surprised by new variants with lots of new mutations in them, we should step up global sequencing efforts and think of ways to help countries get the pandemic resources they need.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1467484165213990920

Read 7 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

4 Dec

Things you should never hear nuclear reactor or atomic scientists cite as reasons for wanting to build their facility inside of densely populated cities.

1. How will we recruit top talent? We want to live in the best cities.

2. Accidents rarely happen. We are very skilled.

Yet somehow these reasons justify building labs concentrating and manipulating unpredictable, potential pandemic pathogens in the middle of urban centers with international airports.

https://twitter.com/guy_pharm/status/1467234299078340608

Setting aside the point that virus hunting and making chimeric versions of novel viruses played (near) zero role in predicting or preventing the current pandemic, if this type of research is so critical, we must treat it with the reverence it deserves.

https://twitter.com/guy_pharm/status/1467234299078340608

Read 5 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

4 Dec

@MolBioEvol

Our peer-reviewed @MolBioEvol Perspective on the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site is now available to read online.

We review the FCS in the context of pathogenesis, origin & how virus sampling may alter the interpretation of existing data.
@shingheizhan

academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-ar…

@MolBioEvol

@MolBioEvol @shingheizhan Against a backdrop of scientists introducing FCSs into the spikes of various CoVs including SARSr-CoVs, the discovery of a unique FCS at the spike S1/S2 boundary in SARS-CoV-2 continues to fuel heated debates about the #OriginOfCovid

@MolBioEvol

@MolBioEvol @shingheizhan Without its FCS, it is unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 would have resulted in a pandemic.

Even in early 2020, it was a straightforward deduction for independent groups of scientists that an S1/S2 FCS could confer functional advantages to a SARSr-CoV.

Read 13 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

4 Dec

Seeing FOIA'ed email after FOIA'ed email revealing that the top virologists and experts were worrying about a lab #OriginOfCovid in early-to-mid 2020 makes me wonder if just about everyone knew the emperor was naked while the media continued to praise his new clothes.

There were letters published in top scientific journals by top experts asserting that it was a conspiracy theory to say the emperor was naked. No clothes-less scenarios were plausible. Even today some experts are maintaining that the emperor is almost certainly wearing clothes.

There's a difference between perceiving that maybe most people didn't understand the issue at the time, versus perceiving that maybe most people did understand but didn't say so publicly.

Read 5 tweets

Alina Chan

@Ayjchan

3 Dec

If you’re thinking of sponsoring virus hunters so they can tell us about dangerous viruses and advise us to conserve wildlife…

Why not just give your money directly to people who are actually conserving wildlife?

We’ve known for decades that the wildlife trade exposes us to novel animal pathogens. We don’t need to keep pulling out shiny new viruses to convince people that the wildlife trade and wildlife farming (for food, medicine, luxury items) needs to stop.

A culture that glorifies the wildlife trade - as a means for the poor to get rich or as a source of unproven medicines - is not helping to mitigate pandemic risks.

We should encourage other effective means of fighting poverty that don’t exploit wildlife.