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Alina Chan

6 Dec, 9 tweets, 4 min read

@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.”

Even as an Asian, liberal, Canadian scientist with strong expertise in working with viruses and genetic engineering, I barely got away with calling for an investigation into a lab #OriginOfCovid

I’ve heard from top news & science organizations (I won’t reveal their identities) that they can’t be associated in any way with the lab #OriginOfCovid controversy. I suspect it’s because many experts have stayed silent in fear of being called racist, anti-science, right-wingers.

We know how scientists, editors & journalists can be exploited to manipulate public narratives. Bad actors also know that now and have been testing these loopholes (eg #PopsicleOrigins).

We need to fix these problems in research and media communities before the next crisis.

As a scientist who argued that experiments funded by NIH were not obviously gain of function research of concern, I felt deceived after documents showing just that were released in Sep/Oct 2021… but not as much as the scientists who advocated strongly for natural #OriginOfCovid

@EcoHealthNYC

The @EcoHealthNYC needs to release all of their communications and documents relating to work on coronaviruses and their collaboration with Wuhan scientists.

https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1451167948970790924?s=20

Too many scientists and journalists have been given the runaround in this pandemic to sufficiently embarrass both communities. We need to demand transparency and hold individuals and organizations accountable if found to have deliberately withheld key info or misled the public.

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More from @Ayjchan

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

"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.

Read 9 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.