Thread by @Ayjchan

Scientists cannot accurately predict whether recombinant viruses created in the lab will be more transmissible or deadly compared to the parent (natural) virus.

The documents that drove this point home for me were FOIA'ed by @theintercept and only released in Sep/Oct 2021.

@theintercept I had read the 2015 publication where a novel SARS-like spike was inserted into 🐁-adapted SARS1.

The authors said there was a "gain in pathogenesis" if you compared different studies. But if you looked at their study (fig 1), there's no observable GOF.

nature.com/articles/nm.39…

In a 2017 study where chimeric SARS-like viruses were created, there was also no observable GOF when the viruses were used to infect human cells (fig 7 and 8).

journals.plos.org/plospathogens/…

With the published data alone, I would've said I don't think making chimeric SARS-like viruses from bats is particularly risky.

But @theintercept litigated Year 4 (2018) + Year 5 (2019 but only submitted in 2021) NIH reports from EcoHealth Alliance...

documentcloud.org/documents/2108…

@theintercept In Year 4, they found that chimeric SARS-like viruses they had also handled at BSL2 produced up to ~10,000x higher viral loads in the lungs of humanized mice (animal experiments at BSL3).

See pages 59 and 60 of the document linked above.

And in Year 5, they found also dramatically elevated viral loads in the brain of the humanized mice and increased lethality caused by chimeric SARS-like viruses as compared to the natural parent virus that had been used as a backbone for these experiments.

See pages 15 and 16.

Even the EcoHealth reported that one of their chimera "showed an increasing viral titer after infection" and caused greater mortality in humanized mice; disease was "more significant in mice infected with rWIV1-SHC014 S [the chimera] than those infected with rWIV1 [the parent]".

And for some bizarre reason, proceeded to engage in similar experiments using human pathogen MERS-CoV, which kills about 1 in 3 people it infects.

Some scientists say, "Increased viral loads, disease severity or death in humanized🐁 don't necessarily mean the virus is more transmissible/deadly in 🧔‍♂️"

My response is we're not testing these recombinant viruses on actual humans to confirm if they're more transmissible/deadly.

These tests and data in humanized mice are the methods by which scientists assess the potential of these viruses to cause a pandemic in humans.

They had been used to warn the world about SARS-like viruses in the wild poised to spillover and cause a pandemic at any moment.

There is likely more unpublished data funded by NIH that EHA has not shared with us.

From a currently funded NIH project proposal, we read that humanized mouse infection with SARSr-SHC014 or WIV1 was not reduced by SARS antibody therapy or vaccination.
s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2105…

However, the scientists emphasize that these humanized mouse models were "used to assess the capacity of novel SARSr-CoVs and MERS-CoV to infect humans and cause disease".

So why are they suddenly saying that it's NBD if a recombinant virus is ravaging their humanized mice?

These data were only made available in Sep/Oct 2021.

Borrowing a quote from David Relman:

“It’s just another chapter in a sad tale of inadequate oversight, disregard for risk, and insensitivity to the importance of transparency”

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1451668252359335938

The most ridiculous part of this is that there is still no new moratorium, framework, or review process.

We can see from these FOIA'ed documents and emails that it is super easy to get around the existing framework and review process.

theintercept.com/2021/11/03/cor…

As we speak, scientists in the US are likely creating chimera with SARS1 and SARS2. And it looks like the CDC is cool with this happening.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1468582694007279616

Oh, you're making babies of SARS1 and SARS2?

Feel free to let us know in 30 days.

Oh, and you want to keep playing with these chimera?

Let us know by mid-February 2022!

There is no way we can accurately predict how transmissible or deadly a chimera of SARS1 and SARS2 will be if it escapes from a lab.

Yet, we are creating these viruses that wouldn't have existed in nature.

This whole pandemic might've begun because scientists underestimated the risks of inserting novel furin cleavage sites into "high abundant, low risk" novel SARS-like viruses in the lab.

The scientists are now expanding from doing these experiments with SARS-like and MERS-like coronaviruses (CoVs) to nipah and ebola viruses.

s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2105…

They say these novel deadly viruses would be studied at BSL-4 in the USA, but we know viruses (even SARS1) has escaped from a BSL-4 before.

SARS2 just recently escaped from a BSL-3 by infecting a fully vaccinated (Moderna) scientist.

At what point do we say the risks are too great and these types of research should not be conducted in proximity to urban centers & international airports, especially without quarantine measures for lab personnel?

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1453715973215772675?s=20