Thread by @Ayjchan

What we know from recent papers + data deposited into NCBI by the Wuhan Institute of Virology / EcoHealth Alliance just before the pandemic is that by 2016 they were actively sampling bat viruses in Yunnan and North Laos, where the closest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 have been found.

https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1475992424191340550

There are 2 things we don't know.

1. What other viruses and locations were sampled between 2016-start of pandemic. Their collaborators across 7 SE Asia countries, including Laos, wouldn't tell @theintercept @fastlerner

theintercept.com/2021/12/28/cov…

Although much of this work was funded by US sources such as USAID (PREDICT) and NIH/NIAID.

EcoHealth even told NIH in 2016 that they were going to transfer pathogen samples from the wildlife trade directly from 7 SE Asia countries to Wuhan.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1456984320036507648

If any records of the EcoHealth Alliance / Wuhan Institute of Virology work, partially funded by the US, conducted between 2016-pandemic exist, the public has not seen them.

The basics remain unknown: the number and dates of trips and the kinds and numbers of animals sampled.

The second thing we don't know.

2. How EcoHealth / Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists in the middle of peer review (especially of papers describing the Yunnan & Laos virus hunting) reacted to the discovery of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan in Dec 2019.

Latinne et al. Aug 2020 (data deposited pre-pandemic, paper sent for peer review Oct 2019):

In fig 3, the scientists who added SARS2 into their analysis when its genome released Jan 2020 would've noticed they were in possession of its closest relatives.
nature.com/articles/s4146…

Specifically, this is the picture they would've gotten since the pangolin & RmYN02 data had not surfaced yet.

They would've seen that the 9 closest relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Jan 2020.

Yet the paper makes no mention of this.

Latinne et al. claimed samples were taken from 2010 to 2015 in China but did not write that some samples were also from Laos.

Fortunately, their data which was deposited into NCBI before the pandemic had locations described, showing 41 Laos samples.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/?term=…

This is the paper's funding information. Clearly showing that US dollars had supported virus sampling in China and Laos, samples sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Donors in the West also funded the work after April 2020.
nature.com/articles/s4146…

I'm going to say that their virus hunting efforts, if intended to predict pandemics and inform about novel pathogens, did not pay off when Covid-19 appeared in Wuhan.

Info about closest virus relatives being analyzed by both Chinese & US partners was not immediately disclosed.

The task of informing us about the closest virus relatives to SARS-CoV-2 fell to internet sleuths @franciscodeasis and @TheSeeker268 who had to slowly and conscientiously piece together info, data, sample IDs spread across publications + leaked WIV theses.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1392579690687250433?s=20

@franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 On the other hand, what do we know about wildlife trafficked from the South into Wuhan, Central China?

Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance told NIH in 2016 that wildlife trade in South China was reduced so they had to sample from SE Asia markets that supply China.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1456983229903347713?s=20

A recently published study involving 2,595 samples from 1,726 animals (16 species, including pangolins) across 344 locations (e.g., natural habitats, artificial breeding sites and zoos) in 19 Chinese provinces found a grand total of zero SARS-like viruses.
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

A wildlife market #OriginOfCovid is still on the table but at the moment:

The only SARS2-like viruses in the wildlife trade = 3 pangolin CoVs in South China.

The closest SARS2-like viruses are from bats in South China and Laos with a known path to Wuhan via virus hunters.

A study conducted right before the pandemic started said no bats or pangolins were sold at Wuhan wildlife markets.
nature.com/articles/s4159…

And near Wuhan, people are still actively touring the local bat caves and pumping water out for residential use.

I don't think they even remotely suspect or believe that SARS-CoV-2 came from bats in their area.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1447519777988255748

I imagine if a similar level of circumstantial evidence existed for natural #OriginOfCovid eg a raccoon dog farm rife with SARS2-like viruses regularly supplying Wuhan, some would've said the case is closed.

Even w/o this evidence, some say they're certain of a natural origin.

Yet we know scientists were regularly sampling sites rife with SARS2-like viruses, bringing these directly to Wuhan, with a pipeline for inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS-like viruses.

And some scientists still refuse to put lab #OriginOfCovid on par with natural.

Why is there a higher standard of proof for a lab #OriginOfCovid? I believe the reasons are not scientific.

Lab-based outbreaks, even of a novel virus (Marburg), have happened before many times. SARS-CoV-2 itself recently leaked from a BSL3 lab, infecting a fully vax'ed person.

Rushing to condemn a lab accident as a conspiracy theory or scientifically implausible was not scientific.

Failing to rigorously follow up on these clear leads pointing to a virus hunting-based conduit of SARS2-like viruses into Wuhan is also not scientific.