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Alina Chan Profile picture
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11 Jan, 5 tweets, 3 min read
Peter Daszak asked for US-funded virus data to be withheld, FOIAed by @USRightToKnow

"It's extremely important that we don't have these sequences as part of our PREDICT release.. Having them as part of PREDICT will being very unwelcome attention"
usrtk.org/wp-content/upl…
@USRightToKnow Only way to know if some of these virus sequences are completely new and still not public is for NCBI database or PREDICT to release the data.
@USRightToKnow The FOIA process is so protracted that we're only seeing April 2020 emails in Jan 2022. And there are many, many more FOIAs and appeals against redactions still ongoing for emails from 2020.

See the longer list of FOIAs by the @USRightToKnow here:
usrtk.org/biohazards-blo…
I believe a US-based investigation with access to every communication, document, and piece of data already in a US-based repository or in a US organization's or individual's possession could already blow the #OriginOfCovid right open.
In the spirit of open science, someone pointed me to some very recently updated (in December 2021) projects and potentially datasets concerning viruses found by PREDICT here:
data.usaid.gov/browse?limitTo…

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
12 Jan
I'm all ears to hear about the precise scientific process that occurred between Feb 2 and Feb 4, 2020 where top experts in virology and evolutionary biology completely changed their minds about the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 emerging from a lab.
In Jeremy Farrar's book, he noted that Marion Koopmans had said furin cleavage site insertions happen in viruses all the time naturally.

Kristian Andersen, lead author of Proximal Origin, said just because it happened in nature did not rule out unnatural origins.
By the time Proximal Origin was published (i.e., the final paper), Koopmans argument had been absorbed into the manuscript without acknowledgement.

"insertions.. can occur.. the polybasic cleavage site can arise by a natural evolutionary process."
nature.com/articles/s4159…
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
11 Jan
Transcripts of the early 2020 exchanges on the #OriginOfCovid among leading scientists in the US & Europe show they were privately worried about a lab origin of Covid-19.

Yet, publicly they authored Proximal Origin, which dismissed lab origin hypotheses.
republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/upl…
In private, they understood that "the only people with sufficient information or access to samples to address [the #OriginOfCovid] would be the teams working in Wuhan."

In public, they wrote "we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible."
The day (Feb 4, 2020) that a first draft of Proximal Origin was shared with Fauci and Collins by Farrar, Farrar said Edward Holmes (one of the Proximal Origin authors) had guessed 60:40 lab and Farrar guessed 50:50. ImageImage
Read 23 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
8 Jan
Stories of Covid-19 whistleblower doctors, journalists & scientists - disappeared, imprisoned, penalized, maltreated, slandered as rumormongers - doesn't inspire confidence that the world will get a timely alert the next time a mysterious outbreak appears.
cnn.com/interactive/20…
These reports are old, but the problem persists.

How can global pandemic response be rapid if there are countries where alerting your hospital colleagues to a novel outbreak and telling them to wear protective equipment results in punishment?
theguardian.com/world/2020/mar…
I don't think it is a misstatement to say doctors were being brutally silenced when they blew the whistle on the earliest Covid-19 cases. Several lost their lives in this process after being forced to sign confessions and returning to fight the outbreak.
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
6 Jan
The balance of evidence for a natural vs lab #OriginOfCovid is different from that of Omicron.

In the case of Omicron, many known plausible natural sources of the novel variant.

In the case of the original SARS-CoV-2, only postulated natural sources, no direct evidence found.
The case for a wet market #OriginOfCovid remains dimly lit. Lack of access to data describing what potential intermediate hosts were even sold at Huanan market in late 2019. Lack of access to early case data and exposures to potential sources of the virus.
Sorry to disappoint some natural origin diehards, but not all people who think a lab #OriginOfCovid is plausible are going to think Omicron likely came from a lab.

You have to evaluate the evidence and circumstances specific to each emergence.
Read 5 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
4 Jan
I'm aware of the @newrepublic review of our book VIRAL: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. I don't have much to say about it because it isn't a review of VIRAL. It was an opinion on #OriginOfCovid dressed up as a book review.

See article by @thackerpd
disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/get-the-hell…
In order to formulate a response in defense of the book, there must be facts-based criticisms of the book's content, which do not exist in the @newrepublic review.

So how should I respond to a negative review that goes after the same old strawmen not represented in the book?
@newrepublic One scientific scenario I can compare this to is when you get a peer reviewer who clearly has a vendetta against a particular hypothesis. Instead of critiquing the data in the paper, goes after old arguments by other scientists, recommending rejection of the manuscript at hand.
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
30 Dec 21
Would also be useful to color the states to indicate average age of population and BMI @nytimes

Also, deaths are counted since Apr 2021 but vaccination rate is as of Dec 2021, so would be useful to shift timeframe a few months later since some states were slower to vaccinate.
@nytimes To be clear, the Covid-19 vaccines approved in the US have protective effect against severe outcomes (although still awaiting Omicron data).

As a low risk category person, I was only fully vaccinated by June 2021 (2 shots Moderna + 2 weeks after 2nd shot).
Overlaying average age and BMI (e.g., age = size of dot; BMI = color of dot), and shifting the date range later to when most people got their vaccines, would help to show the effects of the vaccines vs other factors that contribute to Covid-19 deaths.
Read 4 tweets

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