Thread by @Ayjchan

I still read/listen to interviews of natural #OriginOfCovid proponents. However, it remains difficult to reconcile their public & private stance.

Proximal Origin authors knew from the start that w/o access to info in Wuhan, they couldn't pin the origin.
republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/upl…

Yet, in recent interviews, these authors continue to assert that all sequences/viruses being worked with in the Wuhan lab must have been in the public domain.

Sometimes, they invoke a bizarre generalization that virologists are gossipy and can't keep novel viruses to themselves.

They already surmised in early 2020 that a lab performing gain of function, eg cleavage site insertion, would NOT use an existing close relative of SARS or MERS.

They would've picked a virus in their collection that was less likely to be a human pathogen.
republicans-oversight.house.gov/wp-content/upl…

This private speculation by Western virologists later matched up with the wording in a research proposal submitted by the EcoHealth Alliance, other US collaborators, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. documentcloud.org/documents/2106…

To translate the science-speak in the March 2018 Defuse proposal, the scientists said that they were on the look out for cleavage sites in novel SARS-like viruses, which they could then optimize and insert into less risky SARS-like viruses in their possession.

The fact remains that the virus database at the Wuhan Institute of Virology remains inaccessible after being taken offline in late 2019.

Even its collaborators have not been able to produce a copy of the viruses/sequences found by the Wuhan scientists.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1502842710067224601

The fact remains that the 100s of SARS-like virus sequences discovered by the Wuhan scientists are not fully accounted for in the public domain.

I cannot find the sequences for WIV's 220 SARS-CoV-1-like viruses (2022 interview) or 180 unique SARS-like viruses (2018 proposal).

From their FOI'ed emails, it seems these experts understand that we don't know what was happening in Wuhan labs and what viruses they were experimenting with.

Yet, they keep telling journalists and people in gov that they know a precursor to SARS2 did not exist in Wuhan labs.

I don't think this behavior means they know the #OriginOfCovid (or even that they still privately think a lab origin likelier than not), but imo it looks like a desperation to persuade the public that there's some kind of scientific certainty on the natural origin of the virus.

Some of these experts caveat their certainty of natural #OriginOfCovid by saying if direct evidence of a lab origin appears, they will change their minds.

I don't care if you change your mind later. What would be appreciated from you is a scientific approach to this issue today.