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Alina Chan Profile picture
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May 19 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
From the @TheLancet COVID-19 commission chair:

"EHA-WIV-UNC was involved in the collection of a large number of so-far undocumented SARS-like viruses.. manipulation within.. (BSL)-2.. raising concerns that an airborne virus might have infected a.. worker"
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
@TheLancet Hey @shingheizhan our peer-reviewed @MolBioEvol figure is cited in the letter!
@TheLancet There are 2 components to the Harrison & Sachs letter.

1. There are parties in the US that have repeatedly resisted sharing information relevant to #OriginOfCovid and they should be compelled to cooperate in a formal, ideally bipartisan, US-based investigation.
@TheLancet 2. It's not only plausible that COVID-19 came from a lab, but that the virus might have also been genetically modified, conferring enhanced ability to cause a pandemic.

The letter lays out an example of how one such genetic modification might've been inspired and carried out.
@TheLancet I agree with both points and have regularly expressed frustration with the lack of transparency and lack of progress re: investigating the #OriginOfCovid using sources readily accessible to the US government.
I cannot help but feel that some in US leadership would rather never find the #OriginOfCovid

If the virus is one day determined to have come about as a result of US-China research, the ramifications would be immense, especially for scientists who advocated for that research.
The consequences would be worse if the virus was genetically modified in the lab and thereby achieved pandemic powers - because there was and still is an influential group of international scientific leaders (still) advocating for this niche type of virus research.
All that is required for SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) to have come from a lab is for the scientists involved to have followed through with what they said they were going to do.
As I told @fastlerner @theintercept “These scientists literally had access to hundreds of SARS-like viruses and sequences.”

We have little idea what they found & what they did with new SARS-like virus sequences in their lab.
theintercept.com/2022/05/19/cov…

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
May 19
Not sure @PeterHotez read the @pnas letter carefully.

"SARS-CoV-2 is, to date, the only identified member of the subgenus sarbecovirus that contains an FCS, although these are present in other coronaviruses"
@PeterHotez @pnas "We do know that the insertion of such FCS sequences into SARS-like viruses was a specific goal of work proposed by the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership within a 2018 grant proposal (“DEFUSE”)"
@PeterHotez @pnas "We do not assert that laboratory manipulation was involved in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, although it is apparent that it could have been. However, we do assert that there has been no independent and transparent scientific scrutiny to date..."
Read 6 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
May 19
Some scientists are a bit confused. Just because *globally* there are more than 180 SARSrCoV sequences published, doesn't mean that the 180+ SARSrCoV sequences from the Wuhan/EcoHealth scientists have all been accounted for.
Unless you mean to say that when the EcoHealth and Wuhan scientists wrote a research proposal with the line ">180 bat SARSr-CoV strains sequenced in our prior work and not yet examined for spillover potential", they actually meant the global research community's "prior work".
If the above is true, I would say that that's a very sly way of claiming credit for work you didn't do to get more funding.

I don't think the EcoHealth/Wuhan scientists would claim all known SARSrCoV sequences globally as part of their prior work.
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
May 18
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…
Read 10 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
May 17
Looking forward to the case study on #OriginOfCovid - how a small group of scientists managed to create a mass illusion of scientific consensus via groupthink and connections with prominent science journalists/writers.
Agreed that the public needs to know that scientific uncertainty prevails for some period while data/evidence is collected.

Surprised during the pandemic that some of our top experts don't seem to know this and try to manufacture scientific certainty.
I'm not sure that #SciComm folks could've predicted that some of the worst misinformation during the pandemic would've come from experts instead of mis/disinformants.
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
May 17
If you're a scientist or journalist promoting the benefits of virus hunting (in natural habitats, wildlife trade etc.) and manipulation in laboratories around the world, please practice some circumspection.

Millions might've died from precisely this type of research gone wrong.
A lab-based outbreak doesn't require any fancy bioweaponry or shenanigans (e.g. serial passaging to select for cross-species airborne transmissibility) in the lab.

It can be as simple as scientists chancing on a dangerous natural pathogen in the wild and bringing it into cities.
Top experts in virology and infectious diseases understand this. They know that viruses that have spent time in laboratories don't necessarily have to look different from what we see in nature.

Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
May 17
If the @USRightToKnow and others keep suing for virologist emails via the freedom of information act, we might finally get to see their honest reactions to the Defuse proposal or perhaps their transition to non-FOI’able channels of communication.
This 2020 email doesn’t make me feel particularly confident in the current membership of the NSABB advising federal policies on potential pandemic pathogen research.
Emails such as this make me wonder about science journalism. AFAIK this @nytimes journalist concerned about the risks of pathogen research did not eventually publish an article on #OriginOfCovid

Instead @nytimes kept publishing articles about how unfounded lab origin was.
Read 5 tweets

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