Alina Chan Profile picture
Jun 22 7 tweets 4 min read
For the people who have not grasped the impact of the DEFUSE research proposal submitted to DARPA in early 2018 by scientists in Wuhan and the US, this virologist laid it out last October:
Imo the DEFUSE proposal is the most compelling piece of evidence for a lab #OriginOfCovid. It sits atop a massive amount of circumstantial evidence describing a robust pathway by which SARS-like viruses were being ferried from the spillover zone to Wuhan:
This story was best covered by @theintercept @fastlerner @maiahibbett

The article quotes virologists who studied both the original SARS virus from 2003 and SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) saying that the DEFUSE research could've plausibly led to the pandemic.
theintercept.com/2021/09/23/cor…
And the thing is, the DEFUSE proposal is not a dead end. Because it was co-written with US scientists, we know communications and documents must exist here in the US that can tell us what preliminary work had already begun in 2018. We don't need China's permission to investigate.
Far from a non-falsifiable hypothesis, this is something that should be investigated as a top priority in the US.

Had Wuhan scientists detected intermediate or rare cleavage sites in their SARS-like virus sequences?

Had the work begun (and proceeded) regardless of US funding?
It's mind-blowing to know that key evidence relating to the #OriginOfCovid might have been sitting here in the US all this time.

None of the US scientists on the DEFUSE proposal cared to tell us about it. It was leaked to internet sleuths ~2 years after the pandemic started.
More disturbingly, this "gardener's letter" has not been broadcasted widely by top mainstream media, which in contrast have not hesitated to amplify misinformation about "patient zero" & "dispositive" evidence of a natural #OriginOfCovid at a Wuhan market.

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More from @Ayjchan

Jun 23
Most people can agree that US tax dollars should not be sent to China to do gain-of-function research.

The problem is that the researchers/middlemen engaging in said research can get around the existing definitions and there doesn't seem to be any mechanism of accountability...
Reminder that Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, which sent US tax dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for chimeric SARSrCoV and human pathogen MERS research, was able to privately negotiate a way out of being restricted by the GOF definition.
theintercept.com/2021/11/03/cor…
Even after breaching their own negotiated definition of what would be considered gain-of-function, the EcoHealth Alliance + Wuhan Institute of Virology pitched extending their chimeric virus work to human pathogen MERS virus.
theintercept.com/2021/10/21/vir…
Read 9 tweets
Jun 21
Virtual Stakeholder Engagement Meeting on USG Policies for the Oversight of Life Sciences Dual Use Research of Concern

For those interested in making oral comments, please sign up at SciencePolicy@od.nih.gov by June 27, 2022.
osp.od.nih.gov/upcoming-meeti…
The purpose of this meeting is to gather feedback from stakeholders about.. the effect of these policies in terms of achieving their stated goals, the overarching definition of DURC, and possible alternative approaches for the oversight and responsible conduct of DURC.
This feedback will also be used to inform the discussions of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) in fulfillment their current charge to evaluate and analyze the DURC policies.
Read 4 tweets
Jun 19
Why are people still so stunned when they hear that an expert privately thinks this pandemic started due to research activities?

At this point, we already know that scientists had an experimental workflow in 2018 that could have led to the emergence of Covid-19 / SARS-CoV-2.
Are we all supposed to pretend like it's no big deal (or the most tragic coincidence ever) that a SARS-like virus with a novel cleavage site shows up 1.5 years after scientists in that city propose to put novel cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses?
theintercept.com/2021/09/23/cor…
Given the current balance of circumstantial evidence, I'm not surprised at all to hear that many top experts privately think that a lab #OriginOfCovid is more likely than not.

But many are constrained by their positions into not adopting a public stance on this issue.
Read 8 tweets
Jun 17
"We urge you to reject attempts to impose restrictions on federally funded research.. based on premature conclusions about how the pandemic emerged."

Actually, I think there should be new oversight + regulation of research that could cause outbreaks.
asm.org/Articles/Polic…
I'd also like to understand the process by which these 35 organizations all got together to write to Congress to preemptively ask not to restrict federal funding/the operations of federal funding agencies based on the possibility that this pandemic started due to virus research.
I want to reiterate that this advocacy for safer & more transparent virus research is intended to safeguard against loss of life & protect scientists.

No scientist wants their project to take lives. We just want to make discoveries, publish papers, give talks, and win awards.
Read 4 tweets
Jun 16
Glad to see sustained acknowledgement that both natural and lab #OriginOfCovid need to be investigated.

However, I'd like to know what exactly is the virological evidence pointing strongly towards a natural origin.

*Not ancestral origin, but the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.
For those wondering why I'm differentiating between ancestral vs proximal #OriginOfCovid pls know that some experts eg @WHO SAGO recently changed the definition of origin to mean the ancestral host rather than the pathway by which a virus emerges in human.
@WHO So when some experts say that COVID / SARS-CoV-2 has a zoonotic origin, they might not mean that it didn't come through a lab or research activities.

It just means that it's most likely that at some point an ancestral version of the virus was in nature.
Read 7 tweets
Jun 16
After 2 years, @WHO, US intelligence & more top experts+virologists acknowledge that a lab #OriginOfCovid is plausible and deserving of an investigation.

Yet, the attacks by scientists & pundits on those who called for an objective investigation of a lab origin has gotten worse.
@WHO I'm not expecting an apology or for people to say I was right in May 2020. My expectations of human behavior are not that idealistic.

Here is our statement in May 2020, for reference, that drew me into this unpredictable and dangerous public debate.
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
US intelligence stance in 2021:
dni.gov/files/ODNI/doc…
Read 12 tweets

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