Today's @ScienceMagazine papers on the #OriginOfCovid are not game-changing - they largely say the same thing as the original preprints in February but in a much more subdued and chastised manner.
@ScienceMagazine I'm going back on break from twitter, but I have a manuscript on the evidence around a market/wildlife trade #OriginOfCovid that is under peer review.
I hope to be able to share a peer-reviewed form of it later this year #NeverGiveUp
@ScienceMagazine For people looking for a summary of the evidence on #OriginOfCovid I've written a medium post with 5-6min read time.
It explains the plausible origin scenarios and why investigators are having a hard time determining how the outbreak in Wuhan started. ayjchan.medium.com/the-evidence-f…
@ScienceMagazine I've updated my critique of Worobey & Pekar papers to
1⃣ explain how ascertainment bias led to cases unlinked to the market clustering in its vicinity
2⃣ address the virus-positive cage sample
3⃣ point out flaws in their "2 strains 2 spillover" hypothesis ayjchan.medium.com/evidence-for-a…
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Accidentally swore and got bleeped on my live interview with On Point @MeghnaWBUR while discussing why lab #OriginOfCovid must be investigated and why scientists must not lie or obfuscate the truth for political reasons. wbur.org/onpoint/2024/0…
@MeghnaWBUR Meghna did an excellent job putting the arguments of natural #OriginOfCovid proponents to me so I could refute them directly in the interview.
The scientific evidence does not support a double spillover of the virus at the Wuhan market.
I respect Dr Fauci's decades of service in gov. Being in charge during a pandemic is no small challenge & no one can lead for so long without making mistakes. However, it needs to be said that Dr Fauci has not surrounded himself with wise & honest people regarding #OriginOfCovid
These are the virologists & experts he trusted on #OriginOfCovid
In their private messages in early 2020, they mocked other virologists for not being able to predict their own lab leaks & misled a @nytimes journalist asking about a potential lab origin.
Dr Bob Garry admitted we don't know what viruses were studied in Wuhan labs. The papers he cited in support of natural #OriginOfCovid have been thoroughly refuted (see below).
A research-related #OriginOfCovid is plausible and even considered more likely by some experts and US intelligence agencies. goodjudgment.com/wp-content/upl…
Available data on early cases & market samples do not distinguish between a superspreader event versus spillover.
Even Dr Ralph Baric who collaborated with Wuhan scientists said the “market was a conduit for expansion of the disease. Is that where it started? I don’t think so.”
@COVIDSelect Baric said he forgot about the Defuse proposal & did not mention it at the Feb 1 call.
I believe Baric sharing Defuse would've prevented the publication of Proximal Origin and the use of it to dismiss a lab #OriginOfCovid in US gov and to the public.
@COVIDSelect Baric also could've told them at the Feb 1 meeting that novel SARS-like viruses were being used in infection experiments at BSL2 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology aka the Wild West according to Jeremy Farrar.
Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance testified he didn't know Wuhan Institute of Virology bred 🦇, studied pangolin samples, engineered viruses without leaving a trace, and continued to collect viruses after 2015.
So how does he know they didn't cause Covid?
Daszak said he didn't know if WIV had started experiments described in the Defuse proposal and 🚨had not even asked them🚨.
He only had virus sequences from samples collected up to 2015. He believed that the WIV would've shared more sequences from 2016-2019 if they had them.
Reminder: EcoHealth Alliance still has not shared the sequences for the WIV's 220 SARS-CoV-1-like viruses (2022 interview) or 180 unique SARS-like viruses in their prior work not yet characterized for spillover potential (2018 proposal).
Those dismissing a lab #OriginOfCovid have had to make numerous concessions over the past 4 years.
We now know Wuhan scientists conducted risky experiments with novel SARS-like viruses at low biosafety & planned in 2018 to create viruses with the traits of the Covid-19 virus.
We also know the data on early cases & Huanan market shared by Chinese scientists do not shed light on #OriginOfCovid
Proponents of natural origin continue to argue that it is the totality of evidence that supports their hypothesis but this could be said for lab origin as well.
The latest defense for a natural #OriginOfCovid is that, if a lab leak had occurred, the Wuhan scientists would have acted all suspicious and essentially given the game away, thereby putting themselves, their colleagues & their families in immediate and deadly peril.