A recent YouGov poll on #CovidOrigins shows strong support for the lab leak theory across the globe. Those who believe Covid-19 emerged from a lab outnumber those who believe it emerged naturally in 25 out of 26 countries. #Denmark is the only exception.
Net support for lab leak is incredibly high. In countries as diverse as #India, #France, and #Nigeria, #Indonesia, and #Turkey lab leak supporters outnumber those who prefer natural emergence 3-to-1. Most strikingly, this same ratio is 2-to-1 or greater in all but 5 countries.
Perhaps the most surprising finding: in the majority of countries surveyed, including the #USA, more people attribute the emergence of #Covid19 to an *intentional* lab release than believe it emerged naturally.
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Opening remarks from Prof. Sachs regarding origins:
"We don't know..."
"there are two *absolutely* viable options"
"neither has been fully investigated"
"it's not the case that one has been proved over the other [paraphrasing]"
"these highlight two kinds of risk for the future"
Many critical of @KatherineEban & @jeffykao's article take issue with Toy Reid and his analysis of the "Secret Language of Chinese Officialdom". Such criticism ignores the history of China Watching as practiced by the great Laszlo Ladany.
While the discourse is focused on basic translation & tense, it is doubtful that Reid + additional experts missed this. The interpretation of CCP communiqués does not lend itself to translation by either formal nor sense-by-sense dynamic equivalence. Fluency is just but step 1.
More important is the knowledge gained from immense experience with the genre: peculiarities of language, the subtle ebb & flow of reports, what's explicitly not said. Daily readers of the NYT can relate -- a keen eye spots what's missing from All the News That's Fit to Print.
A new #OriginOfCovid pre-print claims that the SARS-CoV-2 genome has fingerprints indicating synthetic origin.
It's been called both "uninformed nonsense" and "the smoking gun".
How is that possible? What are people even arguing about?
🧵w/ simplified overview for the curious
The paper in 1 tweet: examines a type of restriction site on the COVID genome. These sites occur in nature but can also result from certain cut+paste genome assembly. In COVID the location of the sites are more even-spaced & less random you'd expect naturally. Looks synthetic.
IMO
The paper is important, even if wrong/incorrect.
The restriction site analysis is novel and should be studied further.
The statistical pieces may not be robust/hold up to reanalysis.