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Alina Chan Profile picture
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Dec 4 • 12 tweets • 9 min read
The #OriginOfCovid debate is an uneven one.

Zoonosis proponents can regularly put out speculative claims without losing credibility.

But those inquiring into lab leak are not forgiven for mistakes or speculations, accused of conspiracy theorizing & epistemic trespassing.
Remember when numerous well respected virologists signed up for the cold chain #OriginOfCovid hypothesis?
#PopsicleOrigin
technologyreview.com/2021/03/26/102… Image
If you thought it was just the conflicted scientists sent by the @WHO to Wuhan in January 2021, think again.

Published in @ScienceMagazine by UK virologists.
science.org/doi/full/10.11… Image
Preprint by Singapore scientists suggesting the pandemic virus could've started an outbreak from imported frozen food.

Withdrawn after being cited by China-WHO joint study & other scientists as evidence for frozen food #PopsicleOrigins of Covid-19.

biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
Let's not forget the multi-market #OriginOfCovid hypothesis floated by the Proximal Origin authors & friends in @CellCellPress to try and explain why none of the Huanan market cases were infected with lineage A of the pandemic virus.

cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092… Image
@CellCellPress
After suggesting the pandemic virus jumped from animals to people in multiple different Wuhan markets in September 2021, the same scientists said in February 2022, actually no, the multiple spillovers were almost definitely at the Huanan market.
The same flipflopping occurred regarding whether the pandemic virus was well adapted for human infection and transmission in 2019.

It's not ok for me, a junior researcher, to suggest it, but it's ok for this group to keep changing their minds about it.
Scientists who proposed, in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology bat coronavirus lab to insert furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses, dismissing questions about the unique FCS in the pandemic virus as "ridiculous":
science.org/content/articl… Image
Any #OriginOfCovid journalists following up with Daszak et al. about why they didn't come forward regarding their 2018 joint idea with WIV to put furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses in the lab? @sciencecohen @amymaxmen @janeqiuchina @JoelAchenbach
Image
@sciencecohen @amymaxmen @janeqiuchina @JoelAchenbach
@sciencecohen @amymaxmen @janeqiuchina @JoelAchenbach To borrow the language of Proximal Origin & Friends:

All evidence is consistent with a lab leak #OriginOfCovid

There is no evidence of an animal-to-human spillover at Huanan market. The 2 strain hypothesis is the most ridiculous stuff.

This is dispositive and incontrovertible.

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
Dec 5
I am going to respond to Dr Rasmussen's questions as honestly as I can here.

But first I thank the wise people in my life who reached out to me, reminded me of the ultimate goal of finding the #OriginOfCovid and advised me to take the high road.
I waded into #OriginOfCovid without knowing the kind of mess I would get in for writing a single line in a preprint that the virus might have come from nature or it might have come from a lab.

A year later, I wrote VIRAL: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 with @mattwridley
Half of the money I've made from the book has been donated to charity (non-political). I have not accepted $ for doing #OriginOfCovid research despite several offers. Thankfully the publication and open access fees were waived for my peer reviewed paper.
academic.oup.com/mbe/article/39…
Read 12 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Dec 2
Does Dr Fauci mean Dr Holmes? The expert who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab on novel SARS-like viruses in 2018 & forgot to declare this relationship in papers debunking lab #OriginOfCovid but could pull up a 2014 photo of a raccoon dog at the Wuhan market? Image
I'm not sure how one forgets spending the year before the pandemic in academic review with Wuhan scientists after analyzing novel coronavirus sequences, but fishes out a photo they took 5 years ago at the local market.
I refuse to be gaslit into believing that it was ok for Western scientists "debunking" a lab #OriginOfCovid to forget to declare their relationships with the Wuhan scientists suspected of having accidentally caused the pandemic.
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Dec 1
I don't know if Reid's interpretation of WIV memos are correct. However the fact remains "in 2019, the WIV was addressing serious safety issues while scientists there faced pressure to perform."

They conducted risky SARSr-CoV experiments at low biosafety.
propublica.org/article/editor…
wsj.com/articles/wuhan…
Any credible virologist should be able to tell you now that live SARS-like viruses poised for emergence in human should not have been worked with at BL2.
Read 10 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Nov 29
"Maybe there’s a lab leak but it’s not with the viruses that the NIH was funding. That’s almost certain that that’s the case."
- Dr Fauci, speaking of the viruses that the Wuhan scientists had told NIH about in their progress reports.
The problem is that money from the NIH did go to the Wuhan scientists who are suspected of having discovered and/or manipulated a precursor of the pandemic virus that then leaked.

That US money could have been spent on general "tools and resources" for the lab's many projects.
Looking at the big picture, the type of work - virus hunting followed by infection studies & genetic engineering - was and continues to be endorsed by numerous virologists in the US and internationally.

The NIH funded these projects including by the Wuhan scientists.
Read 11 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Nov 28
It makes no sense to say the entire genome of the pandemic virus looks natural if one part looks natural. Yet this appears to be the argument made in the FOIA'ed Proximal Origin emails and by virologist Robert Garry in @MegynKellyShow

#OriginOfCovid
@MegynKellyShow I'm surprised to see veteran virologists making this argument, getting convinced by it, and writing a letter dismissing lab #OriginOfCovid based on this premise.

By this approach, no pathogen could possibly be engineered because parts of their sequence must come from nature.
Another surprising argument made by the Proximal Origin group against an engineered #OriginOfCovid is that they know the Wuhan scientists did not have a precursor to the pandemic virus or that this is highly unlikely...
Read 6 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
Nov 24
In 2.5 years of looking into #OriginOfCovid, I've had my fair share of disappointments after hearing about evidence that should supposedly tell us how this pandemic started.

But I suspect those disappointments are still less than what the Proximal Origin group has experienced...
At first they hoped the pangolin CoV would have a furin cleavage site and show that the pandemic virus was natural.

No luck.

Since then, it's been close relative after close relative to the pandemic virus published every few months.

No furin cleavage site.
On the other hand, the defuse proposal was leaked last year, describing unique plans in early 2018 by Wuhan-US scientists to make SARS-like viruses with furin cleavage sites.
theintercept.com/2021/09/23/cor…
Read 8 tweets

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