Share this page!

Philipp Markolin Profile picture
Twitter logo
Dec 23 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Special Christmas episode everybody.

We sat down with Professor Edward Holmes to put him to task about his evolutionary research, his role in finding the #origins investigations, proximal origins, collaborations with China, and much, much more.

FIND OUT WHY IT IS ALWAYS EDDIE
Some context:

Prof. Holmes is involved in many scientific papers related to origins research; studying how RNA viruses (including HIV, Ebola, SARS, Hantavirus etc) jump species boundaries for many years, and working with Chinese scientists since 2012, he was perfectly...

2/
positioned to contribute to the rush for more understanding when Covid started; among his many scientific achievements, he was the first to get the SARS-CoV-2 genome published, he was involved in studies finding SC2 relatives in the wild, he has been at the Huanan market in...
3/
2014, five years before the outbreak to take photos about the unsanitary condition and treatment of wild animals there, he was also part of two recent science papers establishing the Huanan market as the epicenter of the outbreak and first H2H transmission chains.
4/
Just recently, he was again on a new preprint that shows how frequent recombination events happen for CoVs and they identified a SARS1-SARS2 chimera, another essential hint towards a natural origin of this pandemic.

5/
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
We cover a lot of ground in our conversation, so just take some time to watch it in full.

I will take some highlight clips later when I find time and attach them to this thread, because there is quite some new things pertaining to the origins discussion worth highlighting.

-tbc

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Philipp Markolin

Philipp Markolin Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @PhilippMarkolin

Philipp Markolin Profile picture
Dec 25
The Brownstone institute is a fracking-billionaire funded anti-science #disinformation outlet

I just highlight some passages to show that the #lableak conspiracy myth would always have happened, no matter where COVID first broke out

If not the WIV, then 🔽

A master thread:
1/ ImageImage
Many amplifiers, including some science journalists, believe that a legitimate scientific uncertainty & geographic coincidence underneath the #originofcovid controversy is the root cause and driver for the conspiracy myth.

This is false
Yes, the inital uncertainties were real
2/
but no matter where the virus initially broke out, there would always be some lab or some scientists that could be made to associate with.

All pandemics were followed by #conspiracy theories about their origins. The 1918 flu was blamed on the Germans and their aspirin, ffs.

3/ Image
Read 15 tweets
Philipp Markolin Profile picture
Dec 25
Alina Chan is not a friend of a GOP witch hunt into US virologists. She knows it will not yield any evidence. Albeit related to her endless mudslinging, she fears it will eventually backfire & vindicate her targets... quite cynically, she'd rather prefer to abuse uncertainty.
For her strategic goals, it is much better to manipulate the public with endless speculative tantrums and artificial uncertainty than see virologists being not found guilty in congressional hearings.
The simple fact is that she made a big bet being a vocal contrarian and now...
all that awaits her is the public waking up to her nonsense and a fall from grace (she has already fallen out from professional circles because of her conspiracy mongering ofc)
To stay in the public limelight, she much rather sees the origins uncertainty never resolve, or go...
Read 5 tweets
Philipp Markolin Profile picture
Dec 11
Inventing conflicts of interest for scientists is a tactic from vested interest to discredit domain experts

Dr. Chan, a non expert, is profiting directly from book sales (& knock on gains from profile boosts) by #discrediting scientific experts

Tell us again how does CoI work?
There is no need to write a sensationalist & false book with a lifelong anti-science attack dog, climate change contrarian and AIDS conspiracists to smear scientists that reach conclusions one might disagree with, one can just publish papers to advance another point of view.
The problem is of course that alternative views based on speculation, not evidence, are not credible.
The only play contrarians like Dr. Chan have to bridge that credibility gap is not to improve hers, but trying to drag domain experts through the mud with mostly made up BS.
Read 4 tweets
Philipp Markolin Profile picture
Nov 24
I've written a bit about this Musk Twitter thing from a system's perspective, and this here 🔽 is a clear signal for what I deem one of the likely outcomes.

System disintegration into smaller subsystems.

Twitter will become smaller, weaker & probably align itself with
1/
other ecosystems to hold info power.

If you are in the EU (+adjacent), expect Twitter to be gone sooner rather than later and live with an alternative that will be more European and less global.

If you are in the US (+adjacent), expect Twitter to stay but transform.
2/
For the US, @davetroy has laid out some suggestions (which I do not fully endorse but can see going in that direction) how a Musk Twitter might look like & be used to further the interests of a very specific network and thought ecosystem.

For the EU, Twitter competitors will
3/
Read 7 tweets
Philipp Markolin Profile picture
Nov 24
First, kudos to the Chinese authors doing this work & a shoutout to @edwardcholmes also involved

I already flagged this Wang et al. preprint yesterday but it is worth explaining its significance to both the #origins discussion and the related pandemic #prevention discussion

A🧵
First: Origins

One thing that goes often down in all the noise surrounding #lableak is the fact that SARS-CoV-2, and actually all CoVs, possess #mosaic genomes.

This is because CoVs evolve not only through mutation but also through exchanging genetic elements with other CoVs
2/
This exchange is called '#recombination'.

One can imagine CoV genomes like colorful Lego brick walls, and recombination as taking one brick from a different virus and putting it in the wall of another; changing the color while keeping roughly the function.
3/ Image
Read 18 tweets
Philipp Markolin Profile picture
Nov 23
Maybe another word on the '#unredacted Fauci emails', now that it is clear that there were no cover-ups or suppression of #lableak, but just neutral #scientific discussion.

Observe how lableak advocates will run their #disinformation playbook, we've seen this before.

A 🧵

1/
Everytime new contradictory information (to the lableak conspiracy myth) comes out, there is an increase in #activity by lableak advocates.

We've seen this with the BANAL sequences in LAOS that proved that the RBD domain of SARS-CoV-2 was not 'manmade'
2/
We've seen this in response to 2 scientific papers that establish the Huanan market as the center & start of the pandemic.

(Worth re-reading this thread too)


3/
Read 15 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Send Email!

:(