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Andre Watson 🧬 Profile picture
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Mar 17 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
#COVIDORIGINS and censorship of scientific discourse 🤫🧵

I asked ChatGPT4 to write an argument debunking and an argument supporting the “Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2” publication, then comparing the strengths and inconsistencies of both arguments. theintercept.com/2023/01/19/cov…… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Image
Prompt 1: Write an argument debunking the “Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2” article.
Response 1:

Title: Debunking the "Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2" Article

Introduction:
The article "Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2" attempts to trace the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. However, upon closer examination, several issues… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Prompt 2: Write an argument supporting the “Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2” article.
Response 2:

Title: Supporting the "Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2" Article
Introduction:
The "Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2" article presents a thorough analysis of the genetic, structural, and evolutionary characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the causative agent of the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Prompt 3: Create an analysis of your prior replies for strengths and weaknesses of the article. For every weakness in a given argument that is a material omission of a possible alternative hypothesis or where bias is shown without regard for the scientific method or the null… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Response 3:

Based on the prior replies, we can analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the "Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2" article as follows:

Strengths:
1. Robust methodology:
Comparative genomics is a widely accepted and scientifically rigorous approach for studying the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Of note, ChatGPT missed two inaccurate claims in the “pro” argument:
1) the spike protein doesn’t seem to be well evolved to binding to human ACE2—not true, it binds 10x better than SARS-CoV-1’s spike protein
2) RaTG13 has a confirmed natural origin—missing genomic reads,… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Now, some of these authors want to convince us that three years later, a bit of SARS-CoV-2 RNA was found in the wet market along with raccoon-dog genes. They published the sequences to GISAID, then promptly deleted those sequences. Somehow, The Atlantic theatlantic.com/science/archiv…… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
On the net? ChatGPT found that the arguments in favor of natural origins of COVID presented in the Proximal Origins paper contained numerous biases, omissions and inaccuracies.

“Based on the above analysis, we have identified four strengths and four weaknesses. In terms of… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
A more detailed breakdown of the new raccoon-dog origins argument, and why it’s silly:

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More from @nanogenomic

Andre Watson 🧬 Profile picture
Mar 17
#COVIDORIGINS

What exactly was EcoHealth Alliance trying to do with engineered bat coronaviruses? A rejected DARPA DEFUSE grant proposal gives some insights and is worth revisiting.

In 2013, WIV researchers, led by Shi Zheng-Li (now regarded as "batwoman") isolated and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
1. Until WIV1 was isolated, no viruses since SARS-CoV-1 were found to use human ACE2 to enter cells.

2. Recombination work on WIV1 would be performed to create enhanced human ACE2-binding viruses, and these infectious clones were studied in animals with humanized ACE2… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Separately, a DEFUSE proposal that was rejected by DARPA notes several worrying elements:

1. “We will intensively sample bats at our field sites where we have identified high spillover risk SARS-CoVs. We will sequence their spike proteins, reverse engineer them to conduct… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Image
Read 6 tweets
Andre Watson 🧬 Profile picture
Jan 5
It’s a new year. With a new year come new resolutions. How are you resolving to virtue signal on Twitter this year? Some tips 🧵
1. Make sure to tell everyone your goals. You may not reach them, or keep going past January, but everyone will think you’re inspiring and cool if you share them.
2. Make sure to share every act of public service, charity and nice thing you do. This will also make people think you’re generous and cool.
Read 7 tweets
Andre Watson 🧬 Profile picture
Dec 9, 2022
Interesting to see Twitter throttling my posts. I cannot get more than 1000 views for the last two threads I posted. ImageImageImageImage
Many of my prior posts would receive 100,000s or 1M+ views. ImageImage
Given the recent release of the Twitter files, I wonder if this is censorship. Disturbing, if so.
Read 4 tweets
Andre Watson 🧬 Profile picture
Dec 9, 2022
On February 19, 2020, there were 500 cases of COVID globally outside of China's 50,000.

After an initial outbreak and lockdown in Wuhan, China, the media and governments did not sound the alarm.

This led to 15-25+ million excess deaths worldwide. Here is a thread on how: ImageImage
1. Failed containment. We did too little, too late.
2. Yo-yoing policy on risk to general public and mask-wearing. Politicization of mask wearing. A CDC that changes advice, wearing out public trust.
Read 20 tweets
Andre Watson 🧬 Profile picture
May 21, 2022
Scenario modeling for a hypothetical monkeypox outbreak in May 2022 was conducted in March 2021 by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and predicted hundreds of millions of deaths by the end of 2023 without intervention: drive.google.com/file/d/1SWjZVh…
In the hypothetical scenario where monkeypox emerged in May 2022, 70 million cases and 1.3 million deaths occur by January of 2023. ImageImage
More info will be shared as it emerges. This is the last post I ever want to make and like with COVID, nothing would have made me happier than to learn that the early signs were a false alarm. This doesn’t read like a false alarm though. If we can’t isolate cases fast, we lose.
Read 4 tweets
Andre Watson 🧬 Profile picture
Mar 18, 2022
The potential for “AI” and even low-budget bad actors with niche knowledge to individually create biological and chemical weapons is probably the greatest existential risk to humanity over the next 25+ years. Need major defense infrastructure advancements.
theverge.com/2022/3/17/2298…
Yes, nuclear weapons are terrifying, but less likely to be used. Nuclear weapons leave a trail and make the attacker vulnerable to counterattacks.
Chemical weapons are one route of terror. But biological weapons are an entirely different arena. They can penetrate borders, spread asymptomatically as we’ve seen with COVID / SARS-2, and performing forensics on origin can be extremely difficult.
Read 7 tweets

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