4. A useful thread by @stevenemassey which exposes some of the technical flaws in this report, who concludes that this is a case study in the perils of making grandiose claims without having completed the analysis:
I get the impression that they repeatedly "filtered out", "excluded" and retained just enough data (based on possibly invalid data from China) to get the results they wanted to support their hypothesis!
6. Probably for the best
"This report is not intended for publication in a journal"
I doubt any respectable journal, even one run by dedicated natural origin proponents, would accept it anyway, hence its magical appearance on zenodo, the oft maligned home of citizen scientists
7. Hypocrisy Exposed!
Do you remember how @jbloom_lab was accused of racism and other nasty things by certain virologists, when he obtained Chinese data?
Well, now it turns out that these compromised virologists have done the same themselves!
After Van Kerkhove saw the zoonosis presentation on the data, she concluded that the data revealed nothing new!
9. Talk about stating the obvious!
"Other samples were dominated by animal genetic material linked to the stall where they were collected, such as cattle at a stall selling beef product, and fish in a sample collected on a fish packaging surface"
10. However, an important caveat
"Hence, the most abundant animal in the sequencing data of a particular sample is not necessarily the source of the virus in that sample"
(Page 9)
11. All fur coat and no knickers?
They could have just told the over eager reporters like @KatherineJWu and @benjmueller who bamboozled the public with zoonati propaganda puff pieces, the following:
"we cannot identify the intermediate animal host species from these data"
12. Partial Data used to spread propaganda!
"Our analysis is based on partial data, corresponding only to a subset of environmental samples from the market in which SARS-CoV-2 had been detected. Other sequencing data exist for some of these samples from Illumina NextSeq 550"
13. The Temptation of Saint Zoonati
"It would be tempting to pursue a correlational epidemiological analysis between the presence of animal genetic material & SARS-CoV-2 positivity using data from market samples that tested negative for the virus, when they become available"
14. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
Based on filched, partial & unreliable data, filtered to support their crumbling hypothesis, these discredited charlatans claim "These arguments stand in stark contrast to the absence of evidence for any other SC-2 emergence route"
..except their summary of the timeline of this scientific chicanery from 4th to 14th March 2023
"In an attempt to ensure transparency and engagement towards global partnership, we
would like to provide further context regarding the timeline of work"
17. The Ides of March
"On 13 March, those of us who had downloaded the data or associated metadata, or contacted the author of the preprint, received emails from the @GISAID Secretariat falsely accusing us of having breached the @GISAID terms of use"
18. Yet more hypocrisy as they brazenly claim:
"We acknowledge these circumstances are unusual. We are proponents of open data sharing & ensuring that data from our analyses are broadly accessible in public repositories"
"We find insufficient data to support a zoonosis hypothesis & instead conclude the most likely scenario is that an infected person brought SC-2 to the HSM"
Closest reported relative of the complete raccoon dog mitochondrial genome sequence was Nyctereutes procyonoides collected in the wild in East China, distinct from that of N. p. ussuriensis, the subspecies commonly raised in NE China for fur
26. A Puzzling Omission
Regardless of the exact sub species of Raccoon Dog, as @stevenemassey pointed out in his thread:
"none of the stalls with raccoon dog nucleic acid have a human SARS2 case linked to it (which puzzlingly they fail to mention)"
27. Is it even likely that Raccoon Dogs were the intermediate host for SARS-COV-2?
Apart from the fact that CCDC refused to share market sample data for 3 years, despite repeated calls to do so @GISAID misleads us about the 2013 H7N9 bird flu outbreak
"In 2013, during the H7N9 avian influenza outbreak, they were credited in a Nature Editorial for "openness in the reporting and sharing of data [via GISAID]β
But, why was Michael Callahan "sent" to Nanjing then?
"Animals that are sourced from markets & that may be potentially consumed, will be manually restrained without anesthesia, if possible, so that they may be returned to the vendor"
37. Impressive analysis by @mahonylab on human DNA reads & cross-species mapping
"If you can have SARS-CoV-2 showing up without much human DNA on a surface that has lots of animal DNA from meat, the same could be true on animal cages"
"we have to be circumspect about environmental samples from Jan 2020. e.g., raccoon dog sample Q61 was collected on Jan 12 which is at least 6 and probably >8 weeks after first human infections"
"This brings me back to main caveat I noted about Chinese CDC pre-print when posted last year: we are unlikely to get conclusive answers about origin of outbreak that started in Nov 2019 (or earlier) by looking at samples collected in Jan 2020"
41. For the Record
@jbloom_lab analysis of Gao et al. (2022) preprint
"proCoV2 existed 8β11βweeks before the Dec 24, 2019 sampling date of Wuhan-1. This places the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 as evolving in mid-Sep to early-Oct 2019, many weeks earlier than the mid-Nov 2019 date proposed by Pekar et al. (2021)"
"A key author of "Proximal Origins" paper that asserted (with no logic) that any lab involvement would be implausible, who claimed a million-to-1 odds for market origin, tried to delay/block posting of the MBE paper in a meeting with Fauci"
@Ticklicker56 @angie_rasmussen @Dissenting2020 @DrStrangeLovett @Rebecca21951651 @All_New_to_This @VaughnMises @R_H_Ebright @Florin_Uncovers @ban_epp_gofroc @MJnanostretch @Muller_Lab @SolidEvidence @ydeigin @ciukzwil @tgof137 @StavaRune @VBruttel @FondueMean @tom335363 @BioSRP @stevenemassey @jbloom_lab @BallouxFrancois @Ayjchan @mattwridley RML expertise in biodefense inlcudes tick & flea agents, so I doubt she would want to discuss how many ticks they have or what they inject them with.
1. Latest Victim of Flo Debarre's "Doxxng" Crusade
Is ME!
I got a disturbing & threatening email, mentioning:
"room for negotiation about the name"
"1st story is often the one that sticks, even if it's not accurate..your chance to negotiate terms"
"continue over Signal"
2. Le Monde
The reporter she is working with, William Audureau @Willvs , seems a principled journalist and did not know of her nefarious doxxing activities against me and other members of DRASTIC and our supporters in Academia, of which he dissaproves.
@Willvs 3. Best way to deal with bullies is to expose them!
I thus emailed CNRS, Cyber Security Office & the Minister of the Interior to complain
"Participant 12" (maybe a soldier at Aldershot). after infection with SC2, over time experienced a substantial number of mutations suggestive of rapid evolution.
Ferdinand de Lesseps's success in building the Suez Canal in 1869 was utterly derailed by the abysmal failure of his subsequent effort to build the Panama Canal due to disease.
Bankruptcy!
800 thousand people had invested their savings in the project!
Good luck using your critical thinking skills to seperate wheat from chaff so that you can decide what is propaganda & what is fact.
Of course the easy options are to dismiss everything as lies or to swallow everything as fact.
2. What I recommend
If you are interested in a balanced analysis of the Russian claims and all the detailed evidence presented by Kirillov before his assassination in Moscow, as well as relted topics, then I highly recommend you plough through those threads at your leisure.