Thread by @BenFPiercePhD

Last weekend, I found a copy of the book “Viral” in the library. Screenshots and references to this book are often included in some nasty replies to some of my threads on #COVIDOrigins.

So, what does this book say? 🧵1/23

The version I read was updated in 2022 (probably early 2022; Omicron is mentioned along with preprints from February 2022, but published papers from Summer 2022 are not included). I’m not aware on exactly which parts were updated from earlier versions. 2/23

A premise of the book regards how well-adapted SARS2 was to humans from Dec 2019, and how this is suspicious of lab origins. Their argument is based on how many more mutations were seen in SARS1 (certainly zoonotic) than SARS2 early samples. 3/23

This is described in this preprint (biorxiv.org/content/10.110…), co-authored by one of the book’s authors (though not peer reviewed).
📢What is very interesting is to read multiple papers that directly counter this claim… 4/23

Two papers in particular (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16140765/; pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…) show that the diversity from early SARS1 human samples should be analysed alongside sample diversity in palm civets and rdogs. 5/23

The rate of SARS1 mutation did not accelerate in humans – it had been occurring in animals for a long time prior, and the rate of mutation in civets was comparable to that seen in humans, whilst more virulent strains arose in civets alone. 6/23

Therefore, the book’s claim that “there were dozens of mutations between animal strains and human strains” for SARS1 is just like the different variants of SARS2 amongst humans around the world: mutations happen at speed in disparate populations. 7/23

We also now know about mutations that arose in SARS2 from human spread: D614G in particular arose due to the low stability of the spike glycoprotein (science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…). 8/23

If SARS2 was well adapted particularly for humans by Dec 2019, such a mutation really wouldn’t be needed in 2020. Also, SARS2 spread to numerous other species: it's not human-specific. 9/23

Back to the book: Page 3 includes a description of Alina highlighting to Matt about how no animals tested positive at the Market. As we all know by now, 0 LIVE animals were tested at the market (nature.com/articles/s4158…). 10/23

Much later in the book, sampling from carcasses of some animal species from the market is finally mentioned, though the non-susceptibility of those animals is not. 11/23

Much of the book focuses on the “insight” that RatG13, isolated from the Mojiang Cave in 2013, is similar to SARS2 (98.7% similarity /in their RdRp). This is presented to raise suspicion in the reader. What isn’t explained enough is how different their full genomes are. 12/23

The RaTG13 relationship to SARS2 theory first pops up on page 22, but the reader is required read on until page 315 (in the Epilogue, actually: 293 pages later), when finally clarified: “RaTG13 could not have transformed to SARS-CoV-2 and caused the COVID-19 pandemic.” 13/23

Dozens of pages are dedicated to the frustration from obfuscating RaTG13 with sample 4991 (tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…), which the book cites someone on Twitter alleging was used to sequence/analyse RaTG13, which is weird as they are the same sample (

https://twitter.com/flodebarre/status/1577056349296668674

). 14/23

But wait! 8 other “secret” viruses were published “far too late”: there’s a whole chapter on this – but first mentioned early on (page 31), again to raise suspicion: “the WIV did not disclose more information about these other eight viruses”. 15/23

207 pages later, the reader (finally) finds the admission that these 8 genomes are more distant to SARS2 than even RaTG13 (or RmYN02). They’re published in this paper: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… 16/23

In the interim, the reader is taken on a detour in Chap 10, which offers an older phylogenetic tree associating the group as closer to SARS2 than they actually are. An important (and more recent) Figure from the published paper on this (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…) is here. 17/23

The article above is from a paper published in Aug 2021, so it’s remarkable to not be clarified in a book updated post-Omicron, in 2022. Why wasn’t this updated tree included? 18/23

The authors stick to the old version of the tree and are exasperated by this novel lineage not being elucidated by the WIV team until so long into the pandemic, which is ironic given their evident disparity to #SARS2. 19/23

And the delays to publishing: who cares about the slow speed of research, or affects from lockdowns, right? 20/23

The book (page 294) offers no apologies, even with growing evidence for a zoonotic spillover: these questions must be asked and answered, regardless of consequential vitriol against these individuals. 21/23

If you want to read this book, read others too. Research on #CovidOrigins will evolve: recent new findings on SARS2 pathology in pangolins is exciting...but has a rough history with the book’s authors.

https://twitter.com/flodebarre/status/1662112367163891712

22/23

And there is much more to come from animal sampling: let’s be patient. There's certainly better tactics than spurring distrust of researchers in this area. [end]