Alina Chan Profile picture
Jun 1 7 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
The 2018 Defuse proposal not only pitched creating SARS-like viruses with furin cleavage sites.

These scientists said they would build an app for warfighters to assess the risk of spillover of dangerous pathogens in Asia. Seriously.
documentcloud.org/documents/2106… Image
I'd like them to walk us through exactly what these warfighters wandering around in Asia are going to do if the app tells them that the bats around them have SARS-like viruses.
When I first read the defuse proposal, I had a hard time believing it was authentic. I later confirmed the furin cleavage site insertion plan with one of the authors of the proposal. But this stuff about the utility of their work in combatant command regions... Image
... and vaccinating and boosting the immune systems of bats in the wild as a service for government customers such as DOD and USGS. Image
How do they come up with these ideas and where can I find more of their proposals?
In the investigation of #OriginOfCovid there should be a systematic review of all proposals and reports (and the associated communications) by EcoHealth that were submitted to US gov agencies and other funding sources.
Letters from Congress were issued half a year ago asking EcoHealth among others to hand over documents relevant to #OriginOfCovid, the defuse proposal, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

At what time can the public expect to see these documents?
oversight.house.gov/release/comer-…

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More from @Ayjchan

May 29
A page from VIRAL. This is how seriously the Chinese authorities are taking the risks of pandemic viruses circulating in pangolins and other wildlife including raccoon dogs which are bred and sold for fur.

#OriginOfCovid Image
If there was any perception at all that pangolins and other wildlife pose a national (bio)security risk - the type that can lead to city-wide lockdowns and protests - it does not appear to be reflected in the pandemic response by Chinese authorities.
If the authorities even slightly believed that it was possible the pandemic virus had come from raccoon dogs or pangolins, I expect the farming and trading of these animals would've been completely shut down - no exceptions - in 2020.
Read 5 tweets
May 6
Listened to a podcast where a disease ecologist said the words "jump" & "spillover" don't accurately describe the way animal pathogens emerge in humans.

I agree. To me, it's like a shots on goal scenario where a pathogen has to take numerous opportunities to cause an outbreak.
This is why I was perturbed by the abrupt appearance of a pandemic-ready SARS-like virus in a city with no history of SARS-like viruses in its people or markets.

Instead it had a unique lab studying how SARS-like viruses jump between species & infect humanized mice & civets.
With world-leading SARS virus hunters based in Wuhan, you'd think that they would know if SARS-like viruses were taking shots on goal in their city center.

Instead they used their own city's population as a negative control for exposure to SARS-like viruses. Zero shots on goal.
Read 6 tweets
May 5
One thing I learnt from the raccoon dog saga is how easy it is for this group of scientists to schedule meetings with the @WHO SAGO to present analysis based on unavailable/incomplete data which cannot be checked or reproduced by other scientists.

From @TheAtlantic article: Image
@WHO @TheAtlantic The single sample that caused so much hype in the media is indistinguishable from a sample that was cross-contaminated during processing, ie it doesn't tell us if that market surface had both raccoon dog and virus.

See @jbloom_lab analysis:
biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
Despite how wobbly this data was, this group of scientists and virologists, including the Proximal Origin authors, ran to @WHO to present their analysis and told the press that the data indicated infected animals at the market.
zenodo.org/record/7754299 Image
Read 6 tweets
May 4
This is the strongest evidence for a raccoon dog #OriginOfCovid?

"Débarre.. who co-authored the first report on the animal sequences says that the latest analysis could never have answered the question of which animal hosts shed the viral material"
nature.com/articles/d4158…
Huanan market map from the Chinese CDC paper.
Most Covid cases were on the west side of the market, which had total retail space >9 NFL fields. But cases did not correlate with sale of wildlife and do not even cluster around the wildlife stalls. Image
We also know from the Chinese CDC data that the areas associated with the raccoon dog stall were aggressively oversampled.

Market had 678 stalls.

About 1 in 6 of the total samples were taken from that 1 raccoon dog stall's areas in the market and warehouse.
Read 9 tweets
Apr 27
Most interesting part of the @nytimes interview is when @dwallacewells asks Dr Anthony Fauci if it weighs on him at all that the pandemic possibly started in a lab doing the type of research he promoted for years. #OriginOfCovid

nytimes.com/interactive/20…
@nytimes @dwallacewells Dr Fauci responded that he sleeps fine and the suggestion that he needs to worry that NIH funded research that started the pandemic is troublesome to him. Image
Impressed @dwallacewells called out Dr Fauci #OriginOfCovid

At this part, I would've wanted to ask whether Dr Fauci was briefed on the defuse proposal by Ralph Baric in 2020 and what he thinks of the striking match between the proposed engineered viruses and the pandemic virus. Image
Read 7 tweets
Apr 23
There are so many parties sitting on unique fragments of info relevant to #OriginOfCovid

There should have been a systematic investigation in 2020 to collect these fragments and piece them together to form a better picture of how the pandemic began.
nytimes.com/2023/04/23/wor…
Part of the problem is censorship from the Chinese gov, which caused evidence & samples relating to early cases to be hidden or destroyed.

But another part of the problem is the journals & databases that didn't come forward with these manuscripts - whether retracted or rejected.
As a result, the window of time in which the virus is estimated to have first infected a human person is still as wide as September to November 2019.

E.g. the raccoon dog proponents say the first infection was only on Nov 18, 2019.
Read 7 tweets

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