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Alina Chan Profile picture
Alina Chan
@Ayjchan
Scientific Advisor at Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard 🧬 Co-author of VIRAL: the search for the origin of Covid-19 📖 A dangerous young investigator 🕵🏻‍♀
3TW 🐭🕊🐰🐸🇺🇸🍊 Profile picture Οὖτις Cheri Stahl Profile picture Kahteei Profile picture Aviva Gabriel Profile picture 63 subscribed
May 2 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Ralph Baric's interview with @covidselect reveals he was on the Feb 1, 2020 phone call with Farrar, Fauci, Collins and the Proximal Origin authors.

Did he reveal his plans from 2018 with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to put furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses?

oversight.house.gov/wp-content/upl…Image @COVIDSelect Baric said he forgot about the Defuse proposal & did not mention it at the Feb 1 call.

I believe Baric sharing Defuse would've prevented the publication of Proximal Origin and the use of it to dismiss a lab #OriginOfCovid in US gov and to the public. Image
May 1 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance testified he didn't know Wuhan Institute of Virology bred 🦇, studied pangolin samples, engineered viruses without leaving a trace, and continued to collect viruses after 2015.

So how does he know they didn't cause Covid?
Daszak said he didn't know if WIV had started experiments described in the Defuse proposal and 🚨had not even asked them🚨.

He only had virus sequences from samples collected up to 2015. He believed that the WIV would've shared more sequences from 2016-2019 if they had them.
Apr 22 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Those dismissing a lab #OriginOfCovid have had to make numerous concessions over the past 4 years.

We now know Wuhan scientists conducted risky experiments with novel SARS-like viruses at low biosafety & planned in 2018 to create viruses with the traits of the Covid-19 virus. We also know the data on early cases & Huanan market shared by Chinese scientists do not shed light on #OriginOfCovid

Proponents of natural origin continue to argue that it is the totality of evidence that supports their hypothesis but this could be said for lab origin as well.
Apr 18 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Freedom of speech is important in academia & science but difficult to navigate when it comes to politicized topics.

With #OriginOfCovid, some scientists, journals & reporters have competing interests & may be blamed if research they conducted, funded or glorified caused Covid. On Tuesday’s hearing, chief editor of Science said the scientific community contributed to politicization of Covid & it was wrong to paint 'lab leak' as a conspiracy theory.

There was widespread consensus, Democrat or Republican, that #OriginOfCovid remains unresolved.
Apr 11 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The @BulletinAtomic Pathogens Project successfully unified experts from opposing ends of #OriginOfCovid, representing diverse disciplines & cultures.

The outcome was a set of practical and high impact recommendations that policymakers are taking note of.
thebulletin.org/2024/04/how-to… @BulletinAtomic Please see this thread for highlights from the report:
Apr 11 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Leaders of scientific funding agencies said Proximal Origin was a nice job. According to the lead author of Proximal Origin, Farrar, Fauci & Collins had advised and led them as they wrote the letter.

So why won't @NatureMedicine put these leaders in the acknowledgements?
Image The only scientist acknowledged in Proximal Origin arguably contributed much less than these 3 leaders.

He wasn't even at the Feb 1 meeting organized by Farrar where #OriginOfCovid was hotly debated and Proximal Origin was initiated.
Mar 19 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Serious question:
Is it acceptable for scientists to publish assertions that they know are not well supported by the available evidence? The first author told Nature they really, really wish they could refute a lab origin but it's just not possible given the data. They were rejected.

They then went to Nature Medicine, telling the editor they would make clear that #OriginOfCovid is natural.
Mar 18 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
What I think would be accurate reporting

2020: Some 🧑‍🔬 dismissed lab #OriginOfCovid as implausible/conspiracy theory. Journalists captured. Issue polarized. Mudslinging from both sides.

2021-: FOIA/subpoenas show 🧑‍🔬 went too far, misled journalists. Lab origin plausible/likely. 2024: Some 🧑‍🔬, including those who misled journalists on #OriginOfCovid and engaged in their own repeated harassment of scientists asking for fair investigation, complain to employers about harassment by scientists on side of lab leak.
Mar 16 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
I believe that reporting on online harassment should be fair.

The latest piece by @jocelynkaiser does not point out the harassment that these dozen scientists filing a complaint have themselves engaged in towards other scientists like myself in the past 4 years. @jocelynkaiser I would also like to invite the employers of these dozen scientists to review their tweets directed at me and other scientists, and to let us know what their standards for ethical and professional behavior are.
Jan 28 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
If even more compelling evidence of a lab #OriginOfCovid emerges, how will the scientific community (scientists, journals, funders, journalists) correct for the silencing, intimidation and degradation of rare scientists who dared to speak out and ask for a credible investigation? I implore scientists, especially virologists, who are tenured and more established to please speak up on #OriginOfCovid

Think not only about the history books but also the risky lab research happening even right now around the world that places millions of lives at risk.
Jan 21 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Defuse is compelling evidence for a likely lab #OriginOfCovid I believe lab leak should be the default hypothesis.

However, there is a gap in the publicly available evidence. We don't know what happened in 2018-2019 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Different people fill in that gap differently.

Some believe the Wuhan scientists gave up on the experiments in Defuse because they didn't get a bit of money from the US.

Others believe they followed through on those risky plans at low biosafety and caused the pandemic.
Jan 18 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
The Defuse documents FOIA'ed by @USRightToKnow @emilyakopp tell us that we need to get all of the exchanges between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its US collaborators in 2018 and especially 2019 - the year of the pandemic.

Why have subpoenas not been issued? @USRightToKnow @emilyakopp The defuse draft & proposal are consistent with the following lab #OriginOfCovid scenarios:

1⃣Natural SARS2 precursor with natural FCS isolated from sample

2⃣Precursor with FCS synthesized as consensus genome in lab

3⃣FCS inserted/optimized in isolated or synthesized precursor
Jan 18 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
What is the end game once virologists have accumulated freezers full of laboratory-cultivated & enhanced viruses?

How does this protect or benefit people in their country? How could it even be used as a threat without self-destruction since viruses don't care about nationality? Can anyone provide a single realistic scenario where enhancing viruses in the lab helps with biodefense?

On the other hand, there are many realistic scenarios where enhancing viruses in the lab harms your own population whether by accidental or deliberate release.
Dec 18, 2023 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Early drafts of the defuse proposal that might have led to the pandemic. FOIA'ed by @USRightToKnow

US collaborators privately said the live SARS-like virus work would also be done in China and one expressed concern about lower levels of biosafety there.

usrtk.org/covid-19-origi… @USRightToKnow Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance wrote:
"I do want to stress the US side of this proposal so that DARPA are comfortable with our team. Once we get the funds, we can then allocate who does what exact work, and I believe that a lot of these assays can be done in Wuhan" Image
Jul 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I have not once, in the past 3.5 years, worried that there might be direct evidence of a wildlife market #OriginOfCovid and that a whistleblower might come out with that evidence.

I can't say the same for the 4 Proximal Origin authors with regards to evidence of a lab origin. I have maintained continuously that both natural & lab #OriginOfCovid hypotheses are plausible even if I shifted toward lab origin in 2021.

It is also reasonable for others to deduce that both are plausible but lean toward a natural origin.

No direct evidence has been reported.
Jul 23, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Many experts initially expected the 2019 outbreak to follow the same trajectory as the 2003 SARS epidemic.

If it had been made public that the virus plausibly came from a lab, I believe this would've made decisionmakers rethink their assumptions about transmissibility in humans. By the time significant differences were noticed between the 2019 pandemic virus and the 2003 SARS virus, it was too late.

No infected animals were reportedly found at the market, other markets, any farms, or anywhere along the supply chain.
Jul 20, 2023 • 19 tweets • 7 min read
The Proximal Origin authors have lost the moral high ground. In their private discussions of a lab #OriginOfCovid they mocked virus hunters for not being able to predict outbreaks of their own making and steered journalists away from asking hard questions about a lab leak.


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Image Kristian Andersen said that performing gain of function experiments in BSL3 or less is completely nuts and that he wasn’t sure that the knowledge gained from these types of exceptionally dangerous experiments is at all actionable.

“It only takes one mistake.” Image
Jul 12, 2023 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Longer email and slack conversations can be extracted from the select subcommittee's report on Proximal Origin. Feb 2, KA: "[RF & CD] are much too conflicted to think about this issue straight - to them, the hypothesis of accidental lab escape is so unlikely and not something hey want to consider. The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely."
Jul 7, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Chinese CDC director confirmed that early covid cases had been identified with a bias toward the market.

In contrast, people seeking help via social media in Wuhan, Dec 20-Jan 18, were predominantly in the district of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
https://t.co/Y77WqlMtuimdpi.com/2220-9964/9/6/…
Image I'm not saying that you can tell from the early case home addresses or from the location of help seekers how the virus first got into people.

But if someone believes you can do this, then they should acknowledge the spatial data pointing to the Wuhan lab.
Jun 30, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I would also like to know if @WHO @mvankerkhove can shed some light on this engagement with NIAID senior scientific advisor and Proximal Origin authors bashing scientists like myself who are asking for an investigation of plausible lab #OriginOfCovid @WHO @mvankerkhove The Proximal Origin authors clearly have a direct line into the @WHO
Jun 29, 2023 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
Emails from Sep 2021 between:
1⃣NIH (David Morens, advisor to Anthony Fauci)
2⃣EcoHealth Alliance (Peter Daszak)
3⃣Proximal Origin & friends (Kristian Andersen, Ed Holmes, Bob Garry)

Morens wrote: "Tony doesn’t want his fingerprints on origin stories."

#OriginOfCovid Daszak wrote that the rules were "meant for pathogens that occur in humans and might be made more dangerous" so it didn't apply to bat viruses. His belief seemed to be that creating chimera in the lab was less risky than isolating new viruses. Debatable.
documentcloud.org/documents/2386…