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CD8 Profile picture
CD8
@CD57227
Aug 8, 2024 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
WHY did Eddie Holmes "kill" the Global Virome Project?

The story of Holmes, Anders$n and Rambaut attacking the GVP seems strange enough to have a closer look...
🧵 Interestingly enough, in 2016, together with J. Geoghegan, A. Senior and F. Di Giallonardo, Eddie Holmes laid out

"a framework... to help predict [!] the general types of viruses that may be most likely to successfully emerge in the future."

pnas.org/doi/abs/10.107…
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Jun 8, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Can't make that up... 😂 When whining about the Daily Mail's "smear campaign" against scientists in Dec 2022, "independent" science blogger @PhilippMarkolin failed to tell us that he was in one of the pictures they used 😂

In fact, he was on the same trip with Daszak at the time
Image @PhilippMarkolin You just gotta appreciate that Philipp was highlighting the transparency of Daszak's video at the time – while not revealing *anything* about him being in it, or even being in Thailand at all. Truly "independent"🙄

Recently he praised himself for his "good journalistic practice"
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Feb 19, 2024 • 12 tweets • 6 min read
Glad to see the lab leak camp broadening the focus to not just look at the Bethesda Boys. Although Farrar's 2013 article was news to me, it nicely fits the picture...

A thread 🧵 Here's Farrar in 2017:

"If we are to take the lessons from Ebola to heart, we need to [...] determine what new threats are inevitably lurking around the corner."

(Source: "An R&D Blueprint for Action to Prevent Epidemics", WHO )
2/ cdn.who.int/media/docs/def…
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Aug 7, 2023 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
This must be the funniest article on the internet!

"Disease X is a placeholder name that was adopted by the WHO in February 2018 on their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases to represent a hypothetical, unknown pathogen that could cause a future epidemic."
🧵 Image "Since 2015, the shortlist of less than 10 EIDs has.. consistently included.. Ebola, Zika and SARS..."

"In February 2018, after the '2018 R&D Blueprint' meeting in Geneva, the WHO added Disease X to the shortlist as a placeholder for a 'knowable unknown' pathogen." Image
Apr 16, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
The notorious conspiracy theorists of 'The Proximal Origin' wrote in early 2020:

"Basic research involving passage of bat SARS-like coronaviruses in cell culture and/or animal models have been ongoing in BSL-2 for many years in multiple laboratories across the world.

1/4 There are also documented instances of the laboratory acquisition of SARS-CoV-1 by laboratory personnel working under BSL-2 containment.

2/4
Apr 5, 2023 • 7 tweets • 5 min read
On April 3rd, 2023, Dr. Carlos Morel @cmmorel gave a few insights into conflicts that were fought out inside the @WHO SAGO group. 🧵

NOTE: Subtitles are mostly machine-translated 🤖❗️

Source:

1/6 Speaking on the occasion when he had invited @PhilippMarkolin to give a talk at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation @fiocruz on April 3rd, 2023, Dr. Morel said:

"Before the pandemic, there was collaboration with China. With the pandemic, things have become a geopolitical issue."

2/6
Mar 24, 2023 • 59 tweets • 10 min read
Aaand there's yet another video out with Eddie Holmes 🙄
10:40

"Actually one of my former postdocs in China was asked to analyze these data in March or April 2020. And he was never sent the data.
...
I know the authors in China, I asked [for] the data in May '21 and a number of times from there on and I was never given it.
Nov 26, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
An early draft of Proximal Origin contained an explicit statement that SARS-CoV-2 was NOT derived from a reverse genetics system that was built in Baric's lab in 2015. But they removed that reference before it got published... 🤔

Does that mean it DOES come from Baric's lab? 🤣 Menachary and Baric constructed a full-length clone for SHC014 in 2015, a virus for which they had only the sequence.
Nov 25, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Almost 3 years into the pandemic and I've still no idea what this is:

"The acquisition of furin cleavage sites have also been observed after repeated passage of betacoronaviruses in tissue culture (personal correspondence and NASEM call, February 3, 2020).

STILL NO PUBLICATION? It's in the Proximal Origin draft from Feb 4th and Feb 7th.

It's been replaced in the preprint version from Feb 17th by Newcastle Disease virus, an avian paramyxovirus:
Nov 25, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm grateful for Tony Fauci who suggested having a conference call with coronavirus experts about #OriginOfCovid before deciding to write a paper.

Not so grateful for Jeremy Farrar who decided to screw it & publish anyway after said experts told them they were on the wrong path. Image Re: Fauci: I think a case can be made that without the involvement of the European virologists, the PO paper would have been published in Nature (not Nature Medicine). And there wouldn't have been that much of an email trail.
Sep 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Stuart's promoting @WashburneAlex's great article on substack. A good reason to read it!

alexwasburne.substack.com/p/how-to-inves… Image @WashburneAlex Excerpt: "... it is unlikely that these knowledgeable people, after jumping on a call together with all their minds in a room alongside Fauci and Farrar, would make such obvious undergraduate mistakes on such a visible and critical matter concerning the origin of a virus..."
Sep 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This guy has me totally convinced that we have a problem with science communication.

#SciComm #WissKomm Context:
Jul 27, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Laborthese wird immer noch unwahrscheinlicher. Ja, wie unwahrscheinlich kann sie denn überhaupt noch werden?

Frühjahr 2021: "extrem unwahrscheinlich"
Sommer 2022: "noch viel unwahrscheinlicherer!"
Jul 25, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
In his PhD thesis (2014), Markus Hoffmann tested proteolytic cleavage and fusogenicity of a bat SARS-like virus.

He had two spike proteins at his disposal:

BM48-31 (aka Bg08)
BB99-04 (aka "Whoa, this thing has sort of a furin cleavage site!" [Drosten])

Which one did he choose? Well, obviously he chose...
Jul 15, 2022 • 27 tweets • 8 min read
Raccoon dogs and SARS-CoV-2

Quick thread 🧵on media articles and studies. March 4th, 2020

In his podcast, Drosten dismisses the idea of pangolins as intermediate hosts.

But, he says, racoon dogs 🦝 may have played a role in SARS-1, and so also may play a role here!

"They are an industry in China."
ndr.de/nachrichten/in…
Jun 6, 2022 • 5 tweets • 9 min read
@gdemaneuf @c_drosten @MonaRahalkar @ydeigin @JamieMetzl @Biol4Ever @R_H_Ebright Fantastic thread 🙏

I think their bat CoVs are interesting:

Original publication was in 2010, when journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JV… came out.

But only BM48-31 was submitted to Genbank by then.

All others were submitted in 2013.
Except BB99-04, which wasn't even in the 2010 publication @gdemaneuf @c_drosten @MonaRahalkar @ydeigin @JamieMetzl @Biol4Ever @R_H_Ebright It was submitted in 2015, by the Primate Center in Göttingen, with an accompanying unpublished article with an interesting title:

"Differential restrictions in the receptor-binding and *fusion activity* of the surface protein S of European SARS-like CoVs"
Jun 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Zoonati in 2020:

"Everything's been published before the pandemic! There are no 'secret' SARS-like sequences that people are working on!"

Drosten in 2022:

"Here are some very interesting spike sequences we didn't publish! Never before seen! Samples were collected in 2008." 🤦‍♂️ doi.org/10.1038/s42003…
Jun 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Interesting, if somewhat confusing, paper, from February 2020.

They created SARS 'spike chimeras' and put them into VSV pseudoparticles.

So here 'chimera' refers to a SARS spike which has a different RBD inserted & 'full length' refers to the spike only.
nature.com/articles/s4156… Their results underline the importance of host proteases for virus entry:
Jun 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Wichtige Durchsage 🤪

"Die meiste Wissenschaft wird in großen Telefonkonferenzen durchgeführt und zum Abschluss gebracht. Auf diesem Wege kann sichergestellt werden, dass alle der gleichen Meinung sind - ein wichtiger Teil des wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisprozesses."
#wisskomm Hier kann man sehen, wie der wissenschaftliche Prozess in Gang gesetzt wurde, der am Ende zum erwünschten Konsens bzgl. #OriginOfCovid führte:

"Ich würde bevorzugen, diese Gruppe sehr klein zu halten." ✅

"Logischerweise werde ich jeden um totale Vertraulichkeit bitten." ✅ Image
Sep 26, 2021 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
Nach dem Lesen der DRASTIC-Enthüllungen titelt das @RND_de nicht etwa, es sei ein "Albtraum", was die EcoHealth Alliance in Kooperation mit amerikanischen & chinesischen Labors geplant hatte. Nope, nur das böse Labor in Wuhan hat Dreck am Stecken...
rnd.de/wissen/ein-alp… "Am besten verpasst man den Viren neue Furin-Spaltungsstellen... [E]s locken, wenn alles gutgeht, dramatische Fortschritte der Wissenschaft. Impfstoffe beispielsweise ließen sich auf diese Art entwickeln, lange bevor eine Epidemie oder gar eine Pandemie in Gang kommt." 🤨