Jamie Metzl Profile picture
https://t.co/M3eSpDWbM2 Founder • Futurist • #HackingDarwin #GenesisCode #EternalSonata author • @AtlanticCouncil • Former NSC, State, UN, @WHO advisory committee
Sue Strong @strong_sue@mastodon.sdf.org 🇺🇦 Profile picture Cheri Stahl Profile picture Nicholas Coulson Profile picture E-man Profile picture Misha🍉 who's the 6th all-seeing 👁 Profile picture 6 subscribed
Jul 20, 2023 25 tweets 5 min read
There can be no doubt the Proximal Origin authors consciously and inappropriately downplayed the #COVID19 research-related origin hypothesis and coordinated efforts manipulating media coverage. They also interacted like noxious frat boys.

No longer private Slack excerpts below. Image
Apr 12, 2023 9 tweets 4 min read
Breaking: Important @WashPost story on the lab safety crisis in China. Anyone saying they know #COVID19 is not the result of a research-related accident is knowingly engaging in fraud. More in the thread blow. washingtonpost.com/investigations… “Chinese officials have rejected the lab-leak hypothesis while also stymying independent investigations into the pandemic’s origins.” More on this here. jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sar…
Mar 20, 2023 5 tweets 4 min read
There's a consistent error in the @nytimes and other media re the deeply flawed, and later abolished, China/Int'l joint study group on #COVID19 origins. This was NOT a @WHO report. Exact words of @DrTedros linked here and reproduce in the thread below. who.int/publications/m… @DrTedros: "these are independent experts... and we don't tell them what to do. They will present their own independent report and that's what I think will of course make this study dependent on independent experts' opinion...
Mar 20, 2023 14 tweets 8 min read
The just released @NYTimes piece on the politics of the #COVID19 origins debate is a good start, but there's a much deeper history the Times did not have the space to cover. Follow this thread for more background on bipartisan efforts re the origins issue. nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/… In April 2020, Trump Deputy NSA Matt Pottinger and I, a lifelong Democrat whose served under Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Joe Biden, spoke re the origins issue. Matt began sharing my site with people inside the USG and foreign counterparts. jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sar…
Oct 28, 2022 8 tweets 4 min read
Excellent new @VanityFair @propublica piece strengthens the case for a #COVID19 lab origin. Just like with the CRISPR babies scandal, the intersection of toxic internal Chinese politics and revolutionary biotechnologies puts the world at great risk. 1/ propublica.org/article/senate… @KatherineEban & @jeffykao outline how CCP went into crisis response mode in fall 2019: internal reference to WIV security breach, emergency visit from top Beijing official, taking down of the WIV virus database & scrubbing of the WIV website. WIV had massive biosafety issues. 2/
Oct 23, 2022 25 tweets 8 min read
I just finished @DavidQuammen new book, Breathless. David does a great job making the case for a zoonotic origin of #COVID19 but a poor job presenting the alternate hypothesis of a potential lab accident origin. My further thoughts in the thread below. 1/ simonandschuster.com/books/Breathle… David has been transparent in stating he does not feel the lab origin hypothesis deserves full attention. In his TWIV podcast, he suggests it merits about 10% attention, vs 90% for zoonosis. 2/ microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-948/
Oct 23, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
I was so incredibly impressed by the work of these Chinese agronomists I sent them a note expressing how grateful I was for the contribution to humanity. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35862527/ In my email, I said: "Although relations between our countries (I am an American) are deteriorating rapidly, the possibility of working collaboratively to solve some of our world's greatest challenges must still give us hope and offer a better path forward."
Jul 26, 2022 17 tweets 6 min read
Congrats to authors of the research article published today in @ScienceMagazine proving what we already knew: the Huanan seafood market was a #COVID19 superspreader location. Unfortunately, media & Twitter comments by some of the authors borders fraud. 1/ science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… On Feb 26, 2022, the Worobey et al preprints were released with associated language asserting they provided “dispositive evidence” of a market origin. 2/ zenodo.org/record/6299116…
May 19, 2022 13 tweets 6 min read
Critically important new PNAS opinion piece by @JeffDSachs & Neil Harrison calls “on US government scientific agencies, most notably the @NIH, to support a full, independent, and transparent investigation of the origins of #SARSCoV2.” 1/13 pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… Although no new evidence presented, Sachs and Harrison state what should now be obvious to all: 1) we still don’t know #COVID19 origin, 2) we must if we are to build a safer future, 3) China blocking & 4) we must do our best to investigate regardless. 2/13
Apr 11, 2022 25 tweets 7 min read
We all remain at unnecessary risk until we determine how the #COVID19 pandemic began and address our greatest vulnerabilities. Any serious investigation of this issue must address the following 23 questions. 1: Why did the Chinese government either not carry out a full contact tracing to find the #COVID19 index case or do so and not share the results?
Mar 2, 2022 13 tweets 3 min read
The @nytimes reported, inaccurately in my view, that two recent preprints establish the Huanan market as the location of the first #SARSCoV2 human infection. I invite @MichaelWorobey & the other authors to answer the following questions re their claims. nytimes.com/interactive/20… Question 1: What is the relationship between people working in and living near the Huanan market and how do you distinguish between them in your analysis? Presumably, some people work in the market but live far away.
Dec 3, 2021 11 tweets 5 min read
The late Phillip Russell, former president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, was a big deal. That's why I encourage everyone to read carefully the email he sent in April 2020. 1/11 usrtk.org/biohazards/bio… "The flimsiness of the epidemiology pointing to the wet market, the absence of bats in the market, the failure to identify an intermediate animal host, the extraordinary measures taken by the Chinese gov't, including persecution & probable killing of two brave physicians... 2/11
Nov 5, 2021 12 tweets 6 min read
Last August, I called for the establishment of a bipartisan US national #COVID19 commission in my @thehill editorial. Delighted that @SenFeinstein @RogerMarshallMD @SenGillibrand & @SenJoniErnst today introduced a draft Senate bill mandating just that. thehill.com/opinion/white-… Understanding what went wrong and addressing the many shortcomings on many levels in the US and globally is key to building a safer future for all. Establishing a bipartisan US national #COVID19 commission has an important role to play in that process. feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.c…
Jun 24, 2021 12 tweets 5 min read
It seems highly questionable that the sequences found by @jbloom_lab, which would likely have suggested the wet market origin story was wrong, were deleted just when the Chinese gov’t was actively peddling an outbreak story they very likely knew was false. nytimes.com/2021/06/23/sci… It’s equally outrageous that int'l experts can’t even speak w/ the scientists who did this work & that journalists from countries where so many have died from this totally avoidable catastrophe can’t ask Chinese scientists the most basic questions about their work & actions.
Jun 14, 2021 20 tweets 8 min read
Although I welcome the @G7 statement yesterday calling for a "timely, transparent, expert-led, & science-based @WHO-convened Phase 2 #COVID19 Origins study including… in China,” this will only be meaningful if it leads to a comprehensive investigation into what went wrong. Fully investigating & understanding pandemic origins isn’t about politics, it’s about identifying our biggest failures so we can fix them. Unfortunately, #China has been engaged in a massive coverup since the very beginning. You can learn more here. jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sar…
May 12, 2021 12 tweets 7 min read
1/ The @MaEllenSirleaf @HelenClarkNZ @TheIndPanel #pandemic preparedness & response report makes essential recommendations that must be realized but is also dangerously incomplete. Supporting what's great in the report requires highlighting what is wrong. theindependentpanel.org 2/ Calling #COVID19 “the 21st century’s Chernobyl moment” w/o referencing #China’s role in starting the pandemic is like not mentioning USSR dysfunction & bad reactor design in a #Chernobyl after-action analysis.
Apr 3, 2021 14 tweets 9 min read
1/ Many people have asked about the politics of the #COVID19 origins debate after I was featured on @60Minutes. It’s tragic that politics is preventing the full investigation that’s required, but the story is a bit complicated. Follow this thread for more. cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-… 2/ Can understand why Chinese gov’t promoting zoonotic jump & cold chain #COVID19 origin hypotheses & squash consideration of lab leak. There’s a big difference btw getting cancer from sun exposure than from #Chernobyl. It's harder to understand why some int’l experts play along.
Mar 30, 2021 22 tweets 9 min read
1/ Having read the int’l cttee/Chinese gov’t #COVID19 origins report & watched the @WHO presser, it’s clear 1) the report is fatally flawed, 2) there’s currently no credible int’l investigation into pandemic origins, & 3) we desperately need one. Follow this thread for more. 2/ The core problem is clearly structural. The int’l team saw its task as finding a zoonotic source of animal transition in the wild, not seeking the actual source of the pandemic. There’s a big difference. They set out to prove one hypothesis, not fairly examine all of them.
Mar 23, 2021 7 tweets 4 min read
1/ A number of media organizations have reached out to me re my question to #SheZhengli earlier today abt whether the Chinese military was doing secret research at the #Wuhan Institute of Virology & her emphatic answer that it most certainly was not. Follow this thread for more. 2/ Dr. Shi said today that there was no Chinese military activity at the WIV. The US government finding released January 15 asserts that there was. Both of these claims cannot simultaneously be true. @ODNIgov @StateDept @Chinamission2un 2017-2021.state.gov/ensuring-a-tra…
Mar 23, 2021 4 tweets 3 min read
Let me get this straight. The Chinese gov't says it can't share anonymized data about the origins of the pandemic due to privacy concerns while the same gov't is forcibly extracting genetic samples from #Uighurs, #Tibetans, etc. Hmmm. news.cgtn.com/news/2021-03-1… The collection of genetic data in #China "is being done without consent because citizens living in an authoritarian state have virtually no right to refuse." If anonymized data can be shared safely in democracies it can be shared safely everywhere. nytimes.com/2020/06/17/wor…
Mar 4, 2021 6 tweets 4 min read
1/ Honored to have co-led a process bringing together experts from around the world calling for a full & unrestricted int'l forensic investigation into the origins of #COVID19. Here's a copy of the open letter we released today. s.wsj.net/public/resourc… 2/ The joint "investigation" by the WHO-appointed independent experts and the Chinese government may unearth useful tidbits, but it's structurally not capable of carrying out the full investigation that's required.