[a not-so-niche thread]
In September 2021, a leaked research proposal was made public. Called "Defuse" and submitted to DARPA, it was not funded.
Some saw it as a "blueprint for SARS-CoV-2". Via FOIA, I obtained drafts of this proposal. It was not a blueprint; here's why. ▫️1/9 The Defuse proposal contained a contentious paragraph, in which "cleavage site" and "furin" were mentioned. The text was unclear enough for people to understand it the way they wanted, like in a Rorschach test. But the drafts are clearer. ▫️2/9

Un fil 🧵 pour partager des informations sur BA.2.86, un nouveau variant de SARS-CoV-2.

Nouveau venu dans la grande famille Omicron, BA.2.86 est un cousin lointain des variants XBB* qui étaient devenus majoritaires en 2023 ▫️1/ Les mutations portées par BA.2.86 (et comme son nom indique) suggèrent qu’il est un descendant de BA.2, variant de la famille Omicron qui a causé un rebond de cas début 2022 ▫️2/

(🖼️ @nicolasberrod / Le Parisien, modifiée)

[a very niche thread]

For months, DRASTIC and Paris group lab leak activists demanded information on a viral isolate from Wuhan, WIV6, insinuating that it could be a hidden progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.

TL;DR Not only it was not a coronavirus, but the information was public. ▫️1/8 A central tenet of the lab leak hypothesis is the idea that Shi Zhengli, of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), is hiding key data.

She already said her lab did not have a virus closer to SARS-CoV-2 than RaTG13, but for lab leakers, this is not enough: they want proof. ▫️2/8

Some people struggle with the idea that the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in a city hosting a lab working on coronaviruses may just be a coincidence.

But coincidences do happen. Here are some Covid-specific examples of coincidences: ▫️1/🧵 1️⃣ The first local Covid case in the UK was from the very town that had been used as an example of the starting point of an outbreak, in a BBC documentary a couple of years before. ▫️2/

https://t.co/EBqiUT4CoC

https://twitter.com/fryrsquared/status/1234491909470638083

Le tant attendu rapport declassifié de la communauté du renseignement US-américaine sur l’origine de la pandémie a été publié pendant la nuit.

Ciblé sur l’Institut de Virologie de Wuhan (WIV), ce rapport indique qu’aucun élément incriminant n’a été trouvé. ▫️1/🧵 Lien vers le rapport :

Lien vers la demande officielle à l’origine du rapport (ciblée sur le WIV et sur la rumeur de chercheurs malades) : https://t.co/I5oBYW66Pd ▫️2/ https://t.co/VCpP9TvdHodni.gov/files/ODNI/doc…
congress.gov/bill/118th-con…

Journalists: your job goes beyond reporting what people say; you have to try and find out whether what they say is actually true or not.

Here are some tips regarding the "sick workers" story: ▫️1/8

https://twitter.com/flodebarre/status/1671602048331022336

Is the story internally consistent?

- It changed over time. Initially it involved a female intern, YH. Her name is not in the final list. Why?

- Some scientists were said to have disappeared; have they?

- BH's wife is said to have died in late 2019. Is this true? ▫️2/8

[a no-so niche thread]

A chronology of the rumour of sick lab workers in Wuhan 🧵

TL;DR: promoted in 2021 by (former) US State Department investigators; revived a few days ago. Until now, seems to only rely on the word of a few people. Check tweets 13 & 14. ▫️1/23 Acronyms used in the thread:

- CoV: coronavirus
- (O)DNI: (Office of the) Director of National Intelligence (in the US)
- IC: (US) Intelligence Community
- WIV: Wuhan Institute of Virology
- YH, BH, YZ, PY: Initials of scientists at WIV (I won't name them)
▫️2/23

Prompted by the Times article, I have tried to track down the origin of the Zhou Yusen / WIV story.

This thread presents what I have found so far; if you know earlier references, please suggest them to me! ▫️1/12

https://twitter.com/flodebarre/status/1668225754142736385?s=20

1️⃣ Early mentions of Zhou Yusen’s death do not link it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (for a reason: his affiliation is in Beijing).

The earliest I have found is a report on a Lu De show in Sep 2020 (but I have not found the original video) ▫️2/12

web.archive.org/web/2020092403…

This @thetimes article is the most scientifically inept and journalistically shameful article on Covid origins I have read so far (the bar was high).

It does not “reveal” anything: it repackages old (debunked) stories as new, and spreads wild unverified rumours.

Examples:▫️1/11 Most of the @thetimes article corresponds to unverified stories that David Asher already promoted in the media in 2021, in outlets like the Daily Mail or the Daily Caller.

There is no more evidence today than there was at the time. ▫️2/11

In a thread, @Ayjchan claimed that if we believe it's plausible that animals at the Huanan market were infected by SARS-CoV-2, we should also believe that WIV workers were infected as well.

But SARS-CoV-2 was detected at the market. It was not, AFAIK, present at WIV in 2019▫️1/4 And that's the key difference between approaches:
Some base their assessments on data that exist;
Others base their assessments on speculations.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was working on SARS-like viruses, but there is no evidence that they had SARS-CoV-2's progenitor.▫️2/4

The former head of China CDC, George Gao, said that a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 was possible.

Is a lab origin possible? Yes.
Did George Gao say it was possible? Yes.
Is this news? No, he also did a month ago.
Is this an admission of a lab leak? No.

A brief press review: ▫️1/ There was renewed attention for the lab leak hypothesis this week, following a BBC paper with a clickbait headline misrepresenting the actual content of the quote. ▫️2/

bbc.com/news/world-asi…

[a niche thread]

This recent article on infections of pangolins by a virus related to SARS-CoV-2 provides a great opportunity to talk about some of the most ridiculous and damaging Covid origin stories:

The conspiracies of the pangolin papers ▫️1/🧵

https://t.co/c6g6Hzd8kJ

https://twitter.com/MichaelWorobey/status/1661087078392934400

- Conflict of interest: I am now a coauthor of one of the protagonists of the story, @edwardcholmes (but I started working on the pangolin papers before our collaboration)

- This thread includes pieces of information that were not yet public (tweets 13, 15, 16, 17, 19) ▫️2/

Something I find absolutely unbearable from the Twitter Lab Leaker trolls, is their constant insinuations that scientists are lying. And that some journalists and members of the public follow them.

An example: their recent obsession for @edwardcholmes’s GISAlD account. ▫️1/5 Interviewed about the Huanan market sequences story, Eddie explained that he had not downloaded the data himself, because he had not used his GlSAlD account in years. It is a simple statement of fact. Why would he lie about this?! And yet trolls used it to try to smear him. ▫️2/5

Hi @zeynep,
Last week in Geneva, I told you that your 2021 @nytimes Opinion on Covid origin had not aged well.
You challenged me to find errors. Here are some. ▫️1/ Link: nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opi…

Disclaimer: in June 2021, I believed the stories I am about to debunk. I had been introduced to them by someone I trusted; I had not yet worked on them and taken the time to check them. ▫️2/

The metagenomic data shared by Liu et al., analysed by them, us and then recently by @jbloom_lab, contain a condensed and increasingly faded history of SARS-CoV-2 in the Huanan market.

A bit like what this image is to the Casablanca movie ▫️1/10 The virus was introduced into the market, humans were infected, they infected other humans, until there were enough severe cases in hospitals that doctors realized something was happening. The market was quickly closed down, and teams immediately went and collected samples ▫️2/10

[a not-so-niche thread]

A few of the falsehoods written by N Wade in his testimony to @COVIDOversight in March 2023.

They go from errors on details to profound scientific mistakes. Almost everything in his testimony is incorrect, so I had to select a few examples. ▫️1/ The source document is here:

COI statement: I am now working with some of the people Wade attacks in his testimony. ▫️2/oversight.house.gov/wp-content/upl…

GISAID data are only available to registered users. According to this interview, the data were meant to be only accessible to reviewers. How can @Nature and GISAID make it happen? Does this mean that the identities of the reviewers are communicated to GISAID?

https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1645832023213211656

On March 11, multiple sequence data were made unavailable on GISAID: the new market sequences, but also older ones
- some that had been made public in the Summer 2022 (notably, A20);
- some that were even older and had been used in multiple publications.

Why? Is this normal?

"Notez bien que ce n'est pas ce que vous dites, mais ce que je vous fais dire"

On pourra parler, un jour, de cette pratique journalistique française qui consiste à réécrire les citations ? À utiliser des guillemets pour autre chose que du vrai verbatim ? ▫️1/4

https://twitter.com/oliviertesquet/status/1621134116900012036

Et des conséquences que ça peut avoir sur les personnes citées quand la citation est incorrecte ?

Dans des citations, on m'a fait utiliser des mots que je ne dis pas, énoncer des choses stupides scientifiquement parlant, et même faire des contresens absolus. ▫️2/4

There is a conspiracy theory about how I came across the data.
I have been asked about it. I would like people, and especially journalists, to understand why the mere fact of asking about it deeply hurts. ▫️1/5 1️⃣ I have already explained multiple times that I was not looking for these very data when I found them. By asking the question, you are signalling that you think I could be lying. ▫️2/5

The @washingtonpost published in Nov 2022 an editorial based on a non peer-reviewed report claiming to have found evidence that China was hiding data on early Covid-19 cases.

Here, I show that a critical point in the analysis is based on an error ▫️1/
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… The non peer-reviewed report used by the @washingtonpost was written by @gdemaneuf, an authoritative-sounding member of a pro-lab leak activist group called DRASTIC. ▫️2/

researchgate.net/publication/36…

— Les séquences des virus de pangolin —
#complotsOriginCovid 🧵

Le grand complot des pangolins, ou l’importance de vérifier les faits avant de relayer des accusations ▫️1/ J’ai déjà évoqué la spéculation selon laquelle les virus de pangolins auraient été une diversion volontaire orchestrée par la Chine, trouvant là un coupable idéal.

(Notons que cette spéculation n’est pas spécifique aux tenants de la fuite de labo) ▫️2/

https://twitter.com/flodebarre/status/1620042958438547456?s=20