1/4 What did Tabak agree about with Collins, when faced with this very honest and dispassionate email from David Relman?

@JamieMetzl @BiosafetyNow @DrJBhattacharya 2/4 'There are some incredibly important questions, not just about what happened, but also about how we should go about understanding biological threats that arise from nature, as well as from the activities of humans, and how we should manage tradeoffs between benefits and risks in science. NIH can (and IMHO, really must) play a leading role in this discussion.'

1/ This thread covers a key Dec 2022 report by the House Intelligence Committee, which aimed to review the Intelligence Community's response to the COVID-19 outbreak:

That report illustrates the role of the Director of National Intelligence at the time.
intelligence.house.gov/news/documents… 2/ But before I dig into it, let me set the expectations right:

👉🏼That report is not about the origins of Covid-19.

It is first about the work of the Intel Community (IC) 'once' the outbreak was public at end December 2019.
The origins question is touched on only indirectly.

1/11 There is an interesting interview from Aug 2002, which I have already pointed to, that shows how Fauci went 100% with the Biodefense agenda of Bush and Cheney.
It adds context to Emily's thread.

More below.
@BiosafetyNow @R_H_Ebright #DRASTIC

https://x.com/emilyakopp/status/1850899200998830110

2/11 Fauci explains how he was given the green light by Bush / Cheney for taking over a major Biodefense portfolio within the NIH.

For instance, one of his first tasks was to plan for a possible bioweapon strike by Saddam Hussein. He worked hard on that urgent threat:

1/8 As I promised some time ago, here is an important piece on the genesis of Proximal Origin.

I called it 'A Tragicomedy of our Times' because that's precisely what it is.

The piece is long (book-size), but there is a short Summary:


@JeremyFarrargillesdemaneuf.medium.com/summary-proxim… 2/8 Key questions are addressed in this research, such as:

👉🏻 Who was really behind the investigative initiative of Jeremy Farrar, of the Wellcome Trust, at the end of January 2020.

👉🏻 Why the tone and conclusions of the Proximal Origin draft changed so much within a week of the confidential investigative call that took place on 1 Feb, organised by Farrar at the suggestion of Anthony Fauci (head of NIAID).

👉🏻 Why the agreed plan to have the WHO onboard the origin question was dropped around the 9 Feb, and never heard of again, despite having the support of the US government.

👉🏻 Why Farrar organised both the publication of Peter Daszak’s Statement of Support and the release of Proximal Origin at a crucial time.

@DrTedros @gabbystern @JamieMetzl @mvankerkhove @schwartlanderb

Fauci did the biodefense work he was asked to do back in 2002/3 when this was largely transferred to him under the NIH.

That’s the issue.
And that’s why there is a consensus not to go after him, while avoiding the biodefense can of worms.

https://twitter.com/WashburneAlex/status/1799306865534521351

As China was started to steam ahead on its own in 2017-18, be it sampling, GoF or various synthetic biology experiments, EHA was starting to be left behind.

EHA tried to stay on the train with the GVP and DEFUSE. That failed, as the risk-reward equations looked bad.

But within the NIH grants framework, Daszak was able to obfuscate his difficulties just enough, while the NIH was clueless enough to keep the game going into new territories.

Then as the degrading picture became more clear, some on the Track II Biodefense side thought that this was basically the only chance left to keep a seat on that train.

So, just at the time when it was losing control, the NIH looked the other way.

1/8 The story of one of the worst policy failures in US history in a nutshell, as an introduction to my latest work on the USAID and EHA grants in South East Asia:

Left Behind:
@emilyakopp @natashaloder @zeynep @KatherineEban 2/8 Limited Options:

1/11 Question for @COVIDSelect:

How come that Daszak's R01 AI110964 lists San Pya clinic (Myanmar) and Institut Pasteur (Cambodia) as in-country partners, when in fact these confirmed that they were NEVER contacted by EHA and have no idea why they are showing up on the grant? 2/11 Not only that, but the April 2020 update by EHA positively states that San Pya Clinic and Institut Pasteur Cambodia performed their assigned tasks and sent their samples to the WIV.

@emilyakopp @KatherineEban

Daszak did 4 months of detention in 1986 for stealing a TV set, a hi-fi, a statue and some other items, so that he could indulge in his alcohol fuelled ‘fun’ at other people’s expense.

This fraud later managed to get hold of 100s millions of US taxpayers money.

https://twitter.com/somebitchiiknow/status/1788115746632978471

Someone saw through him very early:

“Judge Lloyd-Jones told Daszak that he had been given more chances than most and had abused other people trust.”

Another retraction for Robert Garry.

I may be losing track, but it is at least his third retraction.
There is also on expression of concern for one of his papers.
@thackerpd @KatherineEban @emilyakopp

https://twitter.com/MicrobiomDigest/status/1775999007354974564

See previous thread:

https://twitter.com/gdemaneuf/status/1576020227493490688

Here is an important reminder to the Kindergarten epidemiologists who aim to compare themselves to John Snow.

Epidemiology 101:
John Snow never considered his map as proving anything. He relied on fortuitous control groups and cases reviews to establish causality
@mvankerkhove See for instance this image and extract from a recent paper:

Confirmation of the centrality of the Huanan market among early COVID-19 cases
Reply to Stoyan and Chiu (2024)
arxiv.org/pdf/2403.05859…

1/10 Good Judgment superforecast on COVID-19 Origins:
#DRASTIC 2/10 Final probabilities of a research-related accident:

1/5 It is difficult to be more mistaken than Robert Garry below, when discussing a supposed essential finding of Worobey et al:

@TheJohnSudworth @MichaelWorobey @hfeldwisch 2/5 As a matter of fact, that pattern is exactly the one expected if proximity to the market was used as a criteria when identifying cases (as is amply recorded).

Going further, there is no easy way to explain that pattern otherwise.

Here is the mathematically correct version:

1/26 My comments about this just published poling of experts, examining their opinions on the plausible origins of Covid-19.

There is a lot to unpack. Much more than I have seen so far in reductive tweets.

So here it is.

@RogerPielkeJr @BallouxFrancois

https://x.com/SaskiaPopescu/status/1753511289547366662?s=20

2/26 First, a key limitation:

Polling must have been done before Oct 2023, so before:
- Key Science erratum for Pekar et al (invalidated their model)
- Peer reviewed paper showing key statistical flaw in Worobey et al
- DEFUSE draft showing planned work at P2 in China and more

Some key points in relation to DEFUSE and the latest revelations about it:

- The ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) likely never provided DEFUSE to the intel agencies before their Aug 21 report assessments for the Biden intel report.

https://x.com/emilyakopp/status/1748141205651640437?s=20

- Between Aug 21 (end of agencies drafting) and Oct 21 (when ODNI released its long form Biden report), ODNI did not ask either for an update based on DEFUSE we (DRASTIC) published in Sep 21.

https://x.com/gdemaneuf/status/1631383957198737408?s=20

1/4 Memory lane #2

Exactly 4 years ago, on 30 Dec 2019, after a review of SARS-CoV-2 sequence with the WIV, all known cases were transferred to the negative pressure ward of Jin Yin-tan Hospital, using negative pressure ambulances disinfected after each trip. 2/4 The WIV, based on Vision Medicals´ sequence, had confirmed the danger that the virus likely represented at ~10pm on the 27 Dec.

From there, Jin-Yin-tan hospital (which did the review with the WIV) decided to take no risk.

archive.ph/xmPCZ
archive.ph/MiVR0

1/25 Since Daszak seems to be willing to discuss his DEFUSE failure, let me give you a bit of context and info.. 2/25 DEFUSE was Daszak's proposal for the PREEMPT program launched by DARPA.

The director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO) in 2018 was Dr Bradley Ringeisen. He was quite new to the job, having joined in Dec 2016 as deputy director of the BTO.

1/11 The implications of Pekar et al (2022) correction are not very clear, due to the obfuscation of the erratum in Science and the silence of the authors.

The example below is typical: it starts with a misrepresentation and ends up with an attack on @jbloom_lab. 2/11 The thread quoted above and Science itself both give the impression that the correction is mainly in the figure below.

But in fact that correction, from 0.5% to 3.1%, is hardly worth mentioning, as it relates only to scenarios for a SINGLE introduction of SARS-CoV-2.

1/35 This is a quick thread about NIH Grant R01 A1139092, 'Structure-based design of coronavirus subunit vaccines'

That grant had for principal investigator Lanying Du, alleged wife of Yusen Zhou, the Chinese PLA scientist who apparently died in mysterious circumstances. 2/35 Lanying Du works at the New York Blood Centre and is a well-known coronavirus vaccine expert, as was her husband, Yusen Zhou.

He supposedly fell to his death from the roof of his main workplace, the PLA Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology.

image: @RdeMaistre

Some common sense.

https://twitter.com/equal_ibrium/status/1699735373289521646

The DEEP VZN was a post-outbreak reduced version of the Global Virome Project.

For the GVP, see this thread:

https://twitter.com/gdemaneuf/status/1645925887186190336

1/10 Just a reminder:

SARS-CoV-2 was sequenced and analysed on 26/27 Dec 2019 by Vision Medicals, which made it clear at the time that the virus was likely dangerous.

On 27 Dec, the virus was shared with the WIV, which confirmed Vision Medicals analysis and the risk of H2H. 2/10 Huang Chaolin (dean of Jin Yin-tan hospital in Wuhan) and Zhang Dingyu (director) wanted to understand how dangerous the virus was before taking in patients.

Hence, they looped the WIV in for a second analysis in the evening of 27 Dec.
See source: archive.ph/X6ceh

1/16 Here is my latest piece of research for #DRASTIC and the 'Paris Group':

'Limitations of the official 2019 Wuhan cases (based on Primary Sources)'

Link for Google slides:
Link for PDF version: bit.ly/IssuesEarlyWuh…
bit.ly/PDF_IssuesWith…
2/16 This presentation was sent to the @WHO SAGO and @mvankerkhove on 8 August.

The secretariat kindly acknowledged reception. I have not heard anything back since then.

Here is the e-mail I sent them:
@JamieMetzl @ewinsberg @KatherineEban