1/12 Nice article by @stephaniebenz and @yohanblavignat summarizing the situation as to the origins debate.

It captures very well the absurd cheap certitudes of the 100% zoonosis fans, and the questions that such a rush to close an existential debate raises.
lexpress.fr/sciences-sante… 2/12 If asked, I would say that after the wise 50/50 position that any scientist should have initially considered, most of the developments have been towards a research-related accident, with many predictions there coming true,

1/8 I am relieved to see that @RogerMarshallMD has asked Thomas Monheim, Inspector General of the IC, to look into the integrity of the Intelligence Community's COVID-19 origins assessment process.
marshall.senate.gov/wp-content/upl…
2/8 I also asked 2 years ago if DEFUSE was part of the Biden intel evaluation, and, if not, why.

https://x.com/gdemaneuf/status/1631383957198737408

1/15 As you know, Peter Daszak is Greedy.

In 2023 Daszak was boasting internally that his funding was better than before the pandemic (and, indeed, at $17 min over the year, it was).

Read🧵 below for the details:
@R_H_Ebright @DrJBhattacharya 2/15 Research from Billy and me for DRASTIC, with the help of some anonymous friends, all based on legally obtained original documents (h/t @BillyBostickson), provides the internal EHA story.

1/29 In September 2021, we released DEFUSE with the original rejection letter, plus our 2-pager that detailed the reasons why DEFUSE was turned down:

Potential GoF/DURC work, no risk mitigation plan, no ESLI plan, all with vague deployment in the wild.

assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/5…
2/29 @PeterDaszak spent the following 3 years pretending that this was all lies, that the grant was denied just because he asked for too much money, calling DRASTIC conspiracy theorists.

Today's💥bipartisan💥 @COVIDSelect report 💯% confirms what we explained back in Sep 2021.

1/7 Just another way to keep funding Daszak.

This was on top of the private donors and foundations that took the relay after Daszak's grants got suspended in Apr 2020.

One huge advantage in this: no reporting or regulatory requirements as private money!
.@DOGE

https://x.com/mentju4/status/1863865993220547024

2/7 Proofs:

9 June 2020:
"We do have some good news though. First of all, we received the check from your Anonymous donor colleague [$500k] and this will go a significant way to allowing us not to lay off staff from the China work."
.@emilyakopp

https://x.com/gdemaneuf/status/1861362556771934259

1/4 For the record:

Florence Debarre did a lot of her checks by talking directly to Peter Daszak, today defunded & disgraced.

He seems to have been rather convincing. Did he tell her that he was happy to have coronavirus work done at P2 in China, when it would be P3 in the US? 2/4 Also, let's not forget that Debarre was a contact of Daszak from before the outbreak.

1/14 Here is a quick thread on the back-channels funding to EHA and the support by Fauci to Daszak/EHA, via Morens and Keusch as foot-soldiers.

The message below gives the gist.
@RandPaul @RogerMarshallMD @emilyakopp 2/14 We can see here :

• A gift from an anonymous donor (actually an anonymous foundation), enough to help keep staff in China.
• The gift from the Wallace Foundation
• Jeremy Farrar asking Peter for a pitch he can put out to Wellcome Foundation, for funding EHA.

@BiosafetyNow

1/9 An interesting paper about Covid origins open-science on Twitter/X, against the gate-keeping from entrenched communities.

'In essence, much of natural origin science advocacy over the following three years focused on achieving a definitive and final closure of the origin question, in the face of incomplete and missing data.' 2/9 'A core lab origin advocacy group formed on Twitter in spring 2020, under the name DRASTIC. [..] This loose multinational collection of molecular biologists, bioinformation specialists, biosafety experts, engineers, and internet sleuths, some of whom are anonymous, has produced very extensive Twitter content, as well as preprint documents, and peer-reviewed publications'.

#DRASTIC @BillyBostickson

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03…

1/11 Question for @COVIDSelect and @JamesComer

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 @VivekGRamaswamy

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: