Why the HSM data, including the new raccoon dog DNA, does not convince me:

We know with mathematical near-certainty that transmission of SARs2 between humans was already widespread by the time the market was tested.

https://twitter.com/scotub/status/1498661076279431168

When you look for other start dates calculated from phylogenetic approaches, you find total agreement with excess death data (unless you look at misleading reports, like those by Pekar and company) ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Angela Rasmussen’s “Shocking to me scientifically” “I have no idea how this happens mechanistically” (in regard to re-emergence of 2014 strain of Ebola) harkens right back to Robert Garry’s “I just can’t figure out how this gets accomplished in nature” (in regard to FCS in SARS2)

https://twitter.com/jeremyvancleve/status/1642998604859326465

Dear members of the concerned public: I can easily conceive of how this happens scientifically/mechanistically without invoking improbable claims of absolute latency:

A viral vial was thawed from a laboratory freezer, and leaked.

It is a parsimonious explanation at least.

Air travel 🧭 🧳 sucks. I don’t think any airline is immune, but my experience with @JetBlue has been very frustrating. I hate to write a thread like this but with no other outlet, this is my ongoing experience: Flight yesterday afternoon from Buffalo NY to Boston (5 to 7pm) was delayed 3 hours because the “pilot was being driven in from Syracuse”. This meant I would miss my 9pm EST to 1am PST Boston to San Francisco Flight.

The only good BSL-4 labs would have:

1) open data sharing

-what viruses are housed there?
-what experiments are being run on those viruses?
-who works there, what are their roles, and what are their potential state-associations

https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1611571705184686080

2) remote location

-no BSL-4 labs should exist in population centers
-no BSL-4 labs should be peopled by employees commuting from city centers.
-Ideally, BSL-4 labs would house employees in a compound with strong quarantine protocols in place

As we approach an XBB.1.5 wave, we probably shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we are settling into a pattern (even without new immune escaping variants) where we stand to lose >7x more people to COVID each year than we do to the flu (~150,000 vs. ~20,000). While the science is still young, it is also important not to lose sight of the fact that COVID is indisputably capable of causing more long-term health effects in younger populations than what we accept for other seasonal viruses.

Many of my followers may view me as a “lab-leak” enthusiast. In honesty, I’m a truth-enthusiast. A scientist at heart & by training; & yes, someone that happens to think that the sum aggregate of data points to a research-related origin. A market origin is, however, plausible. The point of this thread is to lend my scientific argument against any claims that we now have “dispositive” evidence and “high confidence” for the market origin hypothesis. I will rest this analysis only in math, since I know math and math is hardest to argue with.

Imagine a gunshot murder (pandemic) has taken place.
Common thought & precedent asserts that the spouse (wet market) is a prime suspect.
Imagine the prosecution learns that the spouse owned a gun (raccoon dogs) & also that the spouse has no alibi. They look guilty, right?
1/n Now imagine it is learned the victim had been involved with some nefarious people linked to a drug cartel (virology lab)
2/n

I fear the push to accept zoonosis from an animal intermediary within the confines of the Huanan seafood market as the origin of SARS2 (sans reliable dispositive evidence) is rooted in more than virologists’ aversion to regulatory oversight. The virologists who push this hypothesis far beyond what little evidence is available to support it have now begun doing so in a way that is truly unhinged. They are attacking scientifically competent detractors in reprehensible ways.

Stream of conscious end of year thoughts:

If intelligent, caring people can put aside their ego to periodically (and I think the periodicity is accelerating) admit that some ‘things’ actually don’t ‘make sense’ I believe we could accelerate the precipitation of enlightenment. Even the brightest among us are stumbling in the dark, as if traversing a pitch black cave. We fool ourselves to think that with our internet and our collective sense-making that we illuminate the universal mysteries “easily”.

1) Quick thread

Let's go with data that doesn't depend on the completeness and accuracy of Chinese reporting.

Below, I would like to walk @MichaelWorobey through some simple math. The kind of math I think anyone can follow along w/, and which I am happy to be proven wrong on.

https://twitter.com/MichaelWorobey/status/1470909579349270528

2) First, why not trust the Chinese data? At this point, I hope this is nearly a rhetorical question, but let's take for example some of the most concrete epi-data we can utilize for hypothesis generation, excess mortality data.

We know:

Lab accidents happen,

SARS: at least 6x
SARS2: just recently in Taiwan

More labs handling dangerous viruses exist now than at any time before.

They exist in dense population centers.

Therefore… Even if the risk of any lab accident is low, this risk is increasing as more & more opportunities for such an accident are available. And it only takes one time.

If I roll a hundred-sided die once, the chance I roll my favorite number, 18, is 1%. If I roll it 1,000x, it’s 99.99%

Dear scientific community:

This is not a controversial statement

If you refuse to acknowledge that scientists are also human; sometimes in error, oftentimes uncertain of the truth, almost always using simplified models of a system’s full complexity, your hubris is exposed.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1470425486824255488

To certain members of the field of virology in particular, may I recommend a close reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In it, we see a depiction of the Classical Greek tragedy of hubris personified in an over-ambitious scientist.

And, if we actually bothered to look, track, and analyze this data perhaps in conjunction with other health measures… imagine what we would stand to learn! (Our current approach feels like “why would we want to learn things when sitting in the dark is so cheap?”)

https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1460154366632026115

When the CDC urged caution in interpreting titer levels as protection levels back in June, I figured they were waiting for more definitive data. Now, I’m not sure what is happening. Obviously, as Dr. Mina points out, these data are clearly superior to no data.

Anyone buying lab accidents are “extremely unlikely” needs to look all the way back to 2011-2018

“Efforts to reform the government’s approach to biological security came on the heels of lab safety lapses”

nytimes.com/2018/09/20/hea… “the bio-risk program office, established in March 2016 to help oversee changes to safety protocols, had not established long-term goals, midterm objectives or even metrics to track improvement.”

So by 2016, not only had we accomplished nothing, we didn’t even have any ideas.

@alexandrosM My take is people have become so self interested that only people with something to gain have strong motivations. Pharma has the most to gain. If it isn’t immediately apparent a delta specific vax is better they have little motivation to pursue. Similar to IVM vs molnupiravir. @alexandrosM It’s not like this wouldn’t have been immediately isolated as a possible cash-cow but I think the FDA isn’t so taken that they would approve without showing added benefit. I would bet that they haven’t seen that kind of data to make a strong case.

In my own opinion of lab or nature, this interview was my personal ‘smoking gun’, no need to delve into FCS or cover-ups / conspiracy.

(1/n)

WIV, per this admission from Daszak in late 2019, was in possession of “over 100” SARs-like coronaviruses. He says “very similar to SARs” he adds some are “capable of infecting human cells, of infecting humanized mice […and] causing SARs-like illness”

At the beginning of trying to engage with prominent virologists over the origin possibilities of SARS2 I was confused why they were making the easily spottable & fallacious “absence of evidence is evidence of absence” argument. (1/n) (2/n) I was confused how they were convinced that consistency with natural evolution meant it precluded a laboratory leak. I was confused too they conclude this was “not a purposefully manipulated virus” when it was possible it could have been.

“The SARS-CoV-2 site has more of the hallmarks of sloppy natural evolution than a human hand.”

The same hubris that asserts labs never leak asserts humans have a less sloppy hand than nature...

washingtonpost.com/outlook/virus-… Dr. Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) could be the poster child of anthropocentrism. A dangerous bias of human infallibility, superiority, and with known negative consequences toward logical thinking.