Alina Chan
@Ayjchan
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Scientist against lab-based pandemics 🧬 Co-author of VIRAL: the search for the origin of Covid-19 📖 A dangerous young investigator 🕵🏻♀
Joined December 2011
Ahead of today's hearing in Congress: my opinion piece with the @nytimes on why Covid-19 was likely caused by a lab accident. My hope since 2020 has been for leaders, especially scientists, to lead the charge in investigating a plausible lab #OriginOfCovid - as opposed to.
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Part of the reason why the public has lost so much trust in science is because experts have made claims with so much certainty and refused to apologize or make amends when those claims turn out to be wrong. Most, if not all, research begins with acknowledging uncertainty.
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If SARS2 came from a lab, genetic engineering is very much on the table. This wasn’t my view 1 year ago. However, in light of grant proposals and reports released in the past 2 months, we know novel SARS-like viruses were being synthesized and engineered at unprecedented scale.
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At this point, we've found more SARS2-like viruses in Wuhan labs than in Wuhan markets.
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1. Wuhan University deleted SARS2 data relating to early cases.2. @jbloom_lab recovered the data.3. Identified virus sequences that could precede the official "first" SARS2 sequence from China.4. Analysis suggests SARS2 was circulating in Wuhan before Huanan seafood market.
In a new study, I identify and recover a deleted set of #SARSCoV2 sequences that provide additional information about viruses from the early Wuhan outbreak: (1/n).
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German intelligence now assesses a 80-95% likelihood of a lab origin of Covid-19.
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When a new SARSr-CoV with a new cleavage site insertion was causing an outbreak in Wuhan, how many of the scientists involved in the March 2018 DEFUSE proposal remembered their Wuhan colleagues had a roadmap for experimenting with new SARSr-CoVs with new cleavage site insertions?.
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Tune in for Episode 2 of The Twitter Files tomorrow!.
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Afaik before the pandemic, there was only 1 lab in the world sampling novel SARS-like viruses from South China/SE Asia, synthesizing & engineering them, working with live viruses at BL2+3, with idea of adding cleavage sites to them. The pandemic virus leaked in that lab's city.
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After 2 years, @WHO, US intelligence & more top experts+virologists acknowledge that a lab #OriginOfCovid is plausible and deserving of an investigation. Yet, the attacks by scientists & pundits on those who called for an objective investigation of a lab origin has gotten worse.
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The majority of UNC's documents relating to the Wuhan Institute of Virology apparently will not be disclosed because they are deemed proprietary. This is problematic because the purpose of the FOIA was to look at research-related communications between Baric, Shi and/or Daszak.
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Plane crash. Independent investigation. Industrial chemical accident. Independent investigation. Nuclear accident. Independent investigation. Likely lab leak killing millions. No independent investigation. No accountability. Still no independent oversight organization. Same.
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The pandemic has degraded my confidence in (science) journalism, especially on the #OriginOfCovid. Much of the misinformation on this topic (false or inaccurate info presented as fact, intentionally or otherwise) has come from prominent scientists & been amplified by top media.
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Get ready. This is going to be an important thread. Election season will be over soon and hopefully more people will devote some attention to this. I'm going to walk through a timeline of SARS2-related virus data published in the months after the outbreak. (1/30).
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I think I’ve been blacklisted by Twitter. Applied for a verified check mark again and was denied. I have:. A Wikipedia page. Authored a HarperCollins book. A nytimes profile. Appeared on CNN. An MIT Tech Review profile. Appeared on an AAAS/Science Magazine panel.
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Of all the viruses that could’ve started a pandemic in city with a lab experimenting on novel pandemic potential SARS-like viruses with novel cleavage sites, it was a novel SARS-like virus with a novel cleavage site.
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This pandemic could’ve started because scientists decided to insert a novel cleavage site into a weak novel SARS-like virus. Not knowing it would generate a pathogen with pandemic potential. We cannot be ok with labs globally experimenting with pathogens without transparency.
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I'm all ears to hear about the precise scientific process that occurred between Feb 2 and Feb 4, 2020 where top experts in virology and evolutionary biology completely changed their minds about the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 emerging from a lab.
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Who could have predicted that 3 years after a world-changing pandemic started there would still be no credible investigation of its origin?. #OriginOfCovid.
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Been watching top experts over the past year move their estimates of covid lab origins from ‘conspiracy theory’ to ‘possible but not plausible’ to ‘plausible but not probable’. What’s next? ‘Probable but not confirmed’?.
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On @CBSMornings @tonydokoupil & Dr Fauci brought up my @NYTopinion and said they think I'm "fuzzy". I'd be very happy to be invited on the show to explain why I believe the evidence points to a lab #OriginOfCovid and to address questions that can resolve any fuzziness.
WATCH: Later, Fauci got testy when Dokoupil brought up the lab leak theory. Dokoupil: “[T]he viruses funded by the NIH were so distant from the origin standpoint, or we call it phylogeny, or evolutionarily —”. Gayle King: “We all know what that means, yeah.”. Tony Fauci:
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Forms of intimidation a scientist can expect to face if they publicly ask for an investigation of a lab #OriginOfCovid. 1. Accused of encouraging racist right-wing conspiracy theorists. 2. Accused of being an unqualified grifter. 3. Retaliation in academia. 4. Threats+harassment.
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Step 1 Conduct risky MERS chimera research. Step 2 fail to report results for 2 years. Step 3 when asked by journalists, tell them you didn’t actually do it. Step 4 when journalists discover you did do it, blame the spokesperson
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Is a scientific publication considered misinformation or even disinformation if emails of the authors are later released showing that they had a different private stance and likely did not believe in their own public arguments?.
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I am not 100% convinced Covid came from a lab. I still think there is a small chance the virus emerged in Wuhan without the help of research activities. However, this would mean:. 1⃣ The Wuhan-US scientists' entire framework about the spillover risks of SARS-like viruses,.
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5 years ago, a republican senator raised the possibility of a lab leak origin of Covid. This was called a racist conspiracy theory. Only a handful of scientists & biosecurity experts from reputable institutions dared to say a lab origin was plausible & should be taken seriously.
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The #lableak #OriginOfCovid hypothesis is simple:.Wuhan scientists collected novel SARS-like viruses from the wild & manipulated these at low biosafety as they had done for years. A virus escaped from their lab in 2019 and caused the pandemic.
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I sometimes get the question "Aren't you afraid pushing for an investigation of a lab #OriginOfCovid will fuel dangerous conspiracy theories?". I think scientists who appear to have conspired to suppress an investigation into a lab origin are the ones fueling conspiracy theories.
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Reporting by @emilyakopp: .Morens, a senior advisor to Fauci for decades, wrote in an email to Dr. Daszak. "I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d but before the search starts. So I think we are all safe.". #OriginOfCovid.
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The whole human population getting naturally infected, vaccinated, boosted, and continuously microdosing on a virus is too high a price to pay for finding out what happens when you put a novel furin cleavage site into a low-risk SARS-like virus.
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I encourage experts who have insisted on a natural origin of Covid-19 to gracefully change their public stance instead of doubling down on the threadbare evidence for the wet market hypothesis. You could acknowledge that you initially trusted your colleagues in China/US to tell.
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Peter Daszak asked for US-funded virus data to be withheld, FOIAed by @USRightToKnow. "It's extremely important that we don't have these sequences as part of our PREDICT release. Having them as part of PREDICT will being very unwelcome attention".
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If the names of the 3 sick WIV scientists had been made public in May 2020, I doubt that many in the scientific community and the media would have spent the last three years raving about a raccoon dog or pangolin in a wet market.
After years of official claims to the contrary, strong new evidence suggests the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a Chinese lab. According to multiple sources, the researchers who led gain-of-function research, which increases infectiousness, were the first to be infected.
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"U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.".
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As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with @WHO @DrTedros, US & 13 other countries, & EU that greater clarity about the #OriginsofCOVID is necessary and feasible to achieve. We must take hypotheses about natural & laboratory spillovers seriously.
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Replace 'lab leak' with 'plane crash' in these common arguments:. "We don't need to find out how the lab leak happened. Just do it safely in future.". "We don't need to investigate or hold people accountable for a lab leak.". "Investigating lab leak will hurt public trust. So.
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Because the SARS-like virus research was a US-China collaboration, not only do we know scientists had a precise plan in 2018 to create viruses matching the pandemic virus but we also know researchers on these projects might've been among the 1st Covid-19 cases. #OriginOfCovid.
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“It’s just another chapter in a sad tale of inadequate oversight, disregard for risk, and insensitivity to the importance of transparency,” said Stanford microbiologist Dr. David Relman.
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Everyone should watch the @MegynKellyShow interview of Robert Garry, one of the Proximal Origin authors. Favorite quote from @megynkelly in this:."You can't dismiss a legitimate question by labeling it a conspiracy theory. That's a tactic, not science.".
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Nothing strange happened in Wuhan but if you go around asking questions, you get tortured and thrown in prison for 4 years.
Latest: Chinese citizen journalist #ZhangZhan has been sentenced to four years in prison for reporting from Wuhan during the #COVID19 lockdown. I chronicled her journey to Wuhan and talked to those who knew her well:
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Early drafts of the defuse proposal that might have led to the pandemic. FOIA'ed by @USRightToKnow. US collaborators privately said the live SARS-like virus work would also be done in China and one expressed concern about lower levels of biosafety there.
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Something's wrong if you can look at one of the worst tragedies in living history and say:. "Does it matter that we find out how this happened?" . "Does it matter that people abused their power/position to spread misinformation or suppress an investigation into what happened?".
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The #OriginOfCovid saga has shown that some scientists have their priorities all messed up. Early 2020, prominent scientists condemned the lab origin hypothesis as a conspiracy theory & some claimed they knew this virus was not genetically modified. Mostly everyone fell in line.
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Transcripts of the early 2020 exchanges on the #OriginOfCovid among leading scientists in the US & Europe show they were privately worried about a lab origin of Covid-19. Yet, publicly they authored Proximal Origin, which dismissed lab origin hypotheses.
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Leading science organizations and journals appear to be utterly tone deaf. Up till last month, the National Academies kept Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance as head of their forum on microbial threats. Nature journal continues to play the mouthpiece of the Proximal Origin.
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The lab leak #OriginOfCovid theory is simple. Scientists studied a dangerous virus at low biosafety. It leaked. The continued lack of investigation + the dishonesty of scientists who knew of the risky work in Wuhan is driving distrust in science & actual conspiracy theories.
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There's no way this devastating pandemic started as a result of virus hunting and/or gain-of-function research, say experts who advocated for, funded, or collaborated on virus hunting and/or gain-of-function research.
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On @WSJ front page: the lab leak hypothesis was suppressed in the intelligence community, similar to how it was suppressed in the scientific community. FBI and DoE both assess a lab #OriginOfCovid but their assessments have not been shared with the public.
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Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 is available for pre-order. I'm privileged to join forces with a towering figure in science writing @mattwridley to chronicle the story of sleuths, scientists & the search for the origin of COVID-19.
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At this point we're really just waiting to see who will be the last to acknowledge that the Covid-19 pandemic likely began in a lab. #OriginOfCovid.
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It's important to give the benefit of doubt. However, if a suspect wipes their phone records & online search history, deep cleans their apartment, discards of their gun collection, and won't tell you where they were at the time of crime, I think it's reasonable to ask questions.
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There is maybe a 1% chance that Covid-19 has a natural origin with no contribution from research. In that scenario, nature created a unique SARS-like virus with a furin cleavage site matching the 2018 research proposal by Wuhan-US scientists and unleashed it on Wuhan but none of.
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If this whistleblower is telling the truth, that means. 1⃣ 6 out of 7 CIA analysts leaned toward lab #OriginOfCovid . 2⃣Someone with authority talked the 6 analysts down from a lab origin assessment . 3⃣ 4 agencies: FBI, DoE, CIA, DIA's scientific experts lean toward lab origin!.
🚨BREAKING🚨. New testimony from a highly credible whistleblower alleges @CIA rewarded six analysts with significant financial incentives to change their COVID-19 origins conclusion from a lab-leak to zoonosis.
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It appears that the people who convened the Proximal Origin authors who staunchly dismissed a lab #OriginOfCovid may have also shaped the membership of the @WHO team that went to China and ruled a lab origin as extremely unlikely. h/t @CDommasch .
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New NIAID award for EcoHealth Alliance to look for more novel coronaviruses in Southeast Asia. Can they please tell us what new transparency & accountability measures have been put in place since the collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology?.
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To the scientists saying that the lab leak hypothesis has changed over the past year from manmade to lab escape…. The hypothesis didn’t change. Your narrative did.
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In 2021, I thought that internet sleuths and independent investigators had done enough of the legwork and that it was time for a credible #OriginOfCovid investigation. That didn't happen in 2021. 2022. No investigation. 2023. Still no investigation. What exactly is the holdup?.
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Half of the earnings from our #OriginOfCovid book are going to charity. If you want to help us make VIRAL: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 a bestseller, please consider buying it within the next 24 hours. Thank you!. Amazon:
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At this point, I believe that if/when a credible whistleblower appears and says that a lab accident caused the Covid-19 pandemic, journals like Nature will still continue writing articles about the "mounting evidence" for infected raccoon dogs at the Wuhan market.
This time five years ago, the virus that causes COVID-19 was spreading around the globe unchecked. One of the biggest questions that remains is: where did it come from?.
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This might come as a shock to some people. Whether or not the COVID-19 pandemic started because of a lab accident has nothing to do with your political identity and patriotism. #OriginOfCovid.
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Are there any virologists out there who still think it's acceptable to be inserting gain-of-function features like furin cleavage sites into novel SARS-like viruses?. Have such experiments resulted in enormous benefits for humanity?.
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@USRightToKnow Ralph Baric noted that an earlier version of Defuse proposed handling novel live SARS-like viruses at low biosafety and wrote:."In the US, these recombinant SARS-CoV are studied under BSL3. In china, might be growin these virus under bsl2. US reseachers will likely freak out"
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Early 2018: Wuhan & US scientists propose inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS-like viruses in the lab. Late 2019: Novel SARS-like virus with novel cleavage site is detected in Wuhan. Early 2020: WIV manuscripts fail to take note of the virus' novel cleavage site.
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Today, a thread debunking (unintentional) misinformation on the origins of covid-19 / SARS-CoV-2 virus. Starting with the top 10 easily fact-checked ideas or statements that are not true, although a shocking number of scientists still think these are true.
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Top scientific journals continue to refuse to publish arguments for a lab #OriginOfCovid. In 2020, I was told the lab leak theory is a conspiracy theory. In 2025, I am being told everyone already knows the evidence and arguments so I have nothing novel to publish.
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I believe that reporting on online harassment should be fair. The latest piece by @jocelynkaiser does not point out the harassment that these dozen scientists filing a complaint have themselves engaged in towards other scientists like myself in the past 4 years.
A dozen #COVID19 scientists have filed a formal complaint with Rutgers University alleging that two faculty members violated the university’s policies by posting “provably false” comments that are often defamatory and that could incite harm against them.
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There is speculation that US funded collaborations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to keep an eye on virus research there. The problem is that, when a pandemic happened, the middleman did not produce intelligence but also actively suppressed the lab leak theory.
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“a House committee investigator who is not authorized to speak to the media told me that the NIH has information that can help explain how the pandemic started, but the current administration seems loath to make it public.”. Piece by @thackerpd
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#OriginOfCovid reporting in early 2022 is a repeat of what happened in early 2020. Some scientists, including some from 2020 #ProximalOrigin, put out a paper claiming certainty of a natural origin. Reporters, incl some from 2020, rush out headlines amplifying this claim. /20.
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It's difficult for me to understand why it has been so difficult for the NIH to tell us what it knows about the coronavirus research that was happening in Wuhan as part of an international collaboration.
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A whistleblower says that US partners of the Wuhan Institute of Virology said the experiments to put furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses (as close as you can get to a recipe to create the Covid-19 virus) were done in 2019.
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In 2020, leading virologists deceived a @nytimes journalist, resulting in NYT dropping the lab leak hypothesis. Years later, these virologists continue to deny their perfidy while attacking experts like @sigridbratlie who call out their deception.
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How many of the experts who predicted a pandemic also predicted: . 1. It might have come from pandemic prevention research. 2. We would be 2.5+ years into the pandemic without a credible investigation. 3. Next to nothing has been done to prevent future pandemics at the source.
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SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the city with arguably the world's best SARS-like virus origin tracking expertise. Yet, 2 years later they've found less evidence for a natural #OriginOfCovid than scientists did for SARS-CoV-1 only 3 months after that first SARS virus was isolated in 2003.
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I wasn't aware that it is scientific misconduct to alert editors to the fact that key data is missing in a paper.
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My @Twitter replies are being deboosted. For example, often hidden under “Show additional replies, including those that may contain offensive content.”. So I’m going to RT some of my own replies and ask for the help of people following me to help counter the Twitter deboosting.
@EcoHealthNYC Then why are some of your samples collected even from before 2016 labelled as coming from Laos?.
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To all the virologists and journalists asking for evidence that the pandemic virus may have been engineered in a lab, I think you missed this revelation in September 2021:.
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What is going to help inform us on this question “was SARS2 genetically engineered?” is getting full access to all of the communications and documents US-based scientists, editors, and funders had relating to any novel SARSrCoV work. Not machine learning.
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Imagine if the public had this info in Jan 2020. International scientists, HQ in Wuhan, were collecting an incredibly vast diversity of SARSr-CoVs, making chimera, doing research at BSL2 and 3 in various boutique cells and humanized animal models, and inserting cleavage sites.
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It could have been any virus, in any city, in any year that caused the pandemic. But it was a novel SARS-like virus with a novel cleavage site in Wuhan less than 2 years after scientists there proposed putting novel cleavage sites in undefined SARS-like viruses. #OriginOfCovid.
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First they tell you that you’re crazy for suggesting it,. then they say it’s extremely unlikely but possible,. then possible but not plausible,. then it’s not important,. and finally that they were the ones who had been saying it all along and why are you so extra.
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Emails from Sep 2021 between:.1⃣NIH (David Morens, advisor to Anthony Fauci).2⃣EcoHealth Alliance (Peter Daszak).3⃣Proximal Origin & friends (Kristian Andersen, Ed Holmes, Bob Garry). Morens wrote: "Tony doesn’t want his fingerprints on origin stories.". #OriginOfCovid.
Breaking: In a 2021 exchange with leading scientists about Covid origins, a long-time NIH adviser to Dr. Fauci admitted to using a personal email address in an apparent effort to evade FOIA. He also expressed his intent to delete emails. My latest:
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"Maybe there’s a lab leak but it’s not with the viruses that the NIH was funding. That’s almost certain that that’s the case.".- Dr Fauci, speaking of the viruses that the Wuhan scientists had told NIH about in their progress reports.
Dr. Fauci: "Almost certain" we didn't fund the Wuhan virus that became Covid-19
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When SARS2 was detected in Wuhan in 2019, the WIV had been working on the 9 closest related viruses at the time, for several years, collected from a Yunnan mine where 6 people suffered a mysterious pneumonia and half died. This info should’ve been released to the world on day 1.
Another thesis, from June 2019, describes an entirely new lineage of SARS viruses under study at the WIV - the lineage that SARS2 is in - and you can see from the figure that there were 9 in total: Ra4991 and eight others.
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One fact that I think many scientists and members of the public are not widely aware of is that the original SARS virus - back when it was the only SARS virus known to man - escaped from labs not once but 4 times. 2 of those times from a top Beijing lab.
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Excited to share @rowanjacobsen's interview of me for @BostonMagazine reflecting on the last 5 years of advocating for an investigation into a lab origin of Covid and what needs to be done to prevent future lab pandemics. The issue is on newsstands!
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The #OriginOfCovid is a question weighed in millions of lives lost and trillions in economic loss. Why aren't the largest news outlets like @nytimes leading the charge in FOIA'ing emails and docs from US collaborators and funders of the Wuhan lab?.
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According to the White House lab leak page, HHS & EcoHealth Alliance obstructed investigation of Covid origins and Peter Daszak provided false statements and doctored documents. We have a new HHS secretary and a new NIH director. Re-issue the subpoenas and oversight requests.
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Some have nothing to say about experts who misled journalists, withheld info, evaded FOIA or hid COIs #OriginOfCovid. But will launch letters filled with ad hominem attacks when others present perfectly plausible lab origin or accurately point out scientific leadership failures.
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From a CIA whistleblower:.“Fauci came to our building, to promote the natural origin of the virus. He was covering his ass and he was trying to do it with the Intel community… he pushed the Kristian Anderson paper [Proximal Origin, which Fauci had advised].". #OriginOfCovid.
Fauci Diverted US Government Away From Lab Leak Theory Of Covid’s Origin, Sources Say. Fauci allegedly attacked lab leak theory at meetings at CIA, the State Department, and the White House. by @mtaibbi @galexybrane & @shellenberger.Dr. Anthony Fauci (C) speaks as US President
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Gates may not be aware that the Gates Foundation awarded the EcoHealth Alliance ~$1.5M in August 2020. If you're sponsoring and talking with EcoHealth Alliance, it's not surprising you don't believe their research caused the pandemic. h/t @JustinRGoodman .
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"The head of the World Health Organisation privately believes the Covid pandemic started following a leak from a Chinese laboratory, a senior Government source claims.".
World Health Organisation boss 'secretly blames Wuhan lab for Covid leak' claims UK government source. Intriguing…
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We cannot go back in time, but we have to change how (international) scientific collaborations work. This kind of information must be made public on day 1 of any new outbreak linked to a proximal research facility. We need rock solid whistleblower mechanisms.
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Dr Jay Bhattacharya is the new NIH director. I believe his pledge to vigorously regulate research with the potential to cause pandemics, and to build an NIH that encourages scientific freedom of speech.
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How to look as guilty as possible for causing the pandemic:. Step 1. Withhold key evidence pointing to a lab #OriginOfCovid - the 2018 Defuse proposal. Step 2. Reveal you have another 50,000 pages of undisclosed materials you still refuse to share. Step 3. Say it's "proprietary".
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When the defuse proposal was leaked 2 years ago and virologists said this research might've caused the pandemic, there should have been an immediate investigation of US partners of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to find out what else had been withheld.
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