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It’s been more than 2 years since the world learned of the novel coronavirus outbreak, but the most important questions about its origin are still unanswered.
So here is a list of questions that grows more pressing by the day—this is going to be a long thread, so stick with me.
So here is a list of questions that grows more pressing by the day—this is going to be a long thread, so stick with me.
1/ One of the most enduring mystery: The 2012 Mojiang outbreak. Why weren't the cases reported in the China CDC statistics? Why did WIV leave out the miners from their papers? Why isn't the medical data/samples released for independent analysis? Why hasn't WHO resampled the mine?
2/ If RaTG13 really came from a fecal swab, how are the bacterial reads so low?
(There are so many anomalies wrt RaTG13 that it probably deserves a long separate thread.)
https://kamounlab.medium.com/the-triumphs-of-post-publication-peer-review-abef40466164
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202008.0205/v3
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202008.0595/v2 https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.09469
(There are so many anomalies wrt RaTG13 that it probably deserves a long separate thread.)
https://kamounlab.medium.com/the-triumphs-of-post-publication-peer-review-abef40466164
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202008.0205/v3
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202008.0595/v2 https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.09469
3/ 7896-clade of viruses from Mojiang: Why did Yu Ping et al. didn’t disclose an entirely new lineage of SARS-like viruses that they had already characterized by 2019, and which at the time were the nine closest viruses to SARS-CoV-2? https://twitter.com/AntGDuarte/status/1395718252215644166?s=20
4/ Why did Shi and others at WIV didn’t mention the furin cleavage site when they published their key Nature paper on the genomic analysis of SARS-CoV-2?
Alina Chan said it best: https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1391942103761145860?s=20
Alina Chan said it best: https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1391942103761145860?s=20
**Any resemblance to actual proposals to insert furin cleavage site in SARS-like viruses is purely coincidental.
5/ The still missing “WIV15” live isolate. Why hasn’t WIV shared anything about it in their published papers? https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1441815168330223619?s=20
6/ The pangolin papers: Why were four studies on pangolin coronaviruses all released within the same 2-3 days (Feb 18-20), and all using the same pangolin datasets? https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1320356596392906752?s=20
7/ Where are the still missing Latinne et al. sequences? The first draft of Latinne et al. submitted in October 2019 might be informative. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1447569867696078862?s=20
8/ Why hasn’t WIV/EcoHealth shared any data on SARS-like viruses sampled post-2016? https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1416089197665001475?s=20
From FOIA’ed documents and letters, we know that bat samples from Yunnan and SE Asian countries were being sent to WIV in the years leading up to the outbreak, providing the most plausible link between these habitats and Wuhan.
9/ Why did Shi alter the title and keywords of WIV’s viral pathogen database sometime around December 30th? Two years on, why has the WIV databases never been shared with the international community?
10/ How did China CDC miss the early COVID cases despite having completed the world’s largest direct reporting system for infectious disease by June 2019?
https://web.archive.org/web/20200305161921/https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2020-03-05/doc-iimxyqvz8101965.shtml
https://web.archive.org/web/20210522000612/https://m.chinacdc.cn/xwzx/zxyw/201908/t20190821_204885.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20200305161921/https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2020-03-05/doc-iimxyqvz8101965.shtml
https://web.archive.org/web/20210522000612/https://m.chinacdc.cn/xwzx/zxyw/201908/t20190821_204885.html
11/ Why the official record of the 1st confirmed COVID case - with a reported onset date of November 17 - have never been made public?
As per SCMP which had access to the official data, 266 people were infected in 2019, including at least 9 in November. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back
As per SCMP which had access to the official data, 266 people were infected in 2019, including at least 9 in November. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back
12/ By mid-December, news of the Wuhan outbreak had reached several researchers, including Ron Fouchier, Ian Lipkin, Lawrence Gostin & Osamah Alwalid.
So, if it were known to certain communities, how can Chinese authorities have missed it? The official story doesn't make sense.
So, if it were known to certain communities, how can Chinese authorities have missed it? The official story doesn't make sense.
13/ The December 11 spike in WeChat index for the term ‘novel coronavirus’. Kind of odd considering no one in China is supposed to have known about a 'novel coronavirus' outbreak back then. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1380551615720030208?s=20
14/ As per Zhang Dingyu, director of Wuhan Jinyintan hospital, WIV had received a virus sequence on Dec 27th. They compared the sequence and found a "high agreement" with a bat SARS-like coronavirus.
Wonder why WIV officials never mentioned this. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1425834882568056832?s=20
Wonder why WIV officials never mentioned this. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1425834882568056832?s=20
15/ WIV had produced its own reverse genetics system in 2017, making it possible to genetically engineer coronaviruses without leaving obvious traces. Did they make any further advances as envisaged in the 2017 WIV thesis?
https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1392575275095924736?s=20
https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1392575275095924736?s=20
16/ 2017 WIV thesis: Did WIV go “determining in the laboratory whether recombination occurs after co-infection with different SL-CoV strains and what new strains may arise" post-2017? https://twitter.com/rowanjacobsen/status/1395003290279190530?s=20
It was quite possible that SARS-CoV-2 is a lab chimera which inadvertently infected a researcher, as Ralph Baric had postulated. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1409814636778508291?s=20
17/ Project DEFUSE: Did the Wuhan scientists carried out the project, even without funds from DARPA? https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1446995930075451398?s=20
Without doubt, WIV had already carried out some experiments which were part of the DEFUSE proposal. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1447906322112864262?s=20
In 2018, WIV received several new research funding, and could’ve followed through on their plans. (These grant proposals would be the ideal documents to get.)
Anyone who thinks China needs US funding to do what they have been up to, has his head in sand. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1380203508415168516?s=20
Anyone who thinks China needs US funding to do what they have been up to, has his head in sand. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1380203508415168516?s=20
18/ What happened to the China Virome Project for which funding was already made available in 2018? Work plans were ready by 2019 (PREDICT 2019 semi-annual report), and there were job adverts in mid-2019. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1369392126316937224?s=20
19/ Where are the published studies describing the experiments involving civets and humanized mice at WIV in 2019?
https://www.science.org/pb-assets/PDF/News%20PDFs/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q&A-1630433861.pdf
https://www.science.org/pb-assets/PDF/News%20PDFs/Shi%20Zhengli%20Q&A-1630433861.pdf
20/ EcoHealth grant document: "we will identify approximately 20 viruses that will be used for mouse infection experiments. This will require a total of 80 mice over the study period."
If you aren't wondering why we've read nothing of it, you need to be.
If you aren't wondering why we've read nothing of it, you need to be.
21/ Audit trail: “WIV will implemented an "audit trail" that tracks animals used in experimental investigations (Aim 3) from parents, through birth, shipment, experimentation, results, QC and analyses, providing outside researchers the ability to track experiments..” Where is it?
Oops, I messed up the thread. It picks up here. (Should be #22) https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1483438527086211073?s=20
23/ Where is this catalogue of novel SARSr-CoV strains “different from SARS-CoV with diversity ranges of 10-25%” in the spike protein?
As per the DEFUSE proposal, approximately 15-20 bat SARSr-CoV spike proteins were characterized per year.
https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1435283928856743938?s=20
As per the DEFUSE proposal, approximately 15-20 bat SARSr-CoV spike proteins were characterized per year.
https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1435283928856743938?s=20
**Important to note, the difference in spike protein between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV is ~24%.
24/ EHA submitted its Y4 progress report in Sept 2020, 2 years after when the report should have been submitted. Why? Same for the Y5 report, which was submitted in August 2021, two years late.
Were there earlier versions that was replaced by EcoHealth? https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1450942326633742336?s=20
Were there earlier versions that was replaced by EcoHealth? https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1450942326633742336?s=20
25/ Why did EcoHealth make a wire transfer of $195K to Institute of Microbiology, CAS in 2019, although the institute wasn’t part of the NIH grant? ...but which incidentally was leading the 2018 CAS “Special Project”. https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1366445751904034816?s=20
26/ WIV had a collaborative project with EcoHealth on ‘Viruses and Genetic Resource Database’. Did this database contain the >180 novel SARS-related viruses mentioned in the DEFUSE proposal?
This data is vitally important.
https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1450484665685397507?s=20
This data is vitally important.
https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1450484665685397507?s=20
27/ Private emails between top experts reveal that they had strong suspicions that the virus didn’t evolve naturally.But NIH leaders seeked to shut down public discussions of the possibility. In just 3 days following a teleconference, the experts told just the opposite in public.
Which brings me to the last question, and one of the most piquant: What made them change their mind so quickly? Why won’t the participants release the unredacted emails?
If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding it? https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1480929739288285193?s=20
If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding it? https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1480929739288285193?s=20
