Eddie Holmes

@eddieholmes.bsky.social

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Virus spotter 🤓 Prone to mordant candor. You're twistin' my melon man.

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64 Kb nidovirus! www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

www.biorxiv.org

Could there be a message in this logo?

We are delighted to announce BEAST X v10.5.0 (beta 1) - the X is to differentiate it from the project 'BEAST2' & to denote these are orthogonal with a common origin. Website: beast.community Github: github.com/beast-dev/be... Many new models, performance enhancements and features (and a new logo)

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Eddie Holmes

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Eddie Holmes

VirID: Beyond Virus Discovery - An Integrated Platform for Comprehensive RNA Virus Characterization http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2024.07.05.602175v1

👇

A reminder that the Heritage Foundation's "Road Map" appears to be the script the GOP's House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is following and their recent Stalinist show trials of scientists should serve as a warning given Heritage's other plans and threats.

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Eddie Holmes

"The Lab Theory and The Complicit Media" Wild how we got here, isn't it? sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-lab-leak...

The Lab Leak Theory and the Complicit Mediasciencebasedmedicine.org How the media's need for tales of intrigue and villains fosters the political weaponization of uncertainty

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Eddie Holmes

Egoviruses: distant relatives of poxviruses abundant in the gut microbiome of humans and animals worldwide Novel dsDNA viruses related to poxviruses in the gut - host unclear, but could be either the mammals themselves or a unicellular eukaryote in the gut www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Can England’s games please be suspended by thunderstorms?

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Eddie Holmes

Powerful defense of Dr. Athony Fauci by Richard Horton in The Lancet: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... “why is the international scientific community so quiet? ... The answer is self-censorship"

Offline: In defence of Dr Fauciwww.thelancet.com “Is this what we have become? Is this what we have devolved into?” US Congressman Kweisi Mfume was reacting to comments from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene at a hearing of the Select Subcommitt...

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Eddie Holmes

Reply to

Gregg Gonsalves

It would require a monumental cover-up and doing things in secret. And yet to date - after years of looking - there is not a single piece of documentary evidence suggesting that SC2 was at the WIV before the pandemic. This simple, brutal fact is all you need to know.

secret.to - a really cool domain parked on Park.iosecret.to The domain name secret.to is being parked on Park.io. Contact the domain owner to make an offer right now...

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Eddie Holmes

Reply to

Gregg Gonsalves

To posit a worldwide conspiracy to hide the laboratory origin of SARSCOV2, rather than a run-of-the-mill explanation (e.g., a virus leaped from animals), requires extraordinary evidence, which one might think would take specialized knowledge. 2/

“At times, I am deeply disturbed about the state of our society,” Fauci writes near the end of his book. “We have seen complete fabrications become some people’s accepted reality". Never a truer statement.

'The resonances betwen the 2 greatest public-health crises of Fauci’s tenure at niaid are impossible to ignore. Both cases involve asympt. infection, a scramble for tests & treatments, public-information campaigns, & the search for a vaccine—miraculously fast for covid19, still unfulfilled for HIV'

Anthony Fauci’s Side of the Storywww.newyorker.com The former NIAID director has been both lauded and demonized for his work during the COVID pandemic, but his autobiography insists that his career needs to be seen whole to be understood.

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Eddie Holmes

This 2021 WIRED article about the weaponization of uncertainty with regards to Covid origins still rings true...especially the part about how this is used politically (see: recent activity from GOP members of the House and Senate). www.wired.com/story/covid-...

The Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory Is a Tale of Weaponized Uncertaintywww.wired.com Scientists almost never say they’re sure, and it could take years to pin down the pandemic's origins. Until then: People are trying to scare you.

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Eddie Holmes

This is such a critical and quick read, highlighting the dishonesty of @nytimes.com in platforming revisionist history, pseudoscience, and conspiratorial beliefs in their Opinion section. Expertise matters. NYTimes would do well to appreciate that fact when it comes to science opinion.

John Moore, virologist/immunologist from Cornell Weill Med in NYC and I take the NYTimes to task for two opinion pieces on #COVID earlier this month. Both pieces are examples of "science opinion", where non-experts weigh in on topics beyond their ken. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

“The New York Times” Is Failing Its Readers Badly on Covidwww.thenation.com A pair of shoddy opinion pieces proves that the paper is letting its audience down and undermining the fight to improve our knowledge of the virus.

This needs to be seen in context of the wider orchestrated campaign to silence experts by trying to get their papers retracted and claiming they are fraudulent etc.

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Eddie Holmes

Since it appears that Senators across the isle care little about the scientific method, a good reminder about the rich body of (scientific) evidence as it pertains to "The Emergence and Evolution of SARS-CoV-2". Expertly summarized by @eddieholmes.bsky.social: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

The Emergence and Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 | Annual Reviewswww.annualreviews.org The origin of SARS-CoV-2 has evoked heated debate and strong accusations, yet seemingly little resolution. I review the scientific evidence on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and its subsequent spread throug...

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Eddie Holmes

honestly wish i could frame this (& send a copy to all the ""China hawks"" that buy into LL for that reason):

Perfect summation. If you can’t get your own papers published, write unreviewed opinion articles and claim that real scientific studies are fraudulent.

This is an excellent description of the editorial failure behind The NY Times' decision to run Alina Chan's lab leak article. What's the value proposition to the readership of presenting a one-sided argument that most scientists find lacking? Did no editor bother to ask that question?

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Eddie Holmes

I assume that the Congressional COVID Subcommittee will devote as much attention to this as they have to virus origins: www.reuters.com/investigates...

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to incite fear of China vaccineswww.reuters.com The covert effort began under Trump and continued into Biden’s presidency, Reuters found. Health experts say it endangered lives for possible geopolitical gain.

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Eddie Holmes

Thank you to the New York Times for publishing my Letter to the Editor about Alina Chan's guest essay on the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/o...

666 the number of the bins

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Eddie Holmes

Skyview post here: skyview.social?url=https://...

A few final points I want to address: 1️⃣ Missing / non-perfect data does not mean we have no data and can't conclude anything. 2️⃣ Potential bias vs multiple independent data sources. 3️⃣ Is the "Lab Leak" a conspiracy theory and those believing it "conspiracy theorists"? (hint: no, but...). 🧵

Another example of collateral damage from the lab leak theory: www.preprints.org/manuscript/2...

Proximal Origin of Epidemic Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 Clade 2.3.4.4b and Spread by Migratory Waterfowlwww.preprints.org We investigate the possible laboratory origins of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b genotype B3.13, currently affecting various animal species and causing sporadic human...

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Eddie Holmes

Reply to

Kristian G. Andersen

This is why there is no "innocent" version of the Lab Leak, because it always comes back to accusing specific individuals of being responsible, for lying, and for being part of a cover-up. With no evidence. No matter how a Lab Leak writer might try to hide that inconvenient truth in their writing.

"It's a pathetic piece of work".

And in case you might have heard about "oh, but restriction sites", there are two fatal flaws that makes any further discussion of that 'study' moot: (1) the same restriction sites can be found in related viruses, and (2) many other viruses would also be classified as "engineered". Dr. Baric:

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Eddie Holmes

Reply to

Kristian G. Andersen

Example 2 from Dr. Baric:

Do the right thing New York Times: publish a proper opinion on this that is actually based on evidence.

When dealing with pseudoscience, the devil is in the detail - in this case, narrowing down a specific "Lab Leak" hypothesis. In Dr. Chan's @nytimes.com OpEd there is, however, a very specific hypothesis for COVID-19 origin. It's a prime example of conspiracism vs empiricism, so let's dive in. 🧵

I’m honestly dumbfounded that the ICTV appear to have classified SARS1 and SARS2 as the same species: Betacoronvirus pandemicus. How is that in any way useful? ictv.global/report/chapt...

Genus: Betacoronavirus | ICTVictv.global

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Eddie Holmes

On the day of Dr. Fauci's testimony, @nytimes.com decides to run a deeply unethical OpEd with snazzy graphics and snappy headlines about the Lab Leak. The article itself contains multiple falsehoods and deep mischaracterizations. Let's take every point in turn 👇🧵 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Opinion | Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Pointswww.nytimes.com The world must not continue to bear the intolerable risks of research with the potential to cause pandemics.