Just crazy stuff.
Also, related to this, if the US was serious about supporting international frameworks for pathogen genomics and benefit sharing, maybe we should get that Nagoya protocol signed... Not that it's perfect, but literally every single 'hot spot' country has signed and ratified it.
We have had some delays, but quick update as the wave did indeed come in right as expected.
This translates to *a lot* of infections in San Diego at the moment, so please keep this in mind.
Primarily driven by KP.2 and similar, but KP.3 will add to this shortly, so it'll be high for a while.
Quick update on the COVID-19 situation here in San Diego:
1️⃣ Currently low levels, based on wastewater.
2️⃣ However, I expect this to change in a few weeks.
A few comments 👇🧵
I hope I managed to do a somewhat decent job deconstructing the latest Lab Leak nonsense and revisionist history from @nytimes.com.
However, sometimes you need to head back over to the hell site - because, whatever you thought about my threads, this is better!
x.com/tgof137/stat...
And just to be clear, the writing from Zeynep at that time was were most of us working on infectious diseases also were at the time - where do you think she got the idea from in the first place?
Here's a comment from me in late January - mostly focused on "droplets", but noting uncertainty.
But that quickly changed, and here at Scripps Research, we started efforts to introduce face masks and many other countermeasures in mid-February.
Of course, all of that took time, because of availability and, importantly, allocation of resources were to where most needed (hospitals, not labs...).
We know, despite early statements to the contrary, that several species of susceptible animals were for sale at the Huanan Seafood Market leading all the way up to the beginning of the pandemic.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35881010/
Finally, under a zoonosis model, given good enough and early enough sampling, you would expect to see co-mingling of the virus itself in the same places where you also observe direct evidence of the animals.
That is exactly what we see.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37745602/
Given fairly even sampling and genomic sequencing, under a zoonosis hypothesis tied to a specific market, we would assume that the timing for the pandemic should be the same whether we look at (a) market data or (b) non-market data.
Which is exactly what we see.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37745602/
Given those conditions under a zoonosis hypothesis, you would expect multiple spillovers to occur, with most of those likely going extinct.
However, we see clear evidence of multiple spillovers having occurred - at a minimum two distinct ones.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35881005/
If we look at the market itself, it's a very unlikely place for an outbreak to have started, if it wasn't for the high risk exposures to potentially infected animals.
There are *many* other places *much* more likely for an outbreak to take off in a big city.
Yet, it was the market.
So early hospitalizations and cases point to the market.
Since, once the outbreak was detected, authorities clamped down to, one might also expect to see a signal in early excess deaths in the area where the market is located.
That is exactly what we observe.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34480864/
In addition to early hospitalizations, cases, and excess pneumonia deaths, serological signatures also point to the market, with later studies showing that the area where the market is located had the highest levels.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33585828/
If the market was indeed the place the pandemic started, we would expect cases to cluster around the market - in addition to what was observed at the levels of hospitals.
As we, retrospectively, look at early cases, that is exactly what we see.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35881010/
Now, let's start informing those priors a little more specifically - in this case, precedent.
SARS-CoV-1 vs SARS-CoV-2 look remarkably similar - from the virus itself, to the association with wet markets and the November timing.
Not to mention, SARS-CoV-1 positive animals were only found in Hubei.
Alright, so now to the final point, which I did not mention up front:
8️⃣ The data currently available to us is crap...
Now, this is where we are seeing a clear split between conspiracism and empiricism.
Because not only do we have well-informed priors, we also have a rich extant evidence base.
Dr. Chan likes to highlight the fact that, shocker, there's actually still data missing. But on the "zoonosis" side, at least there *is* actually data and you could simply flip her argument to say that literally everything we would expect to find for a Lab Leak is missing.
Let's lump these next parts together:
6️⃣ The virus escaped the lab, but early cases and hospitalizations were linked to a wet market.
7️⃣ The WIV covered up an early outbreak and has been covering it up ever since.
First, with a claim about the biosafety:
I already addressed the issues about the biosafety in my previous thread, but let's take the part where it's insinuated that some sort of accident must have happened.
As above, we don't have any evidence for that - here, again, the ODNI report:
Okay, but maybe it wasn't an "accident", per se, it's just that workers got infected and got sick.
Note, the timing here is important because this is suggested to have happened in November, 2019. Which, of course, doesn't match the suggestion that the database was deleted in September, 2019.
As I already stated, ODNI disagrees on this "intelligence", but there are other issues:
1️⃣ Again, it's inconsistent with the prior claim of September, 2019. I have already pointed out that it wasn't actually September, 2019, but all the way into 2020. So let's discount this.
Getting back to point #3, but now about the "lying" and "cover up" part.
3️⃣ Dr. Zhengli Shi is the accused and is lying about it.
In this particular case, by deleting a database. The timing isn't mentioned here, but it's important because people describe this as being September, 2019.
There's more specifics to this claim - it has to do with "DEFUSE", which you can get here: drasticresearch.org/2021/09/21/t....
The problem is, pretty much everyone - and certainly anybody who has done such engineering work previously - agree the virus wasn't engineered.
Really? Well yes...
As I mentioned in my prior thread, the DEFUSE proposal doesn't actually present a "blueprint" for the features observed in SARS-CoV-2.
Here's what it actually says in the relevant section (note, the FCS is at the S1-S2 junction in SARS-CoV-2).
Dr. Baric gave more specifics on this in his testimony and also stated that the virus wasn't engineered.
Full transcript here: oversight.house.gov/wp-content/u...
Example 1 from Dr. Baric:
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:
