R to @Ayjchan: The illegal biolab was discovered in Reedley CA in 2022. CDC refused to help local officials until a local Member of Congress was roped in. CDC refused to test samples despite labels including HIV, Tuberculosis, and the deadliest known form of Malaria.
https://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/scc-reedley-report-11.15.pdf
Most biosecurity folks I've met are more worried about bioterror than accidental lab leaks. But here's an illegal biolab in the US run by an anti-🇺🇸 person receiving millions from China, US CDC refused to test samples labeled Ebola, HIV, etc. No idea what the lab intended to do.
Why is the chief of WHO now (very late) telling us that China was never transparent about COVID origin and WHO also suspect it was a lab leak. China’s institutional capture of multilateral institutions is damaging for the entire world and turning the US against these institutions
R to @Ayjchan: The world doesn't need to keep witnessing more ineptitude from its top scientists and the @WHO. This is not good for public trust in science. This is not good for scientists' trust in scientific leadership.
https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1360315563634028548
R to @Ayjchan: And who can forget that the only American the @WHO sent to explore the origins of Covid in 2021 was Peter Daszak, long time partner, funder, and karaoke buddy of the Wuhan scientists suspected of causing the pandemic.
https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1359892457597652994
R to @WHO: x.com/gdemaneuf/status/19024…
R to @WHO: You cannot ask virus hunters to investigate their own friends for plausibly causing the worst research accident in human history.
https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1880010638224986215
The @WHO hired & promoted a chief scientist (now assistant DG) who orchestrated the influential Proximal Origin letter dismissing any lab origin of Covid & signed a letter calling lab leak hypotheses conspiracy theories.
Not convinced a new SAGO will take lab leaks seriously.
R to @WHO: Germany's equivalent of the CDC director who served during the pandemic said, "With the current state of knowledge, I consider the laboratory theory more likely."
"We need new international agreements on biosafety in research."
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/corona-lothar-wieler-haelt-labor-ursprung-von-sars-cov-2-fuer-die-wahrscheinlichere-these-a-1e2bcf76-2bfa-4fb4-b3bb-a9a0ed6ac606
R to @WHO: It's inexplicable that the current U.S. admin has not declassified some of the intelligence that, according to current and ex-U.S. officials who have seen the intel, make a lab origin the default hypothesis, if not the only viable hypothesis.
R to @WHO: I agree with the op-ed on one point:
Germany and U.S. should make public the intelligence that points to a lab origin of Covid-19. Germany's foreign intelligence service has 80-95% certainty of a lab origin.
The truth is too important to keep hidden after 20+ million dead.
R to @Nature: The @WHO team included extreme proponents of a natural origin. 3 refused to even evaluate a lab origin and 1 "requests that her dissent regarding the evaluation of the lab-leak hypotheses be noted."
None of their members have publicly leaned toward a lab origin.
R to @WHO: "... the [Chinese] government has not provided the necessary information that we have requested."
R to @WHO: "Repeated requests have been made to the Chinese government by the WHO to release the health records of research-lab staff, biosafety and biosecurity protocols, and audits or independent inspections conducted to verify the safety procedures of labs in Wuhan..."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00530-y
I question the utility of @WHO convening an expert team to investigate the origins of novel outbreaks.
Today's op-ed in @nature by said team reiterated that a lab origin cannot be assessed as long as the country of origin refuses to allow an investigation.
I’m grateful to have the chance to read @bgurley Bill Gurley’s first book, Runnin’ Down A Dream, before its official launch tomorrow. In a time when there are so many books and news stories about things going horribly wrong, it was a much-needed reprieve to read a book about things going right.
The soul needs more stories about people who flip the script, change potentially millions of lives for the better with their work, and create an immortality project beyond their own initial expectations. In the book’s profiles of human tenacity, there are common themes of taking large risks, suffering to follow one’s calling, becoming immersed mentally and physically in chasing a dream, and getting up every time you get knocked down by others or your own mistakes – with the help of family, friends, mentors and peers who oftentimes provided a wakeup call, a safety net and an entryway into a new world.
Runnin’ Down A Dream also has clear advice on finding and keeping mentors and peers, and has an essential book list at the end. I recommend this book to anyone who feels unsure about the future or stuck in their careers, parents and teachers who want their kids to live the best version of their lives, children once they can read advanced texts, and people who are in the middle of running down their dreams and could use some encouragement.
R to @Ayjchan: I agree with the private stance of 2020 Kristian Andersen.
Those gain-of-function experiments with clear & actionable benefits should still be done at maximum containment.
"It only takes one mistake" to cause catastrophe.
https://x.com/Ayjchan/status/1682074082139947023
6 years ago, influential scientists conspired to suppress questions about a lab origin of Covid.
Privately, they joked that virus hunters had caused a pandemic with a virus "beautifully adapted to human transmission."
This type of research remains untracked & unregulated.
R to @Ayjchan: Covid prematurely ended 20M+ lives
👨🔬scientists still experiment with new coronaviruses outside high containment
🔍low visibility + no independent oversight of research that can kill millions
🇺🇸no US policy on such research, any policy will likely be scrapped by next admin
The scientific community - of which I am a part of - should have expressed much more humility and much less hubris as it was becoming obvious that initial COVID policies were not going to be effective against a highly transmissible respiratory pathogen. The same be said about their doubling down on COVID origins especially after circumstantial evidence for an unnatural origin became so strong.
R to @Ayjchan: “The Catalan government will never admit that the African swine fever virus that infected wild boars leaked out from its laboratory. It would face incalculable financial claims if it did so,” declared the agricultural organization ASAJA.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-12/catalonia-lab-was-experimenting-with-african-swine-fever-virus-when-the-first-infected-boar-was-found-nearby.html
In reporting on a plausible leak of ASF from Spain's CReSA lab:
"human factor is.. common causes of laboratory accidents. CReSA.. dismissed a technician for sexual harassment in 2018, after he tried to kiss a female colleague inside the high-biosecurity experimental unit"
🤦♀️
R to @Ayjchan: EcoHealth's president was talking on podcasts in Dec 2019 about making chimeric SARS-like viruses with Ralph Baric. So their memory must be poor if they forgot all about this a few weeks later when news broke about a novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYDL_RK--w&t=1793s
R to @Ayjchan: Giving maximum benefit of the doubt, maybe these US scientists all really forgot all about their 2018 plan and didn't think any of it was relevant to share with investigators.
This still means it's important to go in and see what else they forgot or didn't think was important.
R to @Ayjchan: In an extreme scenario, a US scientist could be sitting on an email where Wuhan scientists described initiating the 2018 experiments or working on a new lineage of SARS-like viruses.
The longer evidence is withheld, the more damage will be done to public trust in science.
US scientists failed to disclose their 2018 plans with Wuhan virologists to create viruses with the same makeup as Covid-19. Those plans were leaked from inside the US gov in 2021.
This is why people want to know what other evidence could still be buried in US institutions.
R to @Ayjchan: There is an opportunity here to set an international precedent for sharing the genomic sequence of an outbreak pathogen ASAP. The 1st carcass was found on Nov 25 a few hundred meters from a lab working with ASF. It's been a month. The genomic sequence is still unpublished.
Spanish authorities are still investigating the origins of the African Swine Fever outbreak near Barcelona. A lab origin could "trigger multimillion-euro compensation claims from the Spanish pork sector, which exports almost €9 billion annually."
https://elpais.com/ciencia/2025-12-30/los-analisis-geneticos-sugieren-que-el-virus-de-la-peste-porcina-no-salio-del-laboratorio-de-la-generalitat-que-estaba-a-cientos-de-metros.html
"Models latch onto surface patterns, struggle to walk away from bad ideas, and try to explain failures instead of learning from them."
One could say the same about many human scientists.
R to @Ayjchan: "The outcome could set precedents for future pandemic-related litigation and diplomatic engagement between the two countries."
https://www.newsweek.com/missouri-reveals-which-chinese-assets-it-will-target-in-50b-row-11243305
R to @Ayjchan: abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSt…
Missouri sued China for hoarding personal protective equipment in the pandemic & won $24B that they're planning to collect by seizing Chinese-owned assets in the state.
China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is now demanding $50B from Missouri for defamation.
Los @mossos y la @guardiacivil han ido a por muestras de los virus con los que trabaja el CReSA para ver si coincide con el de los jabalís infectados de peste porcina africana. Las muestras las recogen los especialistas de los Tedax. También solicitan documentos y clonan dispositivos https://elpais.com/espana/catalunya/2025-12-18/los-mossos-y-la-guardia-civil-registran-la-sede-del-laboratorio-senalado-por-la-fuga-de-peste-porcina.html?ssm=TW_CC
How can the government hope to receive reliable intelligence on vital national security issues if it deports a Chinese dissident who provided evidence of China's Uyghur camps?
R to @WHO: If one cares about science, truth and minimizing pandemic harms, you have to re-evaluate the realistic functions of the World Health Organization in responding to pandemics and their process (if any is codified) for verifying facts and scientific data in times of crisis.
R to @WHO: Even 3 months after the detected outbreak in Wuhan, the World Health Organization was still telling the world that Covid was not airborne and to focus on disinfecting surfaces.
https://x.com/WHO/status/1243972193169616898?lang=en