Scientist against lab-based pandemics 🧬 Co-author of VIRAL: the search for the origin of Covid-19 📖 A dangerous young investigator 🕵🏻‍♀
Joined December 2011
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3 Jun 2024
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 shutting it down as a conspiracy theory or standing by while conflicted parties do so. That hope has been revived repeatedly in the past 4 years by courageous scientists, journalists and individuals who took on considerable risks to do the right thing and push for a fair investigation.
In sharing this analysis of the available evidence with potentially millions of NYT readers, my aim is to undo some of the politicization of this issue - which has stood in the way of a thorough and bipartisan investigation of this global catastrophe, resulted in mis-reporting on origins for 4 years, as well as hindered the implementation of effective measures to prevent lab-based outbreaks.
A wholehearted investigation by US gov has the power to unearth more compelling evidence while spurring whistleblowers to find their courage and opportunity. And, regardless of whether the pandemic came from nature or a lab, the world must not continue to bear the intolerable risks of research with the potential to cause pandemics.
nytimes.com/interactive/2024…
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Jun 12
This sharing of Covid origins intel within US gov should've happened in week 1 of 2020. It would've informed everyone of a likely lab origin of Covid and preempted cover-up attempts.
Why did it take 1.5 years for a whistleblower at DARPA to uncover a damning virus engineering proposal by Wuhan scientists and for this to be shared with NIH leaders who had funded similar research in Wuhan?
Jun 11
In 2021 a DARPA whistleblower said that he had uncovered a grant proposal in an unmarked folder with plans to create viruses like COVID, and that names of Wuhan scientists on the grant proposal matched names in U.S. intelligence intercepts.
Less than two weeks after the DARPA whistleblower’s report, the NSC “warmly” invited Fauci to be briefed again.
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May 31
Several US-based Hantavirus cruise passengers are returning to their homes after today. They disembarked the cruise on May 10. Infected people tend to develop symptoms in 2-4 weeks but could go as late as 8 weeks.
"Cruise passenger Jake Rosmarin, 29, said he decided from the start to spend the entire 42-day quarantine in the [Nebraska quarantine] facility...
“... we are treated very well here. I can’t complain. I made the right decision for me.
I don’t want to risk anything. I don’t want to go home until I know there’s a zero percent risk for anyone else.”
washingtonpost.com/health/20…
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May 31
Reminder that Canadian and Spanish cruise passengers tested positive for Andes hantavirus on May 16 and 25.
They may have been allowed to share common areas with other cruise passengers while in quarantine.
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May 31
imo the stigma of wearing an ankle monitor or having a guard outside one's home for a few weeks is nothing compared to the stigma of causing deaths in one's community.
Read the stories of people from the 2018 Andes hantavirus outbreak.
x.com/Ayjchan/status/2054627…
May 13
Isabel DĂaz, 53, survived the outbreak with a different stigma – her father, VĂctor DĂaz, was labelled "patient zero"
"Nobody chooses to get sick, much less infect others, much less lose a mother."
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May 27
People on social media and even top journalists or experts often make the error of over-simplifying the positions of their opponents.
Just because someone was against city-wide lockdowns during Covid doesn't mean they wouldn't have a different harm-benefit assessment in a cruise outbreak of Andes hantavirus.
To protect more Americans from being exposed to hantavirus, it is necessary to quarantine the small number of people exposed to this severe and deadly disease that is human-to-human transmissible and compatible with superspreading events.
The experts quoted by @nytimes were stunned by US CDC's decision but do they disagree that quarantining cruise passengers instead of letting them "self-isolate" on their own terms (eg in a Florida @Airbnb) is the correct public health decision?
May 27
This is good, and quarantining extremely small numbers of ppl for diseases that have ~50 percent mortality rates is entirely compatible with opposition to whole-of-society Covid lockdowns:
nytimes.com/2026/05/21/us/ha…
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May 27
If an Andes hantavirus outbreak pops up in the US - especially without a clear link to the MV Hondius cruise - the White House and CDC will face much more painful decisions such as whether to shut schools down in affected regions or enforce quarantine of 1000s of people.
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May 27
I don't believe any government wants to deal with the disaster of Andes hantavirus outbreaks in schools or at the upcoming FIFA games when it's so easy to keep 2 dozen people in the US in proper quarantine.
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May 26
The hantavirus cruise outbreak shows that even when it's a known pathogen with known human-to-human transmission, known prior instances of transmission without close contact, known incubation time, known abruptness of symptom escalation, known earliest cluster of patients/contacts...
Somehow it's not possible for the WHO and the 23 countries affected to come up with a coherent tracking, testing and containment strategy.
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May 26
Even given these "best" circumstances, it also isn't clear that biotech/biosecurity companies are able to spring into action to swiftly deliver effective tests (PCR or antigen), PPE, therapeutics, or vaccines.
They should be using this as a test run for a real pandemic.
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May 26
Just how quickly can companies develop and validate rapid tests, therapeutic antibodies or drugs, vaccines, and deploy these to at least their home countries/states?
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May 26
But the at-risk individuals for hantavirus were allowed to share common areas last week...
"The 14 Spanish passengers who are at GĂłmez Ulla Hospital are doing well... They have already been able to leave their rooms and share the common areas."
May 25
Confirmado un nuevo caso positivo de hantavirus tras PCR en una de las personas que permanecen en cuarentena preventiva en el Hospital GĂłmez Ulla.
Corresponde a un contacto estrecho identificado dentro del seguimiento epidemiolĂłgico activado tras la detecciĂłn inicial del brote.
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May 26
Does this mean the 6-8 week quarantine now restarts for all at-risk individuals? Were other patients at the hospital also in the common areas?
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May 26
Assuming these were the passengers who disembarked from the MV Hondius on May 11, they were let out to mingle with each other not even 2 weeks later. Are public health and medical workers aware of the up to 8 weeks incubation period?
x.com/sanidadgob/status/2057…
May 22
“Los 14 pasajeros españoles que están en el Hospital GĂłmez Ulla están bien. Incluso el que estaba con sĂntomas, que ha empezado a estar asintomático. Ya han podido salir de sus habitaciones y compartir las zonas comunes”
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