Alina Chan

Scientist against lab-based pandemics 🧬 Co-author of VIRAL: the search for the origin of Covid-19 📖 A dangerous young investigator 🕵🏻‍♀

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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.
https://t.co/HhOcYjXILN

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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.
https://t.co/GEVUE7T52y

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

@WHO Isabel Díaz, 53, survived the outbreak with a different stigma – her father, Víctor Díaz, was labelled "patient zero"

"Nobody chooses to get sick, much less infect others, much less lose a mother."

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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.”
https://t.co/drek41vigk

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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.

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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.

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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?

[Ross Douthat @DouthatNYT]

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:
https://t.co/4rc4jdJ4H0

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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.

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

@SteelPhoenix I'm sure more specific tests can be developed. This should've been used as a trial run.

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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.

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

@akhomenko The link is in the tweet after because it seems Twitter is suppressing tweets with links in them so lots of people are posting opening tweets without links and adding the link in the 2nd tweet.

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

@javierpadillab What does this mean exactly?

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

But the at-risk individuals for hantavirus were allowed to share common areas last week...

"The 14 Spanish passengers who are at Gómez Ulla Hospital are doing well... They have already been able to leave their rooms and share the common areas."

[Ministerio de Sanidad @sanidadgob]

Confirmado un nuevo caso positivo de hantavirus tras PCR en una de las personas que permanecen en cuarentena preventiva en el Hospital Gómez Ulla.

Corresponde a un contacto estrecho identificado dentro del seguimiento epidemiológico activado tras la detección inicial del brote.

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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?

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

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.