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zeynep's profile
zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci
zeynep tufekci
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@zeynep

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zeynep tufekciVerified account

@zeynep

Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more. @UNC professor. @NYTimes columnist. My newsletter is @insight: http://www.theinsight.org 

floating in a most peculiar way
theinsight.org
Joined August 2009

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    1. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      So statements like this are just nonsense. What's happening here is very, very similar to what happened with SARS. Also worth noting, but not disclosed, is that Gilles Demaneuf is part of the DRASTIC research team adamantly advancing the lab leak theory. (Ditto for Yuri Deigin)pic.twitter.com/S9kGOqhZrL

      1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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    2. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      It is not a "fact that we haven’t discovered a similar mammal connection." We have. Science shows a range of animals that could've been the intermediary hosts: It's just a matter of figuring out which one it is. https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/3/494/htm …pic.twitter.com/i4yzbW7FI7

      1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
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    3. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      Just because the quest to answer this really complex mystery is taking some time isn't evidence, in and of itself, that a lab leak is true.

      1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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    4. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      The other big argument is that the furin cleavage site on COVID-19, which Crowe accepts is wonky and hard to replicate in a lab, isn't evidence of natural origin because the Wuhan lab researchers "have used insertions that are nearly identical to it."

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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    5. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      To prove that, he links to one study that....does not prove his point: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12985-017-0766-9 … As you can read, the Wuhan researchers were sequencing wild viruses. Their entire point is: Hey, we've found some novel coronaviruses in these caves that could be a problem.pic.twitter.com/knSJ45MxEm

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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    6. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      Maybe he was actually talking about this study (which was done out of Beijing, not Wuhan) where experiments on a similar cleavage site were being done, specifically to help develop vaccines for coronaviruseshttps://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/11/10/972/htm …

      1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
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    7. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      Gain-of-function research is specifically done to mimic what's happening in nature. Researchers (in China, or wherever) are trying to guess where pathogen evolution is going. Best we can tell, Chinese scientists were in the ballpark of COVID-19 but not *that* close.

      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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    8. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      The rebuttal basically amounts to 'we don't have a firm answer on the intermediary host, and Chinese researchers were studying similar, but different, furin cleavage sites.' Taken together, that's not a slam dunk.

      2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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    9. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021

      Like I wrote, we have a pile of really good science supporting the idea that COVID-19 emerged from nature. The lab leak theory has a small heap of circumstantial evidence. Might that balance change in the near future? Maybe! But right now, we've got to face facts.

      2 replies 6 retweets 24 likes
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    10. Energia Publica‏ @EnergiaPublica 7 Jul 2021
      Replying to @Justin_Ling

      Pls do @zeynep. Consistently right abt COVID19, thinks there’s something to the lab leak theory. Less an engineered/ manipulated virus, more a natural virus brought to Wuhan from S China by scientists. Then accidentally released via an infected lab workerhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html …

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
      zeynep tufekci‏Verified account @zeynep 7 Jul 2021
      Replying to @EnergiaPublica @Justin_Ling

      Ralph Baric, maybe world’s leading coronavirus expert, says we cannot rule out engineering based solely on the genome, and has highlighted many things that can go wrong with just bat samples including recombination in the lab. Who am I to rule out things myself that he doesn’t?

      9:40 AM - 7 Jul 2021
      • 1 Retweet
      • 5 Likes
      • BlockedByAVirologist kcz Andrew Scheidl Energia Publica Chris Billows
      3 replies 1 retweet 5 likes
        1. zeynep tufekci‏Verified account @zeynep 7 Jul 2021
          Replying to @zeynep @EnergiaPublica @Justin_Ling

          Lots of articles from this period, in my view, are going to make it into future textbooks—and not in a good way. Time usually does its job. People can take that for what it’s worth right now.

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        2. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021
          Replying to @zeynep @EnergiaPublica

          I don't think it's a question of ruling things out. I think it's a matter of stacking possibilities based on the evidence we've got. I'd argue that we're spending a lot of time running down a theory that's possible, but for which there's not a lot of hard evidence.

          2 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
        3. Gigi Gronvall‏Verified account @ggronvall 7 Jul 2021
          Replying to @Justin_Ling @zeynep @EnergiaPublica

          Let’s also include here that we are making it harder to find an intermediate animal and that (regardless of your take on this) we are not positioning ourselves well to detect and stop another zoonotic event.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
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        2. Energia Publica‏ @EnergiaPublica 7 Jul 2021
          Replying to @zeynep @Justin_Ling

          Sorry @zeyneb if I misrepresented your article, the possibility of an engineered virus. My intent was to get @Justin_Ling to engage on a range of lab leak scenarios not just the possibility of an engineered/ gain-of-function virus. Love your work, thanks for the writing.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Justin Ling‏Verified account @Justin_Ling 7 Jul 2021
          Replying to @EnergiaPublica @zeynep @zeyneb

          You're right that the possibility of a pure lab leak (i.e. COVID-19 was found in the wild, taken to the lab, then broke out) is the most plausible, but it's also a theory for which there is zero evidence beyond just the proximity of the WIV to the outbreak.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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