Video Analysis of ICE Shooting Sheds Light on Contested Moments

NYT video consistent with what you said. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/v...

Thank you for all of your work in all of the 20 years that I've been following you.

Nice work.

The recency and geographical origins of the bat viruses ancestral to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 - PubMed The emergence of SARS-CoV in 2002 and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 led to increased sampling of sarbecoviruses circulating in horseshoe bats. Employing phylogenetic inference while accounting for recombination of bat sarbecoviruses, we find that the closest-inferred bat virus ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-Co …

Additionally, you forgot the most important reason for 1. the viruses came to the market via the animal. No bats needed. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40339581/

1. Evidence suggests FCS was likely acquired in an intermediate host over a period of time 2. Pre-pandemic disclosures show WIV was more interested in SARS1-like viruses and did not realize impt of RaTG13/RaTG15 3. No evidence of spillover near the WIV 4. GoF work targeted WIV1/SHC014 backbones

It seems that we will not get any further specific information that contradicts publicly available accounts. For an academic, @nachristakis.bsky.social seems to have a low bar in emphasizing anecdotal personal sources of questionable reliability over contemporaneous information with actual dates.

Here is a detailed interview with the same person from March 16, 2020. It is well worth your time. www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/...

Note that the above link is from February 4, 2020. Surely you cannot believe that everything coming out of Chinese media so early was manipulated to cover up a much earlier outbreak?

We also have a hospital president's early recounting of the chronology of a December outbreak. www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020...

Even in this thread, we have a link to afirst-hand account. bsky.app/profile/zach...

We also have early reports from caixin as described here. archive.md/uAaV6

Not asking you to share emails. Can you please be specific about what contradicts all of the firsthand accounts that are published from people in Wuhan?

At this point all of these anecdotes including that cited by @nachristakis.bsky.social seem to be erroneous recollections much later in 2020/2021. Any data driven person has to revise and not hide under an 'absence of evidence' is evidence fig leaf.

I am suggesting that Chinese data sharing shows 92 potential early cases that were eliminated. It seems that you are suggesting that China was honest about the 92 initially and dishonest about the later serology tests that eliminated them later.

Identification from Chinese data, rejection from Chinese data

That 92 were considered plausible is also from Chinese data.

The 92 that were eliminated by WHO

Reference confirming the 266 count and any implied November cases that were eliminated by WHO: archive.vn/2WSIi#select...

AFAIK, SCMP said 9 cases in November and 266 overall. This is consistent with the 174 early cases from December and 92 that the WHO considered and eliminated, so the SCMP November case reference is invalid.

The short window is relevant in the context of multiple spillovers reducing the D=2 penalty. As I've noted, 'statistical inference without biological context' reminds me of several climate science debates disconnected from domain-specific knowledge that neither of us possesses.

In summary, reservoir modeling is complex. D=0/1 penalties are greatly reduced with multiple spillovers from a reservoir that does not include TT/CC for biological/sampling reasons. A short window correlated introduction raises the probability that A/B are established in close time/space proximity.

Separate cages etc may also eliminate intermediates in the reservoir or they may be gapped release not because of fitness but sampling bias upon bringing animals to the market. Hensel '25 example supports that there may be bottlenecks for intermediates.

Your reservoir penalty of 0.27 (Poisson) for D=2 includes possibilities that D=0/1. In a short time window, with correlated intros, multiple spillovers of A/A+1 and B would be indistinguishable from A/B satisfying time constraints. But TT/CC is not cryptic and may be selected against like in humans.

I'm saying host selection etc against certain mutations may create gapped reservoirs. A+1/B+1 are not D=1 penalties for multiple (cryptic) spillovers in a short time window correlated introduction environment but TT/CC are and they may be selected against.

Mutation patterns in animals could be different and favor pre-existing diversity. From Hensel '25 "Multiple spillovers need not have high sequence diversity—for instance, the viral genomes RshSTT182 and RshSTT200 were collected from two different bats and differ by only 3 mutations"

As long as the animal reservoir is a well-mixed population that can be modeled by the Poisson distribution from which D=2 is drawn, this seems to be correct by my understanding. I don't know if that is biologically a good model though as opposed to an I1 evolving in humans.

No problem. The D=2 dilution penalty is based on a reservoir clock modeling that Pekar makes no statements about. That cannot be called 'Pekar's model'.

I1 has 'fiddly' parameters too e.g. stochasticity for Lineage A but not B to explain clock reversal although both A and B were pre-registered to be linked to the shared market prior to discovery; lack of intermediates in human evolution and using the debunked Lv et al as evidence for intermediates.

Maybe..this is above my pay grade. But a median 8 spillovers (as Pekar suggested) over a period of say 20-30 days with pre-existing reservoir diversity may mean high probability that A and B spill over within 4 days of each other into a correlated introduction environment.

'Circular' 'phylogenetic data don't say anything' 'distractor seem too strong when the complaint is about prior-sensitivity. Do you agree though that if there were multiple introductions, your analysis for exactly two introductions does not capture that?

The way I understood this paper, B is 99% monophyletic, 69% >=1 B spillovers, 82.6% are multiple spillovers which then (to me) meant single-spillovers are in A and 69% of trees involve both A and B. I could be mistaken. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...