While the provenance of GISAID is sounding murky indeed, (and in that regard this Science Magazine article certainly adds value) anyone following the origins de

While the provenance of GISAID is sounding murky indeed, (and in that regard this Science Magazine article certainly adds value) anyone following the origins debate on Twitter would see this article (especially its timing & authorship) as just another volley in the reputation war between a small subset of vocal virologists vs. anyone with data / evidence / analyses running counter to their narrative. Article co-author Jon Cohen comes in with his own murky background in the origins debate (all but outing a whistleblower to Holmes and Andersen in 2020: “Here's what one person who claims to have inside knowledge is saying behind your backs”), as does quoted virologist Marion Koopmans (of the long-since panned WHO-convened origins study trip fame) and evolutionary biologist Kristian G Andersen's group (KGA was lead author of the now overtly infamous Proximal Origins paper in Nature Medicine). As the article opens with, GISAID restricted access to French CNRS researcher Florence Debarre after publicizing following downloading the raccoon dog sample + SC2 sample data from GISAID that was uploaded by the Gao team of researchers. (Gao, former director of China CDC, asserts that humans carried the virus into the market, not the other way around). Kamil was very vocal on Twitter about the whole kerfuffle. Getting cut off from such an international database popular with so many scientists was seen as a major reputational slap on the wrist to such an outspoken origins researcher as Debarre. So this article simply serves to take GISAID down a few pegs in its own right (a diminution it certainly sounds like it has earned) mitigating the reputational impact to Debarre. But bigger picture, the piece is just the latest salvo in the schoolyard dustup that is vocal virologists (and their scribes) jockeying to maintain position. So for all of the status these folks enjoyed in 2020, (when tbe rest of us fearfully turned to any expert for pandemic context with little regard for possible CoI's) it is finally their banal human nature on display that I find utterly disappointing. (Apologies for any typos, am on mobile.)