People should be aware that this investigation occurred in an extremely complex political and diplomatic landscape.

I agree with Dr. Gottlieb here, but people need to understand the context for why this hypothesis was investigated. https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1359180710788161537

Determining a virus' origin, whatever that may be, is an extremely long process. It can take decades. It sometimes never happens. It was never going to happen in two weeks.

This mission is the start of a much longer process that will likely take years. https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-most-likely-spilled-over-to-humans-through-intermediate-animal-says-who-11612868217?mod=hp_lead_pos5

Ebola's been around for 40+ years and we think it circulates in bats, but we still haven't proved it by isolating infectious virus. We've only just sequenced a full genome in a bat. This isn't Outbreak where they find the host monkey or whatever and instantly end the pandemic.

Regarding the complaints that they dismissed lab origin too quickly...sorry to break it to you but they weren't equipped to investigate that to begin with. WHO is not a law enforcement agency. They can't show up in Wuhan with a warrant and demand access to all of WIV's archives.

I see the purpose of this mission as laying the groundwork for a much longer collaboration. If the international community wants to be part of these origin studies, they need to build a collaborative relationship with scientists in China and the Chinese government.

Building long-term productive collaborations requires diplomacy and trust. That means it sometimes also requires compromise. Like it or not, China doesn't have to allow any investigation at all. Any investigation will require establishing and maintaining productive relationships.

The WHO team is there at the pleasure of the Chinese government and can't conduct the type of forensic investigation that so many demand. They're also not detectives by profession or hobby. They are a bunch of microbiologists and aren't qualified to conduct an audit of WIV.

If WHO is going to investigate the lab origin hypothesis, they will need to assemble a team with the actual forensic investigative skills. Contrary to popular belief, reading a bunch of papers about cloning and tweeting with conspiracy theorists does not make one a detective.

What this WHO mission can do, however, is continue to study both natural zoonotic origin and this frozen fish theory. That is within their skill set. And as implausible as the frozen fish theory might be, investigating it might be a condition of investigating origins altogether.

For the record, the frozen food hypothesis is extremely unlikely. To date, no transmission has been linked to food packaging despite multiple shipments of frozen food in multiple countries testing + for SARS-CoV-2 RNA.

But I understand why it is not being dismissed outright.