Flo Débarre

@flodebarre

Personal account Evolutionary biologist, senior scientist at CNRS/Sorbonne Université Interests: origins and control of infectious diseases and conspiracy theories; diversity in science; scientific publishing EN & FR

2.436 Folgt11.015 Follower1.601 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir flodebarre.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 2d

In his recently published book, Quay claims that BANAL-20-52 is fake as well -- but he does not show why nor why a Laotian-French team and Institut Pasteur would want to fake a bat coronavirus genome sequence. Anyway, it's the typical conspiratorial trick: ignoring contradictory information. ▫️6/7

"The viruses supposedly from nature that are most closely related to SARS‑CoV‑2 are RaTG13—claimed to be from a bat-fecal specimen collected in an abandoned mine in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, 1,205 miles from Wuhan—and a series of viruses called BANAL, which stands for a bat anal swab, which came from caves in Laos, about 1,777 miles by train to Wuhan.

As I will show here, these viruses carry the marks of laboratry manipulation, taking them out of the natural-spillover equation. [p. 141-142]"
Cover of the book, THE CODE AS WITNESS
DR. STEVEN QUAY
(NB: Possibly due to editing errors, he does not show anything later in the book.)

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 2d

In late 2024, Steven Quay revived the HIV claim, stating that the inserts were not found in "pre-pandemic" sarbecoviruses. It's a common leaker trick (Alina Chan would also often use it) to suggest that no post-2020 genome can be trusted because "the Chinese" have manipulated data. ▫️4/7

Here I examine the regions of the spike protein that bind to fibrin, fibrinogen, or both. The N-terminus of
the spike protein contains the three strongest binding peptides and surprisingly, these regions are also the
three insertions in the protein sequence that are unique to SARS-CoV-2 and not found in natural
sarbecoviruses. All pre-pandemic sarbecoviruses have either a partial deletion in these regions or have
protein amino acid substitutions that are non-conserved and therefore would not support fibrin binding.

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 2d

The claim was almost immediately debunked -- some inserts were not actually inserts, and the link to HIV was clearly a coincidence. archive.ph/hCFPA In France, the claim had a second life with Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize winner for the codiscovery of HIV (cf. quoted post in #1) ▫️3/7

screenshot of thread by Trevor Bedford

Trevor Bedford @trvrb
Feb 1st 2020, 9 tweets, 5 min read

Based on the content of my mentions, I feel like I need to further debunk crazy #nCoV2019 / HIV conspiracy preprint. This is a thread doing so. 1/9

This paper proposes that there are 4 short "insertions" in the spike protein in #nCoV2019 copied from HIV. Yesterday, I showed that the proposed inserts are tiny strings that randomly match a whole bunch of things. 2/9

QT:
Trevor Bedford @trvrb These short inserts do indeed exist in #nCoV2019 relative to its closest sequenced relative (BetaCoV/bat/Yunnan/RaTG13/2013, seen here https://nextstrain.org/groups/blab/sars-like-cov). However, a simple BLAST of such short sequences shows match to a huge variety of organisms. No reason to conclude HIV.

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 2d

The HIV claim was first published in late 2020 on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social; it went viral, and was withdrawn a few days afterwards. The authors claimed that they had identified 4 insertions in the spike of the new coronavirus, and that these insertions matched parts of HIV.▫️2/7

bioRxiv screenshot
New Results
This article has been withdrawn. Click here for details
Follow this preprint
Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag
Prashant Pradhan, Ashutosh Kumar Pandey, Akhilesh Mishra, Parul Gupta, Praveen Kumar Tripathi, Manoj Balakrishnan Menon, James Gomes, Perumal Vivekanandan, Bishwajit Kundu
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 2d

Quay was not that prominent during Covid, so people may not realize how abysmally stupid his lab leak scenarios were and how incompetent he is. In late 2024, he revived the claim that SARS-CoV-2 had been designed after HIV -- a claim fully debunked in early 2020 ▫️1/7🧵 zenodo.org/records/1455...

Published December 26, 2024 | Version v1
Preprint Open
The thrombo-inflammation and neuropathology sequence motifs of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein appear to have been engineered into the virus
Authors/Creators
Quay, Steven Carl (Researcher)1
ORCID icon

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 3d

Quay claims that they are not zenodo.org/records/1455...

A conclusion that the pathophysiology of long COVID is based on the insertion of spike protein motifs with sequence homology that mimic the HIV gp120 protein motif properties, and that these SARS-CoV-2 motifs are not found in the sarbecovirus subgenus strongly suggests that these inserts were design features in the synthetic assembly of SARS-CoV-2.

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 4d

The disconnect between the WWE cutout and the memorial service on the TV in the background is so distasteful that I really had to double-check, and yes, this is what it is -- here's another angle www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=...

screenshot of photo of RFKJr giving a speech, with the same people around as in the Bhattacharya tweet photo

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 7d

Quay's 2026 X posts are still there; check what he found appropriate posting: an AI-generated "infographic" of the DRC Ebola outbreak, with a round coronavirus-like virus, and imaginary country shapes (again, on a par with this administration) source: archive.ph/uXeQh ▫️6/ #covidorigin #quayniaid

@quay_dr
Ebola status as of May 19, 2025.
•••
A LLM-generated image from a detailed prompt I provided.
I hope you find it

[infographic]

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 7d

Add to it some gratuitous cringiness, when he and other leakers harassed an editor because they did not like a paper (ours...), to the point that the editor had to close their social media accounts. "I'll even buy you a wig for your post-debate alopecia." ▫️5/ #covidorigin #quayniaid

Dr Steven Quay @quay_dr •3m
Ha XXX , that was my hail pulling OpEd. Can you state with clarity an
inaccurate statement within it?
..
I thought not
Let's have a XXX Sponsored Debate on the Origin of Covid. Name the place and time and I'll be there.

I'll even buy you a wig for your post-debate alopecia.

QT
Bryce Nickels v @Bryce_Nickels • Sep 21
"There was a WSJ editorial that made me want to pull my hair out" In Oct 2021, ~2 years before the Proximal Origin Slack chats became public,
XXX , Deputy Editor of XXX commented on a WSJ Op-Ed discussing the "lab leak theory" during a Zoom panel with other

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 7d

Quay is a well-rounded person spending too much time on the Internet, so he is also a climate sceptic. ▫️4/ #covidorigin #quayniaid

@quay_dr • 7m
The science of carbon dioxide 'hardening' plants, allowing them to flourish into hostile desert environments, is the untold story of the collateral benefits of fossil

RT of Robin Monotti : CO2 IS GREENING EARTH

@quay_dr
...
Using official NOAA data, the Antarctic sea ice has grown 21% in extent.
This is inconsistent with the expectations of a climate change warming trend.
0 Tony Heller @TonyClimate • 7h
Antarctic sea ice extent is 21% higher than it was on this date eight years

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 7d

Because the Venn diagram of lab leakers and antivaxxers is close to a circle, Quay is antivaxx. It helps to work under RFK Jr., I guess. Here he is, rewritting tweets by accounts that described every sudden death as being caused by a vaccine. ▫️3/ #covidorigin #quayniaid

screenshot of tweet by Quay_dr, retweeting a "Sudden And Unexpected" account

image of twitter search showing quay_dr retweeting announcements of deaths with the comment "And another..."

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 7d

Quay is a lab leaker, and everything is a lab leak. SARS-CoV-2 of course, but also... West Nile virus, when Fauci was infected in 2024. ▫️2/ #covidorigin #quayniaid archived: archive.ph/zyaW6

Tweet screenshot
@quay_dr
Dr. Fauci is recovering from a bad case of West Nile Virus. "I got it in my backyard," he said.
...
He has to be the unluckiest guy in DC.
West Nile incidence in entire US = 1 in 1.4 MM
Incidence in DC = 1 in 700,000 people (2 cases)
Funny, there's a ton of it inside NIAID labs...
[images]
4:27 PM • Aug 28, 2024 • 684 Views

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 7d

Steven Quay, in line to be NIAID director, is not just any lab leaker. He is of the type of leakers who still talk about "HIV inserts". He has deleted his tweets from 2021-2025, so here are some screenshots to give you an idea of who Quay is: ▫️1/🧵 #covidorigin #quayniaid

Tweet screenshot

@quay_dr
My new analysis indicates these same inserts are responsible for long
COVID.
Designed into the virus.
zenodo.org/records/145597...

Quote-tweeting:
Dr David Cartland BMedSci MBChB MRCGP (201 v) @CartlandDavic • 11h
"It was the job of a professional [and] it's NOT Natural"
Nobel Prize winner for HIV research, Luc Montagnier (RIP), said someone
"inserted small sequences of HIV" into the original covid Pandemic virus. He died after he presented the findings aired here on a French
[photo of Montagnier on CNews]

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 10d

Found it! RSV as lab leak It's some theory that was put forward on the Children Health's Defense website, RFK Jr's organization. They manage to link it to polio vaccines... But it's not even gain of function! archive.md/9XZLp

screenshot of linked article
August 27, 2021 › Big Pharma › Views
Big Pharma
From Chimpanzees to Children: The Origins of RSV — Respiratory Syncytial Virus
Research shows that respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — recognized as one of the most common causes of childhood cold-like illness — originated in monkeys housed in a Maryland facility where they were used to conduct polio vaccine research.

by Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN
August 27, 2021

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 10d

About Lyme, there was a book a few years ago, which was even recommended by Jay Bhattacharya himself on X/Twitter, calling it an "incredible, infuriating, well-written book worth your time". archive.ph/gmezi

Cover of BITTEN by Kris Newby, showing red and black target like lyme pattern

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 10d

OK so RFK Jr did say on CNN that "COVID-19", "RSV" and "Lyme disease" came from gain of function research. I've only seen lab leak RSV from some very fringe social media accounts so far; is this a common claim? Source: youtu.be/u-FVCCLsZnQ?... via @atrupar.com

screenshot of youtube with transcript, showing

AND CLEARLY, COVID 19
PANDEMIC AND MANY OTHER GLOBAL
PANDEMICS THAT WE HAVE, HAVE
COME FROM GAIN OF FUNCTION
RESEARCH. THE RSV EPIDEMIC THAT
WE HAVE, THAT IS THE BIGGEST
KILLER OF KIDS IN THIS COUNTRY
TODAY CAME FROM THESE KIND OF
EXPERIMENTS. THE LYME DISEASE
ALMOST CERTAINLY CAME FROM THIS
KIND OF RESEARCH. SO, UM, AND

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 10d

Small correction here, some bamboo rats were tested www.nature.com/articles/s41... Civets and raccoon dogs were indeed missing

screenshot of a table showing Bamboo rats

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 12d

After interviewing almost 100 people in and around Mongbwalu—including nurses and doctors, community leaders, survivors, grieving family members, coffinmakers, and cemetery caretakers—the team concluded the epidemic ignited in January, and perhaps even earlier, in Mongbwalu’s outskirts. A patient seeking care may have brought it to the city from a rural area.

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

THE END ▫️50/50 #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Rand Paul's conclusion is super short. Fauci exits the room. ▫️49/ #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Nice not nice Rep Senator makes comment about whether Fauci was allowed to plead the 5th after short testimony at the beginning of the hearing. Paul says pardon prevents Fauci from using the 5th -- directly contradicting himself: he was ready to corner Fauci on "lies" today. ▫️48/ #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Are we seeing the end at last? Rand Paul says something about privilege waived by testifying at the beginning. I cannot comment on this, I don't know. Fauci repeats his 5th amendment answer. Paul says the privilege is unsupported. Something about contempt vote. ▫️47/ #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Torture is back with Sen. Scott firing short questions. Multiple questions about Bill Gates. It's a pathetic show. He has no mercy and seems to enjoy it. Does not even make an effort to articulate. It's not about the questions, it's about exhausting Fauci. ▫️46/ #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Ron Johnson AGAIN on remdesivir, "experimental gene therapy", hydroxychloroquine. Aren't you bored? I am. ▫️44/ #faucihearing

Ron Johnson's table of deaths per treatment/vaccine

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Rand Paul swiftly moved from wet markets to "natural immunity". Rambling. Quoting Martin Kulldorff. Time to post one of my favorite xkcd drawings xkcd.com/2557/ ▫️42/ #faucihearing

xkcd on immunity
[White Hat has raised his hand, palm up, as he addresses Cueball.]
White Hat: See, it's good to get infected, because it gives you immunity.
[White Hat has lowered his arm.]
Cueball: Why would I want immunity?
[Same setting.]
White Hat: To protect you from getting inf...
White Hat: ...wait.

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Rand Paul entering into the record something about the CIA transferring funds to NIAID(?) Again COVID origins. They are playing a video of news clips with Fauci saying "wet market" Rand Paul lies about SARS1 origin - we don't actually *precisely* know how it started in 2002 ▫️41/ #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

6-foot rule. lockdowns. They keep relitigating the same old stories. 🥱 Cannot you just move on? Fauci sounds almost blasé here in his 5th admendment answer (i'm mostly following via audio) ▫️40/ #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

And a third Rep. (Last COVID hearing she was about to cry because she felt so proud to be in the room.) Talking about masks. Somebody tell them it happened in other countries as well. We were also told in France we did not need them, and then they were compulsory. Now 6-foot rule▫️39/ #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Two Reps in a row. Slooow pace now. I am not sure they really understand what they are reading. Quotes Birx's book, something about "blocking Trump" to make him accept "flatten the curve" Same Reps complaining about 1 million US deaths... ▫️36/ #faucihearing

Flo Débarre@flodebarre· 14d

Back to the Reps. They are trying to trick him by asking questions on the 5th amendment; there was a slight hesitation but Fauci is back on track repeating his answer. What an ordeal. ▫️35/ #faucihearing