“Lab Leak” Dialogue with Clare Craig [Archival]

Jessica Hockett, PhD

Posted to Wood House 76 Substack on 20 August 2025. Original post here. Revised 23 October 2025. Subtopics include the Corman-Drosten protocol/paper, Corman-Drosten Review Report (critique), the COVID shot, and flu vaccines.

This post archives dialogue between Clare Craig, co-chair of HART Group (UK), and me in September 2024 that I had forgotten about until August 2025.

The catalyst for the conversation was my “delayed” response to a 7 April 2023 post by Jonathan Engler about statements in the Corman-Drosten Eurosurveillance paper. We later addressed those statements in Did the Corman-Drosten Protocol “rely on social media reports” to seek (& then find) SARS-CoV-2?, and I have continued to pursue the issue in follow-ups and related articles.**

As far as I can remember, I became aware of the “social media sourcing” statements in the Corman et al paper in summer 2024 after reading a draft of Kevin Ryan and Piers Robinson’s “A Plausibility Probe of 9/11 and COVID-19 as ‘Structural Deep Events” and then “A Farewell to Virology: Expert Edition” by Mark Bailey.

Dr. Craig was one of 22 authors on a critique of the Corman-Drosten paper that was published on 29 November 2020.

My interest in documenting the Twitter exchange relates to Dr. Craig’s view that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab, and to the critique having “missed” the social media sourcing. Another critique author, Bobby Malhotra, had mentioned that sourcing in a ‘mega thread’ that appears to have served as a ‘draft’ of the critique. (Discussed here and here.)

I was “late” to the existence the Corman-Drosten protocol, and to the critique, having spent 2020 through much of 2023 looking at U.S. tests and testing programs. At the time of my interaction with Dr. Craig, I did not realize she was an author on the critique.

The tweets from Dr. Craig’s account are still “live” and therefore shown as embeds. My tweets are reproduced from the archive I downloaded before I removed the account from the platform.

On 9 September 2024, Jessica Hockett said to Jonathan Engler:

Checking in.

I think I found the posts they are referencing, thanks to a footnote in Mark Bailey’s “Farewell to Virology paper” cc: @PiersRobinson1

github.com/flodebarre/covid_origin_documents/blob/main/2020-01-30_LittleDog.md

Two images below. The rest are at [the] link.

I don’t understand why Eurosurveillance (journal) would allow Corman, Drosten et al to get away with not citing these messages.

Am I understanding this scenario correctly: That a key assumption of the “gold standard” C-D test is based on text messages posted to social media? cc: @MartinNeil9 @NickHudsonCT

I’m not a scientist, so I’m going to need help with this one…

Craig to Hockett

That github has only been around for two years. https://github.com/flodebarre/covid_origin_documents/commits/main/2020-01-30_LittleDog.md

That github has only been around for two years. https://t.co/UVVzCvwXxJ
— Dr Clare Craig ✝️ (@ClareCraigPath) September 10, 2024

Hockett to Craig:

Yes, but it’s not as much about the link as it is about the images that are posted to it.

So either the images are messages that were sent in late December (as the images say), or they’re not.

Also, the Github link is an English translation of this:

https://freewechat.com/a/MzAxMjMyMDk0Ng==/2650112053/1/1580318101

I am not vouching for the authenticity of the messages, whether they were actually sent at the end of December 2019, or (assuming they were sent then) that they weren’t part of a staged effort.

The connection I am making is between what @jengleruk observed the authors said in the Eurosurveillance paper, and the social media reports the authors could be referring to.

I emailed Dr. Drosten (corresponding author) directly on 2 Sept 2024 and asked what he and his colleagues were referring to but I have not received a response.

No matter what, it is unacceptable that the editors of the journal allowed the authors to refer to state “we relied on social media reporting announcing detection of a SARS-like virus” without citing the reporting on which they relied.

So, if not the messages I linked to, which “social media reporting” was it and why in the world did those test developers rely on it? Is that “good science” — or is it more like “social [media] science”?

Hockett to Craig:

Can we agree that this sounds like a computer lab endeavor – not anything involving a virus lab/virus lab leak?

I’m only sorry I didn’t see JE’s [Jonathan Engler’s] tweet a year+ ago when he posted it (or if I did, that I didn’t quite take it in and realize the implications).

Is this how virology works? Where is the established casual [sic] link between these “viruses” and illness? Where is the proof of human to human transmission? How does this relate to the “seasonal trigger” idea?

My kids were harmed over this mess. I’m not letting this go anytime soon — and I’m sure you’re not either.

“Before public release of virus sequences from cases of 2019-nCoV, we relied on social media reporting announcing detection of a SARS-like virus. We thus assumed that a SARS related CoV involved in the outbreak. We downloaded all complete and partial (if greater than 400 nt) SARS-related virus sequences available in GenBank by 1 January 2020.”

Craig to Hockett:

I think it was a virus lab leak.
The evidence for human manipulation is myriad.
It is evident in samples from all over the world.

I think it was a virus lab leak.
The evidence for human manipulation is myriad.
It is evident in samples from all over the world.
— Dr Clare Craig ✝️ (@ClareCraigPath) September 10, 2024

What do you make of this? https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/2019-novel-coronavirus-vaccine-dated

What do you make of this?https://t.co/DCCyonbWcq
— Dr Clare Craig ✝️ (@ClareCraigPath) September 10, 2024

Hockett to Craig:

@ClareCraigPath @c_drosten @PiersRobinson1 A virus leak involving what mechanism(s)?

Craig to Hockett:

I can’t tell you about the leak itself – but we have already agreed they happen a lot.

Viruses replicate and spread.

By autumn 2019 there was global evidence of its spread.

The fact that the global genomic sequences map back to a common ancestory in October 2020 is not something that can happen accidentally.

I agree that there would be zero guarantee that a lab virus would take off in the population. In fact, evidence suggests most don’t. It does not make for a workable James Bond style baddie plan.

However, if there is an intent to amplify a problem then having a novel virus about to detect is a great way to convince the medical and scientific community that they need to address something. In its absence, you would struggle to get any buy in at all.

I can't tell you about the leak itself – but we have already agreed they happen a lot.

Viruses replicate and spread.

By autumn 2019 there was global evidence of its spread.

The fact that the global genomic sequences map back to a common ancestory in October 2020 is not…
— Dr Clare Craig ✝️ (@ClareCraigPath) September 11, 2024

Hockett to Craig:

Funny enough, my edit of Matt Ridley’s Hollywood story has your answer [to what I think of the Chudov article]

@ClareCraigPath seasonal shots are a problem.

Always have been – but especially in the years leading up to Operation COVID

There is a reason COVID shot criticism has been permitted and elevated since late 2022.

It was intended as a decoy IMO – which is not to say it isn’t harmful.

But it is impossible to separate the impact of the covid shot from the impact of the flu shot (not to mention all the rest of the health harms at play)

Huge mess for data, and I think it’s big mistake to assume ACM wasn’t manipulated

But I digress…