Zach Hensel
@zachhensel.bsky.social
single-molecule microbiology lab @ ITQB NOVA in Portugal https://zach-hensel.github.io/
Riboseek is a fast RNA/DNA search. More sensitive than nhmmer at 250x speed. Structure-aware realignment produces MSAs approaching rMSA quality. Plus 1.7M precomputed RNA MSAs, and an API to search your own 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 💾 github.com/steineggerla... 🌐 search.foldseek.com/riboseek
So, something that the media will sanewash as this story develops is Quay isn't just a lab origin proponent. He has for 5 years sold an endless stream of very specifically wrong and silly ideas on the topic. He's not right, but even if he was, that wouldn't excuse his fabrications along the way!
‘“All I will say is this man does not deserve any of this SHIT that he and his family are going through,’ Carla Heeke Dean, a former patient of Fauci’s whose medical information was included in the documents, said in an email.”
Margaret Manto@margaretmanto.bsky.social · 18h agoExclusive: Sen. Rand Paul published Anthony Fauci's diary entries without redacting the names or medical details of over 20 people, including people with cancer, Ebola or HIV. www.notus.org/health-scien...
There was an actual scandal last week around the Fauci hearings. But you probably won't hear about it from the science/politics commentariat.
Margaret Manto@margaretmanto.bsky.social · 18h agoExclusive: Sen. Rand Paul published Anthony Fauci's diary entries without redacting the names or medical details of over 20 people, including people with cancer, Ebola or HIV. www.notus.org/health-scien...
Here's what Quay was doing with his time rather than paying so little attention to his company that he hired a rapist on the run as Chief Medical Officer. Lots of silly stuff in his testimony, but the sillier one was saying ORF8 in SARS-CoV-2 was a diabolical gene inserted by mad scientists.
Zach Hensel@zachhensel.bsky.social · 19h agoThis is only the tip of the iceberg for Quay. He also should be asked some hard questions about why he let a rapist conman that he'd hired by accident get away in 2022, when he was busy telling Congress about his conspiracy theories: www.statnews.com/2026/07/29/r...
Gold Standard Science™ Saying that Quay is "coming from the drug industry" is like saying someone is "coming from an avalanche." The dude is currently CEO of the third publicly traded company in a row that he's run into the ground.
Zach Hensel@zachhensel.bsky.social · 19h agoI recently read Quay's new book. Now he's reportedly been tapped to lead NIAID. Not only is his book full what are plainly lies, it also reflects a person who can't keep tabs on reality. www.politico.com/news/2026/08...
I recently read Quay's new book. Now he's reportedly been tapped to lead NIAID. Not only is his book full what are plainly lies, it also reflects a person who can't keep tabs on reality. www.politico.com/news/2026/08...
When can we expect the paper with your well reasoned case for how your colleagues are actually responsible for starting the pandemic, @ashishkjha.bsky.social ? I hope that’s not just idle speculation you reserve for CNN and that there’s some thought behind it.
Woah, update: Alina Chan has now addressed this. Her explanation: "It doesn't count when you have unpublished manuscripts or talks where you don't even point out the connection to covid." Here are the full excerpts from Viral, so you can judge for yourself if that caveat was included... 1/3
Zach Hensel@zachhensel.bsky.social · 5d agoChan and Ridley wrote in Viral that 3 December 2020 "was the first time that the existence of [Lineage 4] had been acknowledged publicly as opposed to buried in a database..." Zhengli Shi on 9 March 2020: "These SARS-like coronaviruses can be divided into four evolutionary lineages."
It's also shocking to me, how little interest there seems to be, how little good reporting I am seeing. Is this the next pandemic? No. Does that mean it's not important and we should ignore it? No.
Lots of "lab leak" chatter this week, cherry picking from impolite things written in private during a crisis. So, for some contrast, here's something that was hiding in plain sight for years. It disproves a defamatory conspiracy theory that appeared in @vanityfair.com and the book Viral.
Exclusive: Katie Miller has called for Anthony Fauci to be jailed. But since-redacted excerpts from his diary suggest the two had a close relationship in 2020. www.notus.org/health-scien...
Redacted Fauci Diary Entries Depict Him Personally Helping Katie Miller
Katie Miller, who has since called for infectious disease doctor Anthony Fauci to be jailed, has said Fauci’s diary entries are self-aggrandizing.
notus.org
for any actual public servant, cabinet secretary is the apex of their entire career, you literally cannot go any higher, and all of these people treat it like it’s their side hustle to get the job they *really* want, which is “influencer”
I will be following Anthony Fauci's hearing today, and I will post comments in this thread with the hashtag #faucihearing. Feel free to mute it! ▫️1/🧵 www.hsgac.senate.gov
Very, very serious hearing going on here. Someone waited in line to get a good seat so that they can advertise some silly conspiracy theory book.
Rand Paul published private diary entries full of private health info. Conspiracy theorists found the unredacted versions and are digging through them. Full of very non-public information about many different people, many of whom aren't public figures. FYI for tomorrow @peters.senate.gov
Flo Débarre@flodebarre.eurosky.social · last wk."Neither HHS nor Paul’s committee alerted Fauci ahead of time that they had obtained his diary and that they planned to publish it in full, according to a person familiar with the matter." This is so vile
Thanks to @jeremymberg.bsky.social for laying this out so clearly and transparently. Here's a quick comment about why this matters.
Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · last wk.So... I am mentioned in Dr. Fauci's (now public) diary. 1/9
Does this mean I can tell people that I’m hundreds of centimeters tall? If your best evidence is a fish story, you don’t have any evidence.
bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 3w agoThree phylogenetic metrics are compatible with natural evolution of the earliest SARS-CoV-2 sequence https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.08.737272v1
Yup. Elevates an impossible conspiracy theory rather than debunks it.
Alex Crits-Christoph@acritschristoph.bsky.social · last mo.So, the hypothesis tested in this paper is as follows: "If someone secretly isolated a novel SARS-like virus, and then performed a gain of function experiment using a particular set of mutations only found in a figure from a single 2017 paper on *MERS*-like viruses... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
How does testing an impossible conspiracy theory justify the costs here? Were the experiments reported in this paper for some other reason as well? www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Evaluation of a proposed link between the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site and mouse-adapted MERS-coronavirus MA30 | PNAS
The origin of the polybasic furin cleavage site (FCS) of SARS-CoV-2 remains a central question in debates on the emergence of COVID-19. One hypothe...
pnas.org
And here's another email from the DOE's Z-Division, which finds the science in the Yan Report 'credible'. It is tempting to believe that the government has top secret intelligence. In this case they were impressed by something so cringe that public conspiracy theorists are deeply embarrassed by it.
Flo Débarre@flodebarre.eurosky.social · 2mo agoTheir colleagues in the Intelligence Community also thought the claim was unsupported. This is from the set of documents released by Gabbard's team! ▫️4/5 www.dni.gov/files//docum...
Yup. The "paper" they're talking about is the first Yan report. A few other examples in the little that's not been redacted that show how much of a joke the LLNL investigation was.
Peter Jacobs@pjacobs.bsky.social · 2mo agoAs embarrassing as this last ditch attempt to flood the zone with conspiracy narratives is for ODNI itself, it's actually far more embarrassing for the chuds at FBI and a handful of the national labs analysts, who were buying into the absolutely dumbest claims on Earth about the pandemic's origin.
Correct. Here's a very surprising endorsement on the book jacket.
Norma@looftsabine.bsky.social · 2mo agoHe does not know the difference between a linear measure and an area measure 🤦♀️(a scientist?)
Pop quiz. Steven Quay has a new lab leak book out today. Right in the beginning he copied some meaningless PR from a website of a business district in Wuhan. Website: "...planned area of 518 square kilometers..." Quay: "...planned area of 322 square miles..." What did he do wrong?
Today is the first Tuesday of the month, meaning it is blog post day! I wrote about last month's hearing of a "CIA Whistleblower" on the "COVID coverup". The guy was a "plandemic"-type conspiracy theorist, which was not obvious to folks with the same tendencies... #CovidOrigin
Rand Paul’s “CIA Whistleblower”
In mid-May 2026, Senator Rand Paul held a hearing at the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC), titled "Whistleblower Testimony on the COVID Coverup". It was to whi...
pandemonium.hypotheses.org
Matt Ridley nominated a twitter conspiracy theorist as his champion rather than defend his own work. A short new post: www.the-gallop.com/matt-ridleys...
Matt Ridley's Trial by Comment
My last post laid out the absurdity of Matt Ridley going from declaring that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was "almost certainly the wrong lab to look at" to recently telling an audience at the NIH ...
the-gallop.com
Zach Hensel@zachhensel.bsky.social · 2mo agoMatt Ridley’s evidence for a lab leak collapsed, yet his certainty only grew. My post breaks down Ridley’s bizarre, unscientific case that boils down to a 12-nucleotide “God of the Gaps” argument. www.the-gallop.com/review-matt-...
Matt Ridley has responded by retweeting someone whose defense is that all of the data that disproves their conspiracy theories must be fake. Of course there are other samples that show BANAL-52 isn’t fake.
Zach Hensel@zachhensel.bsky.social · 2mo agoMatt Ridley’s evidence for a lab leak collapsed, yet his certainty only grew. My post breaks down Ridley’s bizarre, unscientific case that boils down to a 12-nucleotide “God of the Gaps” argument. www.the-gallop.com/review-matt-...
