Private channel session 23
17 messages over 1h 54m, 2020-05-05 – 2020-05-05.
A “conversation” here is an activity session — a run of messages with under 60 minutes of silence inside it. The channel had no native conversation boundaries.
-
Paul Sharp just pointed this out to me: http://www.aidsorigins.com/static/ (a blast from the past, @Eddie Holmes).
-
`'There will be more, either out there already or in the making'` , I am not sure I said it quite so succinctly but I like it!Will quote myself on that.
-
A blast from the past indeed.
-
"Garry turned out to be an unexpectedly colourful character. We arranged to meet on a street corner in New Orleans, which was unusual, and he left me standing there in near-40 n heat for more than half-an-hour. Finally Ireturned to my hotel room to take a shower, only for him to knock on my door 5 minutes later, to say that he had been watching me from his car, and that this had been a necessary security measure. Days after my return to theUK, I phoned Garry to ask some follow-up questions, and he now claimed that some of the Western blots from Robert R. had been stolen from his lab, that this had happened around the time of my visit to New Orleans, and thathe suspected me of involvement. I was flabbergasted, and quickly disavowed him of that notion." Two true statements in this revision of history. I admit to being rather colorful, and yes "someone" did break into my office andstole several old notebooks at just the time that Hooper was visting NOLa. I never met him at his hotel room - he did show up at my office a few days before the "break-in" smelling like he had spent the day and night laying in aBourbon street gutter. Maybe that's where the 40 degree heat came in. Very strange man - I think he's confusing mewith someone else - I never wrote a Science about Chimp kidneys (that article is by Andrew Hillis). He's also somewhat right about the Robert R sequences - I never published a paper on the sequences (but stand behind the western blots and the antigen capture) because 1. the sequences from the old 3 foot Sanger gels just not that good and 2. I suspected the short runs we got they might have been contaminants too.
-
But - running afoul of Hooper - another great reason why I'm a big fan of Andrew and Eddie - good company to find myself in.
-
And Kristian welcome to this rather exclusive "club." Hooper write; "But for Kristian Andersen to claim that the workby his colleagues and himself "rules out" the lab origin theory, and for Josie Golding to claim that it "end[s] any speculation" along such lines, is clearly premature and inaccurate. There are no such disproofs. I believe that as itstands at present, the lab origin hypothesis is at least as plausible a hypothesis as that of origin from Wuhanbushmeat."
-
I am just left wondering why W. Ian Lipkin was spared in Hooper's a_d hominem_ rant. Surely he could have found something - somewhere - on Ian, if he just looked in the right place.
-
I'm really looking forward to reading this. And Bob - I gotta say, you _are_ an unexpectedly colourful character...
-
Have you guys heard about this PCR positive case from December in France?
-
Yeah, I saw the article - seems unlikely. False positive?
-
They have a +ve and -ve control. Label mix up?
-
Need a sequence or it didn't happen
-
Sheri Fink wrote about a case in Cali n early Feb
-
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/santa-clara-county-coronavirus-death.html
-
Agree - need sequence - but High Ct value with the qPCR they show - may not be sequencable - yes could well be false positive or another CoV. They don't show the Gene finder® COVID19 Plus RealAmp kit result.
-
Very high prior probability of being false +ve.
-
Also if there was one, there were more. There would have been a big outbreak in France it would have seeded the rest of the world.