COVID-19 Records

Private channel session 1023

23 messages over 2h 30m, 2021-02-24 – 2021-02-24.

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.

  1. 2021-02-24 07:16 Robert F. Garry open PDF p.544
    Pompeo [shared file(s): China's Reckless Labs Put the World at Risk - WSJ.pdf]
  2. 2021-02-24 07:34 Andrew Rambaut open PDF p.544
    So much insinuation without actually accusing them of anything
  3. 2021-02-24 07:41 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.544
    Hah, this is sooooo terrible. I'm pretty sure that Pompy looked up "Biosafety Level", thought, "That's some scary shit- let's blame China", and grabbed the keyboard.US politicians (and intelligence) actually used to be widely respected in the world. Boy, has that gone downhill.
  4. 2021-02-24 07:44 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.544
    We now have an "NYC" variant... Sigh. Any concerns about any of these mutations - especially the ORF1s? [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-02-24 at 7.38.07 AM.png]
  5. 2021-02-24 07:45 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.544
    Here's the report on it - rising in NYC (yes, of course there's a preprint...) https://outbreak.info/situation-reports?country=United%20States&division=California[...]20York&pango=B .1.526&selected=New%20York&selectedType=division
  6. 2021-02-24 08:11 Andrew Rambaut open PDF p.544
    There are 2 subclades of B.1.526 - one has E484K, the other S477N. https://github.com/cov-lineages/pango-designation/issues/6
  7. 2021-02-24 08:26 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.545
    Ah, interesting - need to dig a little further then (we can now do pango lineage + mutation on outbreak.info, so that's pretty nifty). If this is the one with, especially, eek, then that's interesting - a lot of standing immunity in large parts ofNYC.
  8. 2021-02-24 08:51 Robert F. Garry open PDF p.545
    That's a really good point about all the pre-existing immunity in NYC. E484K doing double duty - ACE2 binding plusa neutralizing epitope. S477N likely the same/overlapping epitope, but NO interaction with ACE2 at least directly. [shared file(s): image.png]
  9. 2021-02-24 09:02 Robert F. Garry open PDF p.545
    @Andrew Rambaut Q957R is interesting - Q957 probably forms a salt bridge with K304. Put another positive charge there make clash and likely "loosens up" the monomer more than a bit. Like Eddies corridor analogy though - variants finding their way down to a common path,
  10. 2021-02-24 09:22 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.545
    Yeah, B.1.526 with eek is definitely rising in New York. This might be real. https://outbreak.info/situation-reports?country=United%20States&division=California[...]1.526&muts=S%3 AE484K&selected=New%20York&selectedType=division
  11. 2021-02-24 09:27 Robert F. Garry open PDF p.545
    Speaking of the WSJ - they just requested an interview to discuss our Virological post.
  12. 2021-02-24 09:27 Andrew Rambaut open PDF p.545
    It is weird the V701A reverting in the S477N lineage - maybe the tree is wrong
  13. 2021-02-24 09:29 Robert F. Garry open PDF p.545
    HMMMM - that is interesting.
  14. 2021-02-24 09:29 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.545
    Oh... We have identified a MAJOR issue with Illumina's consensus caller - it's calling reference calls if there are _any_ mismatching reads at a variant site. That might be why
  15. 2021-02-24 09:29 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.545
    If this is from NYC, it's possible they used Illumina's DRAGEN pipeline
  16. 2021-02-24 09:29 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.545
    (I have reached out to them - crickets).
  17. 2021-02-24 09:30 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.546
    shared file(s): image (1).png, Screen Shot 2021-02-24 at 09.30.29.png
  18. 2021-02-24 09:34 Andrew Rambaut open PDF p.546
    Interesting - we have seen quite a lot of 'reversions' in some of the VOCs. Who would be using this consensus caller? Is there a way to find out?
  19. 2021-02-24 09:34 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.546
    Preprint on the NYC sequences - pretty interesting. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.14.431043v2.full.pdf
  20. 2021-02-24 09:34 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.546
    I'm worried A LOT of people are using the Illumina pipeline - and there's no way to find out in most cases
  21. 2021-02-24 09:35 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.546
    Any lab that hasn't previously been involved in virus sequencing and isn't as comfortable with command line tools would likely use this caller. It's a big big problem.
  22. 2021-02-24 09:46 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.546
    B.1.526 with S477N: https://outbreak.info/situation-reports?country=United%20States&division=California[...]1.526&muts=S%3AS477N&selected=New%20York&selectedType=division
  23. 2021-02-24 09:47 Kristian G. Andersen open PDF p.546
    Interestingly, none with both (kinda supporting this is a real effect - since they're independent events): https://outbreak.info/situation-reports?pango=B.1.526&muts=S%3AE484K&muts=S%3AS477N