Private channel session 1133
31 messages over 4h 15m, 2021-03-20 – 2021-03-20.
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.
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@Robert Garry Reminds me of Covidfaker. After his episode in the COVID spotlight and subsequent termination by NBC he spent the next year doing this: [shared file(s): image.png]
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@Robert Garry You might ask about the feathers - it's not a permanent boa.
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@Robert Garry It's St Michael the Archangel on his back protecting Covidfaker from Satan. Wiki: *Michael* leads God's armies against Satan's forces in the Book of Revelation, where during the war in heaven he defeats Satan.
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@Robert Garry Can't make this stuff up.
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Great reference to the Rolling Stones - Jagger clearly has his own demons but unlike some of the others [Alina, Yuri, Covidfaker] discussed herein is a true genus.
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I am hoping Jessie dives in and comes to his senses. Alina is too far gone.
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https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-5008?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&a mp;rfr_dat=cr_pub++0pubmed&"the real-world studies that detect viral RNA in the environment report very low levels, and few have isolated viable virus." In anticipation of the WHO report - which is likely to have a section about smoking racoon dogs - i think it's key. The most likely explanation for the high levels of virus on the grates under the animal cages is that the animals were infected. They were ab`le to grow virus out of 2 of the environmental samples.
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well done @Eddie Holmes https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/19/979314118/next-pandemic-scien tists-fear-another-coronavirus-could-jump-from-animals-to-hum
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You can see why people want it to be a lab leak - this is much more scary.
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I think we mentioned this on our very first call... Nature is way way more scary than lab.
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Very good point - Daszak made a good one as well in the NPR - extrapolating the 3% serology to even a portion ofthe general population is a lot of sarbecovirus exposures - way more than a few lab ppl mist-netting at a few caves per year.
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3% - that may well be every ~6 months given (a) exposures likely very low titer, and (b) seroreversion to CoVs. Ithink it's safe to say that a huge number of people are exposed to CoVs on a daily basis - and not just in China.
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~5% serology seems to be the baseline false positive for just about everything - see Ebola in Sierra Leone etc.
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... in Africa :wink:. That 2-3% number actually has pretty good baselines
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Baseline sampled in e.g., Wuhan - of all places.
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OK - baseline cross-reactivity with some sort of CoV
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See waste-water in Europe in 2019
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The 2-3% serological studies were specifically for SARS-like CoVs, with good baselines - so they might well be accurate. But yeah, getting a positive hit on a CoV serological assay - without controlling very closely for background- you can get anything, anywhere.
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Andrew - since you have a keen eye. Do you know which 'mystery' sequences and viruses Jesse is talking about? I'm quite confused. I think maybe he means these? https://twitter.com/K_G_Andersen/status/1373310963680571397?s=20 Clearly they must be fragments they have managed to successfully sequence, as they mention in the Nature addendum - so absolutely no mystery. Am I missing something?
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I was assuming it was those. Some RdRp PCR products I assume
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Good to be discussing these points ahead of a likely burst of reporting with the relaese of the WHO report! I already have several reporters promising to call.
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... and then this slide showing that they have managed to get some spike sequences too? Clearly very distant. [shared file(s): EvVevMrXcAA_GmP.jpeg]
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Also this tree, but I suspect that the same I just linked to, and yes, probably RdRp. Same IDs, so clearly the same. And clearly, they don't have the full genomes (because, well, bloody hard to do) [shared file(s):Ew35lxKU8AAbXdw.png]
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@Andrew Rambaut points well taken re cross-reactivity - even the best seroassays are not 100% - the paper we referenced in PO1 and the one Daszak is talking about did look for cross-rxty with other covs. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12250-018-0012-7 cloned most of the known human covs and tested thoseas well as follow-up western blotting. my take is at least some sarbecovirus reactivity possible.
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...and the cdc paper - which i cant find now - showing seroreactivty to SC2 pre-pandemic was crap.
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More crap: https://undark.org/2021/03/18/utterly-plausible-lab-leak-hypothesis/
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Reality: Every one of the zoo's panthers are equipped with chips. The instant the animal left it's perimeter, alertswere sounded and a team was sent to capture it before it escaped the zoo, The zoo has large fence around itsperimeter as well.
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https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/major-coronavirus-variant-found-pets-first-time:black_cat::cat2::dog2: ohmy.
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So --- if it's true that SC2 a "generalist" virus, is it rapidly now becoming more of a generalist virus???
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AS for the panthers there have been 125 panther attacks in the US in the past 100 years - 27 fatalities. All of the attacks were wild panthers - none had escaped from a zoo.
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But there is a hypothetical chance that pathers could escape from a zoo, so best- i guess it will be argued - just toshut down all the zoos.