Private channel session 1416
9 messages over 2h 4m, 2021-05-22 – 2021-05-22.
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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RaTG15 Spike - 658 DITKARTSSTPA 669 S1/S2 junction - haven't run the analysis but guessing that there are O-linked glycan sites.
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My response to Betsy McKay at WSJ: It's a big deal - in terms of the origins "debate." It's a major arrow taken from the quiver of lab leak proponents and snapped into bits. Bloom, Chan and other Science letter signees have make a major issue that Shi had not released these mine virus sequences. The DRASTIC krewe even more obsessive regarding the mine viruses. The repeat of the claims of acover-up are likely coming (cue ominious questions: why not release sooner/are the sequences now fake?). Seems to me that Shi herself had enough and put the sequences out there.It shows that WIV was not covering up a mine virus that was closer to SC2. Like RatG13 none of the new viruses could have been used to engineer SC2 (make a chimera) or derive SC2 by other types of "GoF research." The mine viruses are interesting, but not a priority [so many viruses, so little time]. The paper confirms that that even among related sarbecoviruses there is a lot of diversity in spike, particularly [butpredictably based on other CoVs] around the S1/S2 junction where SC2 has the FCS.
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This is good. And worth adding - not only did they not cover up these sequences, they're continuing to try and figure out where these viruses come from and how we can be safer in the future.
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For the unsurprising DISTRACT take on these sequences, look no further https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1395898890294026243?s=21
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"Likes" of that thread includes Sharri Markson...
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DRASTIC should be considered part of the Murdock media empire - the really dark part - so is the WSJ - the WSJ news division though including Betsy McKay is relatively isolated and have been pretty balanced on C19. Editorial page - not so much.
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https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1395550790228529152 eDim
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This is exactly right. Nailed it. [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 8.20.50 AM.png]
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Just read the pangolin CoV paper from Joe Grove again - such a great paper. If you haven't already, make sure you read - so weird.https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.22.436468v1