Chat message

Slack / Private Message Drop, pp.36-37 [SLACK_000250] · slack_pm:msg:00362

Date: 2020-05-24 15:30
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Robert F. Garry, Edward C. Holmes, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Kristian G. Andersen

Recipients on this medium are inferred from channel membership, not per-message addressing.

Yes, although I don't buy her "we were only interested in SARS-like CoVs, and something like SARS-CoV-2 is too far away from that, so we'd never have it here". That's just not true and not a good argument. I liked her commentson RaTG13 though, because it displays something important which she didn't say - yes, they have a lot of samples from bats and other animals - as well as a lot of sequences - but taking a sample and growing an actual virus out ofit is really, really difficult. So with tens of thousands of samples (most of them with no SARS-like viruses in them), one could only hope to maybe grow out a handful of viruses - what's the chance of out of that handful, one of them would be a super-charged pandemic virus?

In context

A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.

2020-05-24 15:18 Edward C. Holmes open

Curefinder? I tried it and got arsefinger.
2020-05-24 15:22 Kristian G. Andersen open

Use a proper translator... This one should be easy :wink:
2020-05-24 15:26 Edward C. Holmes open

Although CGTN is a propaganda organ for the Chinese government, what she said rang true to me.
2020-05-24 15:30 Kristian G. Andersen

Yes, although I don't buy her "we were only interested in SARS-like CoVs, and something like SARS-CoV-2 is too far away from that, so we'd never have it here". That's just not true and not a good argument. I liked her commentson RaTG13 though, because it displays something important which she didn't say - yes, they have a lot of samples from bats and other animals - as well as a lot of sequences - but taking a sample and growing an actual virus out ofit is really, really difficult. So with tens of thousands of samples (most of them with no SARS-like viruses in them), one could only hope to maybe grow out a handful of viruses - what's the chance of out of that handful, one of them would be a super-charged pandemic virus?
2020-05-24 15:36 Edward C. Holmes open

Yes, I agree. And surely you'd only grow a virus that you sequenced and likely published?
2020-05-24 15:37 Kristian G. Andersen open

Yes to the former, but not the latter - no, I don't think they would have published their sequences before also havinggrown it (however, somebody should have known about such a sequence if it existed and I'm pretty sure something would have been leaked by now)
2020-05-24 15:47 Edward C. Holmes open

One that latter point, I am struck by the complete lack of intelligence on this: surely, if they were growing a virus inthe lab, incident or not, there would be standard chatter about it on email, text, weichat, whatever, but there's nothing. There's a mountain of chatter about the pneumonia cases in Wuhan back in December before the disease was officially reported, but there is nothing about the lab.
2020-05-24 16:01 Robert F. Garry open

The virology is old-school - still grinding tissue and culturing I guess. Yeah - put that sample in a minus 80for 6 or 7years and growing something out would be hit or miss at best. Which organ are you going to grind up? SARS viruses not so viremic (resisting temptation to evoke the idiot) so blood not a good bet. I remain curious about the99% virus which I guess either never existed or was not - well - quite 99%. They clearly did culture something out ofwhere-ever they got that one if the EMs are vaguely reflective of the quasi-reality.

Full conversation →