Chat message

Slack / Private Message Drop, p.160 [SLACK_000374] · slack_pm:msg:01641

Date: 2020-09-11 22:06
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Robert F. Garry, Edward C. Holmes, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Kristian G. Andersen
Topics: Vaccines Intelligence community assessments

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Eddie, great OpEd - something like that was needed! One thing though: "The coronavirus's sluggish pace of mutation is good news for us: A virus that evolved more rapidly would have agreater chance of outrunning any vaccines or drugs developed to counter it."I don't think we can say this for two reasons: (1) there's currently no vaccine induced selection pressure on the viral population, but lord knows what it'll do once there is, and, most importantly, (2) what we _don't_ capture via the evolutionary rate estimates is the rather frequent strange recombination events observed in SARS-CoV-2 - all ofthose are masked out in alignments and phylogenetic analyses, because it's a different evolutionary process (it's -very interestingly - driven by the proofreading activity of the virus... go figure). Especially the latter point is important when we think about vaccine escape since big and consequential genomic rearrangements can happen really quickly.

Extracted statements

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Statement	Grade	Attribution	Stance
Especially the latter point is important when we think about vaccine escape since big and consequential genomic rearrangements can happen really quickly.	own voice, substantive	speaker_own	asserts

Statement

Grade

Attribution

Stance

Especially the latter point is important when we think about vaccine escape since big and consequential genomic rearrangements can happen really quickly.

own voice, substantive

speaker_own

asserts

In context

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

2020-09-11 22:06 Kristian G. Andersen

Eddie, great OpEd - something like that was needed! One thing though: "The coronavirus's sluggish pace of mutation is good news for us: A virus that evolved more rapidly would have agreater chance of outrunning any vaccines or drugs developed to counter it."I don't think we can say this for two reasons: (1) there's currently no vaccine induced selection pressure on the viral population, but lord knows what it'll do once there is, and, most importantly, (2) what we _don't_ capture via the evolutionary rate estimates is the rather frequent strange recombination events observed in SARS-CoV-2 - all ofthose are masked out in alignments and phylogenetic analyses, because it's a different evolutionary process (it's -very interestingly - driven by the proofreading activity of the virus... go figure). Especially the latter point is important when we think about vaccine escape since big and consequential genomic rearrangements can happen really quickly.
2020-09-11 22:30 Edward C. Holmes open

Logically, I would say that a lower rate of evolution must also reduce the rate of antigenic drift (particularly if a lot ofthe mutations in SARS-CoV-2 are APOBEC related). But, that said, I agree with your points. What you ought toknow is that my original submission looked absolutely *nothing* like what I submitted. Nothing. I never had a sectionon reinfection for a starter. The Editor re-wrote everything. It was torture. Just torture. My original statement on the vaccines said: "SARS-CoV-2 is in the evolutionary slow lane for an RNA virus. This is good news because it means that the virus will find it just a bit harder to 'escape' from any future vaccines or antiviral drugs if and when they are developed". So, not quite the same.
2020-09-11 22:34 Kristian G. Andersen open

Well, whatever the editor did the product is still very good :wink:. That's funny about the reinfection part, because I _did_ find that a little out of place - and the concern here isn't asmuch that people are reinfected with a more dangerous virus, it's just the fact that they're reinfected in the first place... (which, as you - or the editor... - say is what we'd expect - but we don't yet know how frequent reinfections are (on this point, I'm concerned - very. But I'm a pessimist)).
2020-09-11 22:36 Kristian G. Andersen open

(and by concerned, I mean that I think after a few months, a good proportion of people are probably going to be susceptible - I wouldn't be surprised if we're at ~50% being susceptible after 6-9 months...)
2020-09-11 22:37 Edward C. Holmes open

Exactly! I didn't want any of that in but she insisted! It was a fight. I added a bit saying that there were too few casesof reinfection to conclude anything but she said it was too vague.

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