COVID-19 Records

Chat message

Slack / Private Message Drop, p.208 [SLACK_000422] · slack_pm:msg:02167

Page text: p.208 · original PDF

Date
2020-10-02 15:15
Type
chat message · slack
recipient
Kristian G. Andersen, Robert F. Garry, Andrew Rambaut
speaker
Edward C. Holmes

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

He probably has a hotline to Alina. I'm for the cryptic circulation in humans theory as well, not least because ofgetting the first cluster of cases most be tiny.

In context

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

  1. 2020-10-02 15:08 Edward C. Holmes open
    Agreed. I only meant the Vero cell thing. Somebody must have proposed this.
  2. 2020-10-02 15:08 Kristian G. Andersen open
    In other words - had they repeated e.g., the experiment previously done with bovine coronavirus, no questions SARS-CoV-2 with the FCS would have been selected very rapidly.
  3. 2020-10-02 15:12 Edward C. Holmes open
    By the way, I only gave Wade some generic off-the-record comments. He was suggesting that the observation that all the human viruses are monophyletic was evidence for a lab escape....he's definitely been drinking the Kool-aid.
  4. 2020-10-02 15:13 Kristian G. Andersen open
    Doesn't surprise me about Wade - really disappointing. But reading his questions I was like "well, I'd have to start with explaining evolution to him first - I ain't got time for that shit".
  5. 2020-10-02 15:15 Edward C. Holmes
    He probably has a hotline to Alina. I'm for the cryptic circulation in humans theory as well, not least because ofgetting the first cluster of cases most be tiny.
  6. 2020-10-02 15:18 Kristian G. Andersen open
    Yeah, I think that's a really intriguing possibility. Could have been related to animal farming, which would (strongly?) select for the FCS popping up in the first place.
  7. 2020-10-02 15:19 Edward C. Holmes open
    I can easily believe that.
  8. 2020-10-02 15:19 Kristian G. Andersen open
    Clearly, once this thing hit humans, there was (is :disappointed: ) very very strong selection for maintaining that site.
  9. 2020-10-02 15:21 Edward C. Holmes open
    Totally. But, as you say, that's no surprise.

Full conversation →