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1. 2020-10-30 15:21 Edward C. Holmes open
   Company A is Vision Medicals. I don't believe for a nanosec that BGI knew there was a pandemic virus on Dec. 10th. That time-line makes zero sense with any known timeline, the epidemiological history of the outbreak, nor what was on Chinese social media. Nor would WIV have anything to do with BGI. The best time-line is here and confirmed my colleagues in China: https://apnews.com/article/3c061794970661042b18d5aeaaed9fae
2. 2020-10-30 15:23 Edward C. Holmes open
   The idea that 2-3 weeks before all this it was known at a commercial sequencing company based in a different city seems untenable to me. Nor does it fit the time-line of the first patients seen by the doctors (sorry to include awikipedia link): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang
3. 2020-10-30 15:24 Edward C. Holmes open
   However, I'm checking with colleagues there now.
4. 2020-10-30 15:33 Kristian G. Andersen open
   One explanation is that BGI created these four BioSamples for a different purpose and then backfilled with the SARS2 data when they generated it. But I don't think there's any ambiguity that these were created on 12/10 - onlywe don't know for what purpose (so could have been for a novel coronavirus, could have been for something else -the metadata describing the BioSample very likely weren't entered until the data were deposited).
5. 2020-10-30 15:35 Kristian G. Andersen
   I would love to see the full submission history for these entries - Andrew, dig a little :wink:
6. 2020-10-30 15:51 Kristian G. Andersen open
   Eddie, it's your paper... :wink: https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext I assume this is the same Weijun Chen who's the submitter of the data and is from BGI.
7. 2020-10-30 15:52 Kristian G. Andersen open
   He'd know what's up with that early creation date.
8. 2020-10-30 15:54 Kristian G. Andersen open
   If you had some suspected cases of novel coronavirus, Weijun would be the kind of guy you'd contact - he's been developing diagnostics for SARS too, so would make sense. I think there's probably an earlier timeline here that they may have been obscuring a little - which, honestly, wouldn't surprise me that much.
9. 2020-10-30 16:22 Edward C. Holmes open
   Yes, I looked at the Lancet paper straight away. I've already contacted Weifeng. If that fails I'll contact Weijun Chen.

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