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Slack / Private Message Drop, p.358 [SLACK_000572] · slack_pm:msg:03736

Date: 2021-01-04 12:57
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Kristian G. Andersen, Robert F. Garry, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Edward C. Holmes

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Yes, zero new here. Same old stuff. It's bunch of starving hyenas fighting over a few shitty bones. I think Linfa Wangis losing the plot. In that Times article he suggests that the serology results from Italy might be true - that's 14%seropositive in Rome in September 2019. Bonkers.

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2021-01-04 12:57 Edward C. Holmes

Yes, zero new here. Same old stuff. It's bunch of starving hyenas fighting over a few shitty bones. I think Linfa Wangis losing the plot. In that Times article he suggests that the serology results from Italy might be true - that's 14%seropositive in Rome in September 2019. Bonkers.
2021-01-04 13:54 Robert F. Garry open

BTW - Pottinger has been the lead antiChina hawk from day one in the Trump Administration. He lived in China for many years and is married to a Chinese physician. As for the serology the positives are meaningless - you get cross-reactivity with seasonal coronaviruses, so %seropositive is simply a matter of where you place the cutoff.*Until you have sequence* from a sample anywhere before late 2019 you don't have anything except an opportunityto be foolish.
2021-01-04 14:51 Edward C. Holmes open

Totally agree Bob.
2021-01-04 14:59 Robert F. Garry open

thanks Eddie - I'm getting very concerned where all this is going. For example the Lab leak hypothesis paper starts out: "Nevertheless, I think it's worth offering some historical context for our yearlong medical nightmare. We need tohear from the people who for years have contended that certain types of virus experimentation might lead to adisastrous pandemic like this one. And we need to stop hunting for new exotic diseases in the wild, shipping them back to laboratories, and hot-wiring their genomes to prove how dangerous to human life they might become."
2021-01-04 15:00 Robert F. Garry open

This is very different than the message from a paper you'll all recognize: "So far, researchers have sampled little ofthe viral universe. Surveys of animals will undoubtedly result in the discovery of many thousands of new viruses. These data will benefit studies of diversity and evolution, and could tell us whether and why some pathogens might jump species boundaries more frequently than others. But, given the rarity of outbreaks and the complexity ofhost-pathogen interactions, it is arrogant to imagine that we could use such surveys to predict and mitigate the emergence of disease. New viruses will continue to emerge unexpectedly. There is a lot we can and must do to be better prepared."

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