A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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I like that poem - clever. I should frame it. Thanks Billy.
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Such great work from Billy. I'm just surprised he can't get financed.
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Maybe he should try selling poetry on Amazon - happy to provide him with material.
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Given how cock obsessed Billy is it's not hard to imagine how microscopic his own member must be. I also suspectit requires its own gain of function.
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2021-03-08 14:16
Andrew Rambaut
I was going to ask - how hard is it to collect samples with cultureable viruses? From what I am hearing it is difficult toculture SARS-CoV-2 from many samples so I would imagine sampling bats (say) you would be just hoping for RNA rather than infectious virus.
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Yes - hard to culture from natural samples. First issue is you are getting animals that are likely at different stages ininfections - early, late, persistent, recovering - who knows? We don't know how long viremia lasts in Mastomys with Lassa virus. Seems much lower than in humans. Rabies - long term infections, bats carry for a loooong time eventually some [all?] get sick. For SC2 from humans unless the Ct values are really low say low 20s it's very difficult. Not to say that there is not infectious virus there and that under the right circumstance (inhaling it directly into the nasal passages or lungs even a fairly low may be all it takes. I'm just guessing but unlikely bats would produce their Covs at high levels even if you caught then just right . The intermediate hosts/reservoirs, might grow virus to higher levels (like say civets for SC1), but probably varies a lot from animal to animal like humans . Sicksnotty nose pangolins might have higher loads for their viruses, too. Same apparently true of camels for MERS-CoV. All these considerations are why no-one's cultured ebola virus from a bat yet.
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And if you just out sampling to look for diversity you are probably going to store the samples to preserve RNA rather than hope to culture anything.
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Yes - you might try to get lucky and if your cold chain was good freeze some sample away, but RNA Is the way to goin most field situations.
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But - most likely - screening by culturing is not going to be a sensitive as screening the RNA, if you know what you are doing with the RNA .