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Slack / Private Message Drop, p.728 [SLACK_000942] · slack_pm:msg:07632

Date: 2021-04-23 16:46
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Kristian G. Andersen, Robert F. Garry, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Edward C. Holmes

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Totally agree that this assay - and things like VirScan - are the way to go, but Linfa is shutout of the Chinese system. He's looking for samples but these are coming from other countries in SE Asia. This is the key problem: there are great assays available, but there's no evidence they are actually using them. It's very unclear what they are actually doing in China.

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2021-04-23 16:46 Edward C. Holmes

Totally agree that this assay - and things like VirScan - are the way to go, but Linfa is shutout of the Chinese system. He's looking for samples but these are coming from other countries in SE Asia. This is the key problem: there are great assays available, but there's no evidence they are actually using them. It's very unclear what they are actually doing in China.
2021-04-23 16:46 Edward C. Holmes open

One more from the jounro: "Think I previously mentioned this Enshi area out in Western Hubei where there were atleast 290 wildlife farming operations and 450,000 animals, right? It was one of the earliest places I saw that wildlife farms were shut down when I was monitoring all that last January into February. Appears there were people out there selling live pangolin in 2018 and were busted, but only got suspended sentences and minimal fines rangingfrom $500 USD and below. https://www.sohu.com/a/332872438_695387 Would need to Google translate it. Really hate these Chinese media reports on criminal cases since they never publish full names, so hard to backtrack tospecific individuals. It appears that what was seized in Lichuan, Enshi in 2019 was taken to Wuhan in an armouredvehicle on Mar. 1, 2020, for investigation into the outbreak, but that's all I've found onthat: http://lyj.hubei.gov.cn/bmdt/dfly/202003/t20200306_2174072.shtml It was taken to the provincial public security department though, and not apparently to any scientific investigation, at least on the surface of the story linked above. There's a huge 60km cave system out that way, probably bigger if it hasn't been fully explored. Bats carrying coronavirus were more common in Hubei than assumed according to a dissertation paper of a student of ShiZhengli's that I've seen. They only were able to test bats for that paper in one part of Hubei, pretty close to Wuhan."

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