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Slack / Private Message Drop, p.855 [SLACK_001069] · slack_pm:msg:08892

Date: 2021-05-22 07:12
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Kristian G. Andersen, Edward C. Holmes, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Robert F. Garry

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

DRASTIC should be considered part of the Murdock media empire - the really dark part - so is the WSJ - the WSJ news division though including Betsy McKay is relatively isolated and have been pretty balanced on C19. Editorial page - not so much.

In context

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2021-05-22 06:39 Robert F. Garry open

My response to Betsy McKay at WSJ: It's a big deal - in terms of the origins "debate." It's a major arrow taken from the quiver of lab leak proponents and snapped into bits. Bloom, Chan and other Science letter signees have make a major issue that Shi had not released these mine virus sequences. The DRASTIC krewe even more obsessive regarding the mine viruses. The repeat of the claims of acover-up are likely coming (cue ominious questions: why not release sooner/are the sequences now fake?). Seems to me that Shi herself had enough and put the sequences out there.It shows that WIV was not covering up a mine virus that was closer to SC2. Like RatG13 none of the new viruses could have been used to engineer SC2 (make a chimera) or derive SC2 by other types of "GoF research." The mine viruses are interesting, but not a priority [so many viruses, so little time]. The paper confirms that that even among related sarbecoviruses there is a lot of diversity in spike, particularly [butpredictably based on other CoVs] around the S1/S2 junction where SC2 has the FCS.
2021-05-22 06:50 Kristian G. Andersen open

This is good. And worth adding - not only did they not cover up these sequences, they're continuing to try and figure out where these viruses come from and how we can be safer in the future.
2021-05-22 06:54 Kristian G. Andersen open

For the unsurprising DISTRACT take on these sequences, look no further https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1395898890294026243?s=21
2021-05-22 06:56 Kristian G. Andersen open

"Likes" of that thread includes Sharri Markson...
2021-05-22 07:12 Robert F. Garry

DRASTIC should be considered part of the Murdock media empire - the really dark part - so is the WSJ - the WSJ news division though including Betsy McKay is relatively isolated and have been pretty balanced on C19. Editorial page - not so much.
2021-05-22 07:51 Robert F. Garry open

https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1395550790228529152 eDim
2021-05-22 08:22 Kristian G. Andersen open

This is exactly right. Nailed it. [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 8.20.50 AM.png]
2021-05-22 08:37 Kristian G. Andersen open

Just read the pangolin CoV paper from Joe Grove again - such a great paper. If you haven't already, make sure you read - so weird.https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.22.436468v1

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