--- type: Conversation title: Private channel session 396 description: "slack conversation, 17 messages, 2020-09-17." tags: - conversation - slack medium: slack message_count: 17 started_at: "2020-09-17T05:34:19" ended_at: "2020-09-17T09:24:17" duration_seconds: 13798 sources: - { id: slack_pm, resource: /sources/slack-pm.md, title: Slack / Private Message Drop, author: "process:senate-hsgac-release" } generated: { by: randpaul-corpus-pipeline/1.0, at: "2026-08-01T12:42:27Z" } status: stable --- A slack conversation of 17 messages spanning 3h 49m. # Metadata - **Started:** 2020-09-17T05:34:19 - **Ended:** 2020-09-17T09:24:17 - **Duration:** 3h 49m - **Participants:** 3 - **Source:** [slack_pm](/sources/slack-pm.md) - **Pages:** 176-178 # Participants * [Andrew Rambaut](/people/andrew-rambaut.md) * [Edward C. Holmes](/people/edward-c-holmes.md) * [Kristian G. Andersen](/people/kristian-g-andersen.md) * [Robert F. Garry](/people/robert-f-garry.md) # Transcript **[2020-09-17T05:34:19] Robert F. Garry:** The Lancet investigation appears to have been born in the greenroom of MSNBC where Daszak and Sachs have been guests (both in NYC so convenient). It would not surprise me if the Deep Throat team hasn't been lobbying Richard Horton for this as well since the ignorant noncoronavirologists probably left stones unturned and lack credibility. **[2020-09-17T05:44:03] Robert F. Garry:** As for GVP - I noticed that the price tag has drifted to $4B. :exploding_head: K -Good job at CREID with the slide -not lost on the Grand Wizard - The GVP congame and scam is not going to go away easily and all it will do is draw money from long-term processes, like CREID, that will work or at least help. **[2020-09-17T06:08:22] Robert F. Garry:** As for the Fucking weather analogy it's false. In fact the weather analogy fits much more to your Nature response toGVP. What really happens is that you detect "outbreaks" of weather systems first [you can see some of these on the attached map] then you can track and predict where they go and when they go. I just wasted 2 days prepping forSally that for days was said to be heading straight to NOLa and ended up 200 miles to the east - Katrina was goingto Pennsicola, FL as a Tropical Storm - wrong- the predictions are not perfect. [shared file(s): image.png] **[2020-09-17T06:43:47] Andrew Rambaut:** Just had the following email. It seems reasonable to get to the bottom of what is up with RaTG13 (I imagine it was sloppy work under extreme pressure). Obviously RaTG13 isn't the whole story and the nutters' obsession with it ismisplaced (the existence of the pangolins and RmYN02 tell you almost as much). ```Dear Andrew,I was recently contacted by a national fact-checking body, run by Norwegian media outlets. The topic was the conspiracy surrounding an alleged release of sars-cov-2 from a Chinese lab. They pointed me to this so-called Yan-report, detailing how sars-cov-2 could possibly have been generated by functional genetics. The "Yan-report" seems obsessed with RaTG13, and cite a… **[2020-09-17T06:44:43] Andrew Rambaut:** (I just don't know enough about sequencing bioinformatics and genome assembly to look at this). **[2020-09-17T06:57:03] Kristian G. Andersen:** I might take a look at the sequence data - overall, I have no concerns though given that this is how sequencing oflow-coverage genomes often occurs. Patchwork.... **[2020-09-17T07:01:42] Andrew Rambaut:** I guess the question is has there been any 'imputation'? From the above it would seem they can't even get the consensus when they map to the actual consensus? **[2020-09-17T07:03:04] Andrew Rambaut:** It would also matter which bits are low coverage. I would prefer to move on but it would be good to be armed with the knowledge - who knows where this will go next. **[2020-09-17T07:10:39] Kristian G. Andersen:** I suspect the data is scattered across repos **[2020-09-17T08:07:54] Robert F. Garry:** I agree with Andrew that the main point is that our analysis would not have changed much at all without RaTG13. The pangolin CoVs (that Alina seems focused on) and other BtCoVs were sufficient for the Proximal Origins analysis. I do recall a PR that talked of a 99% CoV that unfortunately never came. **[2020-09-17T08:13:32] Andrew Rambaut:** > Update from Vegard: ```Quick update: We were in the end able to obtain a decent assembly of RaTG13. The description of their approachis lacking to say the least, but the genome seems legit enough, and seems extremely unlikely to involve any sort offraud.We'll post a little commenn on virological, as there might be others looking into the same question.``` **[2020-09-17T08:14:59] Kristian G. Andersen:** Hah - I'm glad they're so thorough before bugging other scientists... I'm downloading the raw data now - lemme have a quick look **[2020-09-17T09:05:52] Kristian G. Andersen:** Yeah, no concerns really @Andrew Rambaut [shared file(s): RaTG13.jpg] **[2020-09-17T09:06:11] Kristian G. Andersen:** Very few unresolved bases (a handful) **[2020-09-17T09:09:16] Robert F. Garry:** Good to see - Is there an analysis of the pango data? That seems to be a sticking point as well. **[2020-09-17T09:13:15] Robert F. Garry:** "who knows where this will go next" --- not going away anytime soon - too important for the Presidential election -thanks for the rapid science response to Yan. Tucker/Yan now playing the censorship/victim card since Twittersuspended/flagged their accounts. Reminds me of the Grand Wizard - getting his NIH grant suspended was probably the best thing that ever happened to him. **[2020-09-17T09:24:17] Kristian G. Andersen:** I haven't looked at the pangolin data - I'm not quite sure where the raw data is since I believe it was all uploaded tothe Chinese data portals. Might be good to do an independent review though - just so we have it. @Eddie Holmes -do you know where the relevant raw data live?