---
type: Conversation
title: Private channel session 608
description: "slack conversation, 14 messages, 2020-11-24."
tags:
  - conversation
  - slack
medium: slack
message_count: 14
started_at: "2020-11-24T17:22:09"
ended_at: "2020-11-24T19:09:05"
duration_seconds: 6416
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 14 messages spanning 1h 46m.

# Metadata

- **Started:** 2020-11-24T17:22:09
- **Ended:** 2020-11-24T19:09:05
- **Duration:** 1h 46m
- **Participants:** 2
- **Source:** [slack_pm](/sources/slack-pm.md)
- **Pages:** 278-279

# 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

**[2020-11-24T17:22:09] Kristian G. Andersen:** I'm not quite sure what that SCMP article is about, but hey... One thing though - "In Tuesday's update, Shi said she and her team collected 13 serum samples from four miners who came down with a mystery respiratory disease after clearing bat faeces in a copper mine in Yunnan province inApril 2012."They didn't find SARS-CoV-2 in these samples, but they never would even if they were infected by SARS-CoV-2 -you can't find the virus in the blood/serum/plasma, so this doesn't really tell us much....

**[2020-11-24T17:44:51] Kristian G. Andersen:** @Andrew Rambaut - how the fuck did this get through? https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.17.386714v1

**[2020-11-24T18:03:25] Edward C. Holmes:** The clock is ticking for the first set of shit headlines...

**[2020-11-24T18:05:13] Kristian G. Andersen:** This one is a little too ridiculous (but look - Harvard!), so I'm not sure it'll get picked up. We'll just point to Andrew's take-down - thanks Andrew!

**[2020-11-24T18:06:22] Edward C. Holmes:** Just seen Andrew's rebuttal. Great!! The journos will love this - Harvard death mutations.

**[2020-11-24T18:07:07] Edward C. Holmes:** I look forward to the first 'how did this shit get through bioRxiv?' comment.

**[2020-11-24T18:21:36] Kristian G. Andersen:** Harvard just needs to merge this pile of turds with the "oh look, a lot of cars outside the hospitals" study - the ultimate turd pile.

**[2020-11-24T18:45:18] Edward C. Holmes:** Good point. How was the traffic outside that hospital in Brazil?

**[2020-11-24T18:47:21] Kristian G. Andersen:** At a standstill - turns out all the drivers died.

**[2020-11-24T18:48:07] Kristian G. Andersen:** I still can't believe these idiots went ahead and wrote a full paper - such a giant waste of time.

**[2020-11-24T18:54:14] Kristian G. Andersen:** I found another beautiful study from them: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.22.165936v1.full I'm glad to see their new-found interest in virus genomes. You sorta just take all the stuff you learned in Human Genetics 101 and apply it - because, why waste time building a tree or whatever?

**[2020-11-24T18:59:06] Edward C. Holmes:** Who is reviewing these? It ain't me.

**[2020-11-24T19:06:27] Kristian G. Andersen:** Not me either... Total junk.

**[2020-11-24T19:09:05] Kristian G. Andersen:** I wonder if this is what NEJM meant when they talked about "Research Parasites"... Maybe they had a point :wink:. Actually, no, they didn't - the issue isn't the data here, it's just shit science. Can't totally shield against that.