---
type: Conversation
title: Private channel session 1430
description: "slack conversation, 18 messages, 2021-05-24."
tags:
  - conversation
  - slack
medium: slack
message_count: 18
started_at: "2021-05-24T15:28:57"
ended_at: "2021-05-24T15:51:47"
duration_seconds: 1370
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 18 messages spanning 0h 22m.

# Metadata

- **Started:** 2021-05-24T15:28:57
- **Ended:** 2021-05-24T15:51:47
- **Duration:** 0h 22m
- **Participants:** 4
- **Source:** [slack_pm](/sources/slack-pm.md)
- **Pages:** 861-863

# 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

**[2021-05-24T15:28:57] Edward C. Holmes:** https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1396913345815617539?s=20

**[2021-05-24T15:29:05] Edward C. Holmes:** Tony!

**[2021-05-24T15:30:33] Robert F. Garry:** THANKS For clarifying that TF!

**[2021-05-24T15:32:48] Kristian G. Andersen:** I might have been able to do a little convincing yesterday morning to make him a little more confident in that statement - good! His team was pushing on him pretty hard to come out and say that natural emergence is _much_ more likely - I'm glad he did!

**[2021-05-24T15:33:40] Edward C. Holmes:** Huge!

**[2021-05-24T15:34:15] Robert F. Garry:** Agreed!

**[2021-05-24T15:34:20] Kristian G. Andersen:** All of this is so fucking dumb. Glad to see David and Andrew hammering the "it's conspiracy" really hard on Twitter too :wink:

**[2021-05-24T15:35:30] Kristian G. Andersen:** It really is important - the issue isn't about lab leak, it's about that they _must_ have had the virus prior to the pandemic, which (a) is hugely unlikely and (b) there's absolutely zero evidence for - in fact, the evidence quite strongly suggest they didn't!

**[2021-05-24T15:36:14] Edward C. Holmes:** Told the same to Simone at the SCMP

**[2021-05-24T15:37:39] Edward C. Holmes:** Told another journo that if it's not a conspiracy theory it's without doubt a 'theory containing a conspiracy'. I hope they get sarcasm.

**[2021-05-24T15:39:43] Kristian G. Andersen:** We need this particular point to be crystal clear in the letter. Will find some time tonight.

**[2021-05-24T15:43:01] Edward C. Holmes:** I'll take a look as well

**[2021-05-24T15:46:31] Andrew Rambaut:** @Kristian Andersen Yes hopefully the more sensible ones on the BS letter will see what they were actually saying. But I was avoiding saying anything about the evidence fore the zoonosis as that needs a better venue than Twitter.

**[2021-05-24T15:47:08] Andrew Rambaut:** Sorry about this but could you post the link for the letter again?

**[2021-05-24T15:50:39] Kristian G. Andersen:** @Kristian Andersen Relman clearly doesn't like the word - but it's because he doesn't realize what he's alleging. And yes, hopefully this'll help them understand that.

**[2021-05-24T15:51:15] Robert F. Garry:** While I have you all here does anyone have any issues with updating Holmes 2021 as follows: We are updating this post with four additional viruses: RpYN06, PrC31, RaTG15 and RsYN04 (Table 1, yellow highlights). TheseSARSr-CoVs are described in more detail in Zhou et al. (2021), Li et al. (2021) and Guo et al. (2021).```The Spike proteins of RpYN06 and PrC31 share 98.2% identity (99.8% similar) in a 1246 aa overlap. RpYN06 and PrC31 spike are highly similar to Guangdong (GD) pangolin coronavirus in the N-terminus of the protein. RpYN06 and PrC31 have 2 or 3 predicted O-linked glyans near the S1/S2 junction (Indel 8) confirming the highly variable nature of this domain. ```The Spike proteins…

**[2021-05-24T15:51:46] Kristian G. Andersen:** On my phone. Bob, can you please share the link

**[2021-05-24T15:51:47] Robert F. Garry:** https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jmvbeZ1_RqQedPmfNKNs7DA_Z9sySsEWgAgZoVKRSWg/edit