--- type: Conversation title: Private channel session 1523 description: "slack conversation, 27 messages, 2021-06-19." tags: - conversation - slack medium: slack message_count: 27 started_at: "2021-06-19T13:30:54" ended_at: "2021-06-19T16:39:09" duration_seconds: 11295 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 27 messages spanning 3h 8m. # Metadata - **Started:** 2021-06-19T13:30:54 - **Ended:** 2021-06-19T16:39:09 - **Duration:** 3h 8m - **Participants:** 4 - **Source:** [slack_pm](/sources/slack-pm.md) - **Pages:** 947-949 # 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 **[2021-06-19T13:30:54] Robert F. Garry:** @Kristian Andersen let me know if you want to have call later today/tomorrow before Tony/FrancisII - interested inyour thoughts **[2021-06-19T14:08:45] Kristian G. Andersen:** Yeah cutting my trip short for this and will be back tonight. Can we set up a call Sunday am with Andrew too? **[2021-06-19T14:09:41] Kristian G. Andersen:** I haven't looked at any of this yet **[2021-06-19T14:44:49] Robert F. Garry:** "The second explanation, which was proposed in a blog post by Garry (2021) and amplified by a popular podcast (Racaniello _et al._ 2021), is that there were multiple zoonoses from distinct markets, with the Huanan Seafood Market being the source of viruses in clade B, and some other market being the source of viruses that lack the T8782C and C28144T mutations. However, inspection of Fig- ure 4 shows that clade B is connected to viruses lacking T8782C and C28144T by single mutational steps via other human iso- lates, so this explanation requires not only positing two markets with two progenitors differing by just two mutations, but also the exceedingly improbableevolution of one of these… **[2021-06-19T14:45:25] Edward C. Holmes:** Is this something or nothing? I can't quite get my head around it. **[2021-06-19T14:49:05] Robert F. Garry:** I think JB main point is they removed some SRA data re early cases - the data IMO - and maybe I can be shown the error of my ways - adds basically zero. It allows JB to complain about lack of transparency I guess. **[2021-06-19T14:49:14] Andrew Rambaut:** We already discussed this - the 'intermediates' are dubious and from February **[2021-06-19T14:52:17] Edward C. Holmes:** It's a weird sort of stream of consciousness paper. Very naughty to include an email from the unrelated pangolin study in there. Is that even legal? **[2021-06-19T14:56:11] Robert F. Garry:** The WA1 tree - fig 4 and 6 looks fine to me - but me and trees so i really dunno. However the midle guangdong tree looks like :hankey: and forced just based on where WA1 lands, but again i'm no good here at all. **[2021-06-19T14:58:30] Edward C. Holmes:** The February part seems important.... **[2021-06-19T15:02:15] Robert F. Garry:** Unrelated pangolin study - must be either from Alina or a present to Alina. Seriously - not legal - invasion of privacy -unless he got permission somehow from all parties. **[2021-06-19T15:03:08] Edward C. Holmes:** Yes, I agree. Can't believe he is doing this. **[2021-06-19T15:31:05] Andrew Rambaut:** Where did this paper come from? Is it public? **[2021-06-19T15:33:53] Robert F. Garry:** WA1 "The patient is a man in his 30s who lives alone. He had been traveling solo since November in Wuhan, China,a city of 11 million where the outbreak appears to have originated, health officials said. He had no symptoms on hisflight or when he arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Jan. 15, but he contacted doctors Jan. 19 whenhe developed a fever and cough, officials said. It's unknown which clinic he visited that day. The man was hospitalized for pneumonia and, on Monday, tested positive for coronavirus." **[2021-06-19T15:37:45] Robert F. Garry:** Apparently according to Francis Collins: "Jesse Bloom has just submitted to BioRxiv (attached)." So not up there yet. @Andrew Rambaut **[2021-06-19T15:39:43] Robert F. Garry:** and this just in from JB to the email chain (foias R' us) By the way, I just wanted to add one last piece of information prior to the meeting that might be relevant. Because the e-mail Steve Sherry found from Wuhan University about the request to delete PRJNA612766mentioned deleting two projects, I pointed my pipeline that is currently scanning for SRA deletions to that range ofSRRs. It appears that the other largest chunk of contiguous deleted accessions of SARS-CoV-2 sequencing is fromSRR11313377 to SRR11313509, which comes immediately after the PRJNA612766 accessions. I suspect that this might be the other sequencing project that Wuhan University requested to delete in their e-mail to… **[2021-06-19T15:56:39] Robert F. Garry:** Is this science? "It therefore seems likely the sequences were deleted to obscure their existence. Particularly in lightof the directive that labs destroy early samples (Pingui 2020) and multiple orders requiring approval of publicationson COVID-19 (China CDC 2020; Kang _et al._ 2020a), this sug- gests a less than wholehearted effort to trace early spread of the epidemic." **[2021-06-19T15:59:12] Edward C. Holmes:** The direction to destroy the samples was from Jan 3rd 2020. It's got nothing to do with covering origins, and all to dowith controlling the message. The pangolin stuff is actually from the USRTK from last year. **[2021-06-19T16:03:51] Robert F. Garry:** "Finally, both plausible putative progenitors require that an early mutation to SARS-CoV-2 was a reversion towards the bat coron- avirus outgroups (either C18060T or C29095T) on a branch that subsequently gave rise to multiple distinct descendants." WAIT is this true - I thought WA1 was T18060 so bat-like. **[2021-06-19T16:10:02] Edward C. Holmes:** Well, Jesse has gone full-on conspiracy. I can well imagine people deleting data because they were shit scared what the state would do to them. And he's right that China want to control the message on origins...they are particularly keen that it is not China. **[2021-06-19T16:13:44] Andrew Rambaut:** What does he think they were trying to cover up? That there was something that was one SNP closer to a bat virus that hadn't even been sequenced by then? **[2021-06-19T16:13:59] Andrew Rambaut:** Unless it was !!! **[2021-06-19T16:18:30] Edward C. Holmes:** Yes, and it would mean that someone did in China did some very detailed analysis very quickly and spotted this themselves. I can't see that they data deletion is specific to what the data actually says. **[2021-06-19T16:22:43] Robert F. Garry:** He's not overthinking this - Chinese scientist deletes sequences - holy shit it's a cover-up - must be a lab leak. **[2021-06-19T16:24:50] Robert F. Garry:** that was the fox news - murdock version coming to a tv screen near you very soon... **[2021-06-19T16:30:38] Edward C. Holmes:** There's also news/rumours about China's top spy defecting to the US in Feb and providing info about a lab leak. I've just heard it on the radio. No idea what this actually means.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/rumours-swirl-chinas-top-spycatcher-has-defected-us/ **[2021-06-19T16:39:09] Robert F. Garry:** If he's wearing a raccoon dog coat, I'm all ears!