Tony's Diary Package — page 767

New Daily Confirmed COVID-19 Cases in the U.S. =] ite) 7TM [=] [=] 7" TM~ ra - = oS uhh 1.2 Sta Sit GEE TUL Gi mzyg Trg rEg uo Tels refs itis Otis etre Cin Fal Ere ZEyE STE 2020/2021 00,000/595,300 ministers about the possibility that the virus could have been constructed an escape from the laboratory. He did this to indicate that I was not hiding anything because I already knew that this was a possibility and so I didn't change my mind currently by saying that a lab leak is a possibility since I was talking about it openly back then. As it turns out, he was a little bit mixed up because on January 31st, 2020 I received a call from Jeremy Farrar who conferenced in Christian Andersen to tell me that Ed Holmes and Christian had seen a copy of the sequence of the virus and felt that there was a possibility that because of the unusual furin cleavage site that this could possibly have been a constructed virus. as indicated in my notes of January 31st and February 1st , 2020, since I am not an evolutionary biologist I called together by phone a group knowledgeable scientist together with Francis Collins and a few other people to discuss this. After a considerable amount of discussion about half of the people felt that this was possibly a constructed virus and the other half were convinced that this was a natural occurrence. A few weeks later Christian Andersen got together with Bob Garry and Andrew Rambaut to examine this more carefully and they came to the conclusion that they were convinced that this. was a natural occurrence and a jump from the animal reservoir. They published their data in a preprint server in February followed by a nature paper in March of 2020 . That is the reason why it appears that a I briefed people which I did not . I was briefed by them . Scott had said that I had briefed a group of international health people he seemed to have gotten some of the story wrong , but overall he was correct. Cases continue to come down: June 8, 2021 - Global - 173,3000,000/3,700,000; USA - 33,200,000/595,300