Slack / Private Message Drop — page 208

bug! [2020-10-02 15:02:55] [Eddie Holmes] Quite a lot to catch-up on. I don't think we'll get any straight info about Trump's condition. [2020-10-02 15:05:32] [Eddie Holmes] That cleavage site paper is really interesting...a key point is that the polybasic insertion is selected against in Vero cells: that journalist from the NYT (Nicholas Wade) was trying to argue with me that passage in Vero cells was a way that the polybasic insertion could occur...clearly the conspiracy theorists have been discussing this. So, this blows it out the water. [2020-10-02 15:06:26] [Kristian Andersen] Not completely... [2020-10-02 15:07:13] [Eddie Holmes] @Andrew Rambaut I think you could to invite Shi. Coming from you the invite might be accepted: it will deemed to be a friendly audience. [2020-10-02 15:07:42] [Eddie Holmes] Ha, I knew you'd say that! [2020-10-02 15:07:49] [Kristian Andersen] No way the virus would have gained it in Veros, but there's a non-zero chance that it could have gained it upon passage on human primary cells - e.g., human lung cells. The concern here is that we know that type of work was going on at WIV (the EgoHealth stuff), so we certainly can't dismiss it based on this. Hence Bob needs to do the experiment :wink: [2020-10-02 15:08:29] [Eddie Holmes] Agreed. I only meant the Vero cell thing. Somebody must have proposed this. [2020-10-02 15:08:51] [Kristian Andersen] In other words - had they repeated e.g., the experiment previously done with bovine coronavirus, no questions SARS-CoV-2 with the FCS would have been selected very rapidly. [2020-10-02 15:12:11] [Eddie Holmes] By the way, I only gave Wade some generic off-the-record comments. He was suggesting that the observation that all the human viruses are monophyletic was evidence for a lab escape....he's definitely been drinking the Kool-aid. [2020-10-02 15:13:09] [Kristian Andersen] Doesn't surprise me about Wade - really disappointing. But reading his questions I was like "well, I'd have to start with explaining evolution to him first - I ain't got time for that shit". [2020-10-02 15:15:58] [Eddie Holmes] He probably has a hotline to Alina. I'm for the cryptic circulation in humans theory as well, not least because of getting the first cluster of cases most be tiny.