Slack / Private Message Drop — page 212

[2020-10-05 10:29:00] [Robert Garry] Kayleigh McEnany and 2 others in the WH communications office are positive. [2020-10-05 10:35:39] [Kristian Andersen] Many more to come. [2020-10-05 10:51:00] [Robert Garry] Yeah it's really true that most cases are due to these "super-spreader events." Bad terminology but it's true - a case either doesn't spread or spreads to few or there are many cases all linked. [2020-10-05 10:55:52] [Kristian Andersen] While there are certainly SS events, it's still not clear to me if events like these are due to a person being particularly prone to spreading, or whether it's just the event itself (in other words - could any standard patient lead to these events, or does it take something special?). [2020-10-05 10:57:17] [Kristian Andersen] @Eddie Holmes the paper you shared a while back about the ACE2 selection - very interesting and so messed up. Basically, ACE2 in bats and SARS-like CoVs are in a constant evolutionary race swapping AAs frequently. When you combine it with this part (from the paper): "we found that bat SARSr-CoV RBDs showed a higher binding affinity to human ACE2 than to R. sinicus ACE2s but did not display obvious differences among the R. sinicus ACE2s" - well, you'll always have a disaster in the waiting.... [2020-10-05 11:06:40] [Robert Garry] "could any standard patient lead to these events, or does it take something special" It's probably both - put your standard patient in the right situation [like the WH gala or a bar]- they will SS. I also think there are likely special patients that exist that spread especially well and that very high virus load is a major discriminator btwn the standard and special patients. [2020-10-05 12:34:11] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah, no doubt both play a role - but important to know the contribution of each as it's not really clear what drives most SSEs. [2020-10-05 13:50:02] [Eddie Holmes] @Kristian Andersen Do you believe the data that "bat SARSr-CoV RBDs showed a higher binding affinity to human ACE2 than to R. sinicus ACE2s". Seems so counter-intuitive. [2020-10-05 14:19:14] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah, they show that particular point using a couple of different assays, so I think probably true. I agree it's a little counter-intuitive, but probably the binding to hACE2 is generally speaking more optimized for binding to the RBD (so it's inherently a higher affinity binding - no matter the RBD). [2020-10-05 15:05:14] [Eddie Holmes] Thanks for looking into it. Pretty amazing. Emergence here we come. [2020-10-05 15:17:13] [Kristian Andersen]