Slack / Private Message Drop — page 214

[2020-10-06 16:53:39] [Robert Garry] Logical - It's Trump's charter. Trump is a clown (Joe Biden said so 2X). Ipso fatso [sic] - it's a clown's charter. [2020-10-07 04:56:32] [Robert Garry] More fun and games with the Greek alphabet. [shared file(s): image.png] [2020-10-07 05:01:18] [Robert Garry] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/07/920548399/tracker-key-trump-contacts-who-have-tested-positive-for-the-coronaviru s [2020-10-07 05:02:40] [Robert Garry] It looks like Ronna [Corona} McDaniel may have been the first case - can't make it up, [2020-10-07 05:21:43] [Andrew Rambaut] Oh come on - release the sequences. It would be a great dataset for workshops. [2020-10-07 14:27:26] [Eddie Holmes] Science wrote a piece on that rubella paper. Its pretty vexing is that authors say in the Science commentary - as I also pointed out to the writer but she ignored - that these new viruses are obviously not the direct ancestors of rubella virus and yet they don't say that in the original paper! Indeed, they sort to try to imply in the Nature article that they are. [2020-10-07 14:33:49] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah, just came across that article - surprised to see Science writing it up and I can 100% assure you that they tried to imply that these were direct ancestors - it was in their original submission. In the original submission they also talked about how these viruses would "complicate our eradication efforts for rubella and other diseases". Overselling at its best. I'm totally fine with the paper being published in Nature, but I'm very surprised to say the least. [2020-10-07 14:46:08] [Eddie Holmes] Cheeky buggers. Sort of annoying that I told all this to the Science journalist and she lets the authors of the paper make that point. Anyway. Very lucky to get that into Nature. [2020-10-07 14:50:55] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah, very lucky. Good people though, so good for them. I'm surprised @Robert Garry hasn't chimed in - the first author did a lot of stuff in Sierra Leone as part of our program (I spent several week with him there), but I can't remember if he was actually at Tulane or not. Something makes me believe probably yes - he was a bit of a weirdo... :wink: [2020-10-07 15:03:23] [Robert Garry] Not at Tulane AFAIK - I recognize the name and face but we did not interact that much. All I can say about the rubi-like viruses is that at least they didn't try to sell them as human pathogens like Bas-Congo virus. That being said we're about to put something up on virological - might run it by here first - showing serorxty to SARS-CoV-2, N, S and RBD in samples from SL back to 2008. More questions than answers but the serorxty is definitely there - diff labs, diff proteins, different assays - tried to falsify it but failed. [2020-10-07 16:13:27]