Slack / Private Message Drop — page 242

[2020-10-30 15:04:50] [Kristian Andersen] So if those BioSamples were created on, say 12/25, then that's totally what you'd expect - but we're talking two weeks before there was any (official) realization of a novel coronavirus. [2020-10-30 15:05:56] [Eddie Holmes] Yes, I don't get it at all. I'm contacting people now. But 2 weeks also sounds WAY too far in advance! [2020-10-30 15:06:16] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah, definitely - very interesting. [2020-10-30 15:21:23] [Eddie Holmes] Company A is Vision Medicals. I don't believe for a nanosec that BGI knew there was a pandemic virus on Dec. 10th. That time-line makes zero sense with any known timeline, the epidemiological history of the outbreak, nor what was on Chinese social media. Nor would WIV have anything to do with BGI. The best time-line is here and confirmed my colleagues in China: https://apnews.com/article/3c061794970661042b18d5aeaaed9fae [2020-10-30 15:23:20] [Eddie Holmes] The idea that 2-3 weeks before all this it was known at a commercial sequencing company based in a different city seems untenable to me. Nor does it fit the time-line of the first patients seen by the doctors (sorry to include a wikipedia link): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang [2020-10-30 15:24:10] [Eddie Holmes] However, I'm checking with colleagues there now. [2020-10-30 15:33:45] [Kristian Andersen] One explanation is that BGI created these four BioSamples for a different purpose and then backfilled with the SARS2 data when they generated it. But I don't think there's any ambiguity that these were created on 12/10 - only we don't know for what purpose (so could have been for a novel coronavirus, could have been for something else - the metadata describing the BioSample very likely weren't entered until the data were deposited). [2020-10-30 15:35:25] [Kristian Andersen] I would love to see the full submission history for these entries - Andrew, dig a little :wink: [2020-10-30 15:51:58] [Kristian Andersen] Eddie, it's your paper... :wink: https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext I assume this is the same Weijun Chen who's the submitter of the data and is from BGI. [2020-10-30 15:52:25] [Kristian Andersen] He'd know what's up with that early creation date. [2020-10-30 15:54:58] [Kristian Andersen]