Slack / Private Message Drop — page 281

[Robert Garry] Yes - the ringer was the furin cleavage site which threw everyone off since on first glance it appears so striking. But on the deeper dive there is no way that the FCS is anything but a product of nature. I'm starting to think that a PO2 could be very useful - lot's of pieces to compile actually - no confidence whatsoever that the WHO or Lancet investigations will add much {maybe the opposite]. [2020-11-26 20:29:27] [Eddie Holmes] Yes, I'm also swinging toward a PO2 sooner rather than later. [2020-11-27 07:47:42] [Robert Garry] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.12567.pdf "The article "The proximal origin of Sars-coV-2" (Andersen et al. 2020) is recurrently put forward as a proof for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. However, their reasoning does not rely on an actual positive proof of the zoonotic origin. Indeed, as discussed above, the divergence between RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 dates from several decades and we still don't know any suitable candidates for proximal animal hosts and viral strains. Rather, the rationale of this article consists in opposing two mutually exclusive options, which are implicitly considered as exhaustive: either a "natural proximal origin" (i.e. a recent zoonosis), or a virus intentionally designed on the basis of prior knowledge, and constructed by reverse engineering (design hypothesis)." I'm losing track of the article that seek to discredit PO1. This one is particularly disingenuous. We definitely did not set up this dichotomy. [2020-11-27 08:18:40] [Kristian Andersen] Sharing this in case there's any interest/relevance. I obviously have nothing to add... [shared file(s): Re: Wuhan market floorplan] [2020-11-27 08:51:32] [Andrew Rambaut] I just had an interesting phone call from the WHO (Mark Perkin's group). Apparently with the upcoming 'investigation' into the virus origins, the Chinese are pushing the narrative that the virus started in Italy and then spread to Wuhan. Apparently it is based on some phylogenetics (presumably the shit rooting using RaTG13). I told them this was categorically a very unparsimonious explanation of the data because it would need to be an ancestral virus to Wuhan that was then not seen in Italy subsequently. And that we see the sequence of mutations appearing as the virus spreads. [2020-11-27 08:52:24] [Andrew Rambaut] Anyway - Mark and group were quite happy with the explanation I gave I think. [2020-11-27 08:59:36] [Kristian Andersen] Oh boy - if they start pushing crazy theories like that as an official narrative, then they'll lose credibility immediately. I think there's little reason to believe this virus did not come from somewhere in China - sure, could have been neighboring countries, but Europe? No. Yes, I know they got a few hits for the virus in earlier samples from Italy, but I don't buy it. The rooting IS funky though... I don't think it's unreasonable that we might have had two early emergence events, one of which got massively amplified in Wuhan via early super spreading? I don't think the emergence was in Wuhan - probably somewhere else with large-scale animal farming and bats around. [2020-11-27 09:03:36] [Kristian Andersen] https://twitter.com/kakape/status/1332369284186726402?s=20 [2020-11-27 10:35:57] [Andrew Rambaut]