Slack / Private Message Drop — page 31

[2020-05-21 09:10:00] [Robert Garry] What about the retracted snake preprint? [2020-05-21 09:56:31] [Andrew Rambaut] Still says #2 on Altmetric. Need to get on to that Kristian: [2020-05-21 09:57:21] [Kristian Andersen] It's killing me! [2020-05-21 09:57:44] [Andrew Rambaut] Just a mistake I think. Give them a ring. [2020-05-21 09:58:29] [Andrew Rambaut] It is good that apart from the seroprevalence shit show paper, none of these are crazy. [2020-05-21 17:32:29] [Kristian Andersen] I guess I should try to get these guys to write Francis a letter on my behalf too so I can get my god damn West Nile R01 funded. https://twitter.com/StevenSalzberg1/status/1263568031848042496?s=20 [2020-05-22 04:43:40] [Robert Garry] Kristian - your best hope for that West Nile grant is to go on 60 minutes like Daszak. You know they want you. Another strategy might be to have a panic attack, claim you can't catch your breath and force your way onto a COVID ward. The sympathy you'll gather as a leading virologist [you turns out actually are] should push you over the top with NIH. Try to get as many negative COVID tests as you can and failing that just make up that you had a bunch of negative tests thereby further undermining public confidence in the tests but increasing the sympathy factor (poor guy can't even get a positive test). Also let it slip to Laurie Garrett that you are also an Ebola and Lassa (maybe Sabia too for good measure) survivor. I'm pretty sure this will work. [2020-05-22 04:48:05] [Robert Garry] Oh yeah and if you follow either of these strategies - esp the Fair one - I think the West Nile grant AND _*50K*_ will pretty much be a lock! [2020-05-22 06:37:05] [Robert Garry] So damn many invites to review papers. This might be one I take a few minutes on in "honor" of Mikovits. Here's part of the title: "a new case of XMLV (Bxv1) contamination." And speaking of cats - a brief excerpt of the abstract states that the XMLV is "located in the second intron of the pseudouridylate synthase 1 (PUS1) gene." Quite a coincidence and who even knew such a gene existed? [2020-05-22 07:26:02] [Andrew Rambaut] Should I reply? I am so tired of this shit. ```John Sudworth > Re: hello from the BBC I received your automated reply... and of course totally understand how busy you are. But I wonder if you'd have time at least to cast your eye over this very brief set of notes (responding to a number of points in the Nature Medicine paper) that I have received from a molecular biologist contact of mine, who has long experience in vaccine development and gain of function research (his comments are in blue):