Slack / Private Message Drop — page 356

[2021-01-03 19:31:22] [Eddie Holmes] I completely agree. That's why I suggesting saying that we should comment after we've head the whistleblower's comments...could be a very long wait. [2021-01-04 05:08:24] [Robert Garry] Slew of these articles are newly out there. Alina/DRASTIC have found a receptive audience. Now they are whining about not getting enough credit. Eddie is spot on that the Trumpers, Bannon, Fox AND the antiGMO news crowds are going to keep pushing this narrative. I'd say it's about 50-50 in the general public believing that CCP made the virus in the WIV lab. China's own clumsy pushback pours gas on the fire. Time for PO2? Perhaps with a timely perspective on "continuing" evolution. [2021-01-04 05:17:54] [Robert Garry] https://archive.is/SPPee#selection-827.0-827.171 [2021-01-04 05:18:29] [Robert Garry] Frankie and Alina... [2021-01-04 07:10:42] [Kristian Andersen] .... another one - haven't read it. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html [2021-01-04 09:00:23] [Andrew Rambaut] Just sent to Bob and me (plus Christian Drosten, Trevor and Guy Hoelzer). ```Gentlemen, It appears that the mutations in the spike protein that causes PCR failure for that part of the Taqpath assay will be found to have induced a PCR selection bias, and thus contributed to the spread of the virus without increased pathogenicity. Specifically, there will be more false negatives in tests of people with any variant with new variation in the primer target sequences, especially the 8 variants Andrew reported in the spike protein coding region. The reported PCR probe failure in the S gene assures biased transmission of the virus since testing results in self-quarantine. This seems necessarily so given the diagnostic interpretive algorithm in use with Taqpath, the '2 or greater" algorithm, any single probe failure due to mistargeting will increase the probability of a failed PCR test overall given the sum baseline rate of failure of both of the other two probes. See p 104. https://www.fda.gov/media/136112/download It should be straightforward and therefore I propose modeling and simulation to calculate the expected rate of test escape and selection due to mutations in any of the primer sites to distinguish pathogenic variants from those being selected by testing bias. I expect the results will show that test kits will have to be updated to keep up with RNA virus evolution. Free free to and please send any related material or draft analyses for friendly-fire review. I'm also of course interested in any variation associated with severe COVID19 or long-haul COVID19. I encourage working immunogenicity predictions into analyses interpretive of genetic variants as well. We can of course expect evolution away from the vaccine type and from the more immunogenic types, which likely will cause more severe COVID19 as well as evolution away from human aa sequences due to increased risk of pathogenic priming due to autoreactive antibody production. Given these vectors, a path of SARS-CoV-2 evolution might be mapped.