Slack / Private Message Drop — page 360

We still have no viable reliable testing program???``` [2021-01-05 01:07:35] [Andrew Rambaut] The UK uses lots of tests with different targets. No sign of any issues other than the S gene dropout due to 69-70 [2021-01-05 01:08:42] [Andrew Rambaut] And the positive rate has been rising as the S drop-out rate has been rising [2021-01-05 03:39:35] [Robert Garry] "I'd love to be the one breaking _that_ news." I agree with Eddie and Andrew, I think you should be breaking the news, too. We need to report the 12 base insertion in cell culture - need to look to see if it's in or - like the PRRA - out of frame. The cell culture indels have all been deletions around the FCS afaik and Brandon's vero passage did some of those as well. [2021-01-05 03:58:25] [Robert Garry] Oh James - only took two emails to go from "maybe a point" to off the deep end. Simply reveals - yet again - that my idiot-radar is not so good. It's how I ended up with @Covidfaker and "A Lina" in my lab. [2021-01-05 04:11:41] [Robert Garry] Had to go back and reread PO1. "3. Selection during passage" IS actually he third choice. Just sayin'. [2021-01-05 04:29:03] [Robert Garry] [thread - ID: 2021-01-05 04:29:03] And, Baker's article is dangerous not fantastic. Calling for a halt in bat trapping as Baker and Alina have done is really really stupid. We definitely must figure out the range of natural diversity in betacoronaviruses and that is going to have to involve scientists going out and trapping bats. [shared file(s): image.png] [2021-01-05 05:01:22] [Robert Garry] Bloom lab killing it: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.31.425021v1.full.pdf [2021-01-05 07:13:45] [Kristian Andersen] I was waiting for something like this - great stuff. That said, since Jesse has obviously had this data for a while I'm a little surprised he's come out so hard saying that none of the lineage mutations should affect immunity / vaccines and that escape would take years. I wouldn't say his data is very reassuring in that regard. (although I fully agree it isn't like they're not going to work at all - but pretty minimal hits to effectiveness can have big consequences). [2021-01-05 08:19:34] [Robert Garry] Yes - will be important to repeat what Jesse has done with plasma from vaccinees and to put some of the mutations in the RBD in in combination. [2021-01-05 08:33:37] [Robert Garry] BTW the 12 base pair insert in passage 6 appears to be in-frame.