Slack / Private Message Drop — page 489

the virus adapted to its new host, the latter did not. This implies that the virus causing Covid-19 was already well adapted to infecting human beings, a point that was also suggested by the World Health Organization in its global study on the origins of Covid-19, published in November. There are three possible explanations for this. The first is that the virus had circulated, undetected, in people for months. The second is that the virus was already highly adept at human-to-human transmission, even while it was still in bats or other animals. The third is that it had become adapted in human cells, or humanised animals, in a laboratory." [2021-02-06 04:11:57] [Robert Garry] shared file(s): Did the Covid-19 virus really escape from a Wuhan lab_.pdf [2021-02-06 04:13:46] [Robert Garry] shared file(s): Did the Covid-19 virus really escape from a Wuhan lab_.pdf [2021-02-06 04:15:46] [Robert Garry] Alina/Ridley's grand expose. She's still pushing her flawed "it had become adapted in human cells, or humanised animals, in a laboratory." [2021-02-06 04:28:27] [Robert Garry] In a significant change from a year ago, a growing number of top experts - including (ordered alphabetically by last name) Drs Francois Balloux, Ralph S Baric, Trevor Bedford, Jesse Bloom, Bruno Canard, Etienne Decroly, Richard H Ebright, Michael B Eisen, Gareth Jones, Filippa Lentzos, Michael Z Lin, Marc Lipsitch, Stuart A Newman, Rasmus Nielsen, Megan J Palmer, Nikolai Petrovsky, Angela Rasmussen and David A Relman - have stated publicly (several in early 2020) that a lab leak remains a plausible scientific hypothesis to be investigated, regardless of how likely or unlikely. [2021-02-06 04:29:21] [Robert Garry] We informed and obtained consent from each expert for their inclusion in this list. [2021-02-06 04:33:49] [Robert Garry] ALSO @Eddie Holmes did you interact with Frontline/BBC producer Dan Edge? Clearly also at the top of the game. [2021-02-06 06:20:53] [Robert Garry] Given that's Alina has made herself a public figure, I see no downside whatsoever to hitting back at her hard. A follow-up email to the new Broad Director surely can't hurt. before - I think Eric was just being Eric - plus he didn't want to create any waves while he was making his career change. Of course, I also think it's time overdue for PO2. I'm pretty sure that we could properly refute the "quote" science of lab origins. [2021-02-06 07:25:21] [Andrew Rambaut] The question is how much we want to directly enter the fray? I was quite happy with just talking about the natural origins based on the available bat and pangolin sequences but obviously that doesn't address these arguments. If we want to go full on to attack these ideas I think we have: 1. You can't go from RaTG13 to SARS-CoV-2 by passaging. Require the induction of 1200 mutations, about half of which are reversions back to the common ancestor. Even if you did it, that would be a shit load of passages so would be unfeasible in animals. And passaging SC2 in cells causes all sorts of stuff to happen like loss of FCS (although perhaps that is just some cells). 2. You can't use modern molecular techniques to create this virus 'de novo' because you have no idea what mutations you would put in. You still need a starting virus that is almost identical to SC2 and just introduce a few things (i.e. FSC and the odd ACE2 contact residues). And you would introduce the perfect cleavage site and the