Slack / Private Message Drop — page 5

SLACK_000219 AS for the Wash Post - Good job Eddie and Kristian - watched the video - will likely keep the lab escape hypothesis alive for longer - 50K [Kristian Andersen] There's a video? [Robert Garry] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/01/was-new-coronavirus-accidentally-released-wuhan-lab-its-dou btful/ [Robert Garry] Yes [Robert Garry] Rasmussan, Daszak several others I don't recognize. [Eddie Holmes] I've never emailed the Washington Post. That must come from an email that I sent to my press officer who then forwarded to them. I need to correct the I story. Nonsense. [Kristian Andersen] I don't remember talking to these journalists either... [Kristian Andersen] The video is pretty fucking terrible. Ending on "how unusual/remarkable is it that there's a lab working on bat coronaviruses exactly where an outbreak of a coronavirus started"? How dumb are people exactly? Good old correlation, not causation. May I suggest an alternative explanation - they're studying bat coronaviruses BECAUSE THERE ARE A LOT OF BAT CORONAVIRUSES AROUND THERE. Which, I don't know, in combination with wet markets and the like might increase the risk of an outbreak from a bat coronaviruses. We need an actual razor in Occam's razor. [Eddie Holmes] Yes, it's shite. That Baric paper is also really weird. Reads to me that are pissed off that they were not involved in our paper and so want to get in on the act. [Kristian Andersen] Now I need to ready Ralph's paper too... [Eddie Holmes] What proportion of your day is spent dealing with bollocks? Scientific bollocks I should add. [Kristian Andersen] Time spent on bollocks = 80%, of which scientific bollocks = 40%, bollock bollocks = 20%, and bollocks scientists = 20%