Slack / Private Message Drop — page 517

All so true Andrew! And, to add that the other goal would be - per @Andrew Rambaut above - to paint the tinfoil hat crowd into a corner. Dismiss with science of the new Cambo, Thai and Japan covs all the nonsense about recombining RaTG13 and pango Covs, passage in cell culture, seemless engineering and get it down to someone had to have had *prior to the outbreak* either SC2 itself or its immediate progenitor with this new SC2-like RBD plus either the QTQNS or NSPAX/-R at the FCS. Yes indeed the target is sensible people, so tone and language important. ` [2021-02-16 07:29:29] [Andrew Rambaut] Sorry about this Bob but I am not too fond of the current structure of the piece - the intro is brief, the results technical and then the lab origins stuff is sprung in the discussion and dominates. The different bits of the discussion are addressing different points made by lab-origins people without making them explicit - i.e., is mainly done as rebuttals. Is there really anything to say on this other than a very close progenitor virus would need to exist in the lab and there are very good reasons to believe it didn't. [2021-02-16 07:36:35] [Andrew Rambaut] This could be a hypothesis by hypothesis rebuttal of the lab-origins (i.e., from the strongest, complete engineering, through modification, through passaging and finally down to just culturing and accidental escape). Or it could be a description of the new genomes and what they mean for natural origins. But at the moment it is not clear to me how the 'results' section actually fits with the 'discussion' section. [2021-02-16 07:50:56] [Robert Garry] I see your point! "Description of the new genomes and what they mean for natural origins" is the better course. Fitting the results with discussion definitely can be improved... [2021-02-16 14:15:21] [Robert Garry] [thread - ID: 2021-02-16 14:15:21] I think this is literally some form of insanity - she wants people to stop doing pathogen research. [shared file(s): image.png] [2021-02-16 14:36:00] [Robert Garry] I've cut out the hypothesis rebuttal parts (or rather moved them to comments). Now more focused on the new genomes and what they mean for natural origins. Will remove the tinfoil hat references if this version is more effective. [2021-02-16 15:01:44] [Robert Garry] https://www.minervanett.no/corona/the-most-logical-explanation-is-that-it-comes-from-a-laboratory/361860 [2021-02-16 15:03:04] [Robert Garry] He's more than 90% confident [maybe that didn't translate well?] [2021-02-16 16:17:16] [Eddie Holmes] [thread - ID: 2021-02-16 14:15:21] @Robert Garry I think she missed a P [2021-02-16 16:19:31] [Eddie Holmes] Thanks for revising the paper Bob. I'll see if I can take another look today tor tomorrow morning. That Norwegian article is mad!