Slack / Private Message Drop — page 722

[Robert Garry] Maybe even a special genetically-engineered Superdog? That Trump era intel really needs to be released ASAP. [2021-04-21 08:17:35] [Robert Garry] OTOH - it's perhaps not _too_ crazy to think that SC2 could find it's way into and get established in other perhaps high density species. Low hanging fruit - shutting down mink farming seems prudent. [2021-04-21 08:18:39] [Kristian Andersen] Yup [2021-04-21 08:18:42] [Andrew Rambaut] The the thing if you have a new persistent reservoir you should be seeing on going spill over from it. [2021-04-21 08:19:19] [Andrew Rambaut] All B.1.1.7 seems to be neatly derived from the early kent virus [2021-04-21 08:19:29] [Andrew Rambaut] (apart from the recombinants) [2021-04-21 08:20:46] [Andrew Rambaut] However, if DRASTIC is going down this route (that B.1.1.7 was actually constructed) they are just revealing themselves to be the nutters they are to the people who have been taking them seriously. [2021-04-21 08:21:01] [Andrew Rambaut] Let them dig their hole. Give them a spade [2021-04-21 08:38:48] [Kristian Andersen] For the animal epizootic - I agree that we should see violations of tree structure if new mutations kept cropping up and spilling over from an animal reservoir. Thing is though, looking at the mink example from Denmark, the virus was flowing freely between the two hosts, making it impossible to figure out what was mink derived and what was human. We saw convergent evolution between DK and NL mink, so that made us believe mutations fixed in the mink population - so I'm not convinced we can _rule out_ a potential animal reservoir for e.g., B.1.1.7? Clearly, almost all (>99.99%) new B.1.1.7 infections are caused by human-to-human, but can we rule out that there isn't also a persistent non-human reservoir too? Could be small and limited, and of course, the virus would move from humans into that reservoir too. I agree, definitely not as likely as the alternative hypothesis, but this thing keeps surprising me, so I hate ruling things out... [2021-04-21 08:42:22] [Andrew Rambaut] So much convergence and parallel mutations and spike mutational 'bursts' now I think we have to move beyond trying to find a special explanation for B.1.1.7 [2021-04-21 08:43:25] [Kristian Andersen] True.