Slack / Private Message Drop — page 728

[Andrew Rambaut] Also the Large Bat Collider [2021-04-23 03:03:36] [Eddie Holmes] Oh, forgot the bat collider. The journo is finding that this whole wildlife industry is run by some very dodgy people "The pangolins often end up at these places then are "transferred" out to "licensed breeders" who often really have no reason to have pangolins, at least in Guangxi and one other provincial rescue center I know that's been looked into by NGOs here. I keep coming up with potentially problematic people in the layers around this park/wildlife zoo/rescue center. For example, the VP of the Forestry University in Hubei, who is also the legal rep for the whole park, was given a party warning in September 2019 over a large scale misuse of subsidies. The head of the center himself who is also at that same university may have been an investor in a wildlife farm in Yunnan, his name shows up in the records, but need to make sure it's the exact same person." [2021-04-23 05:38:59] [Robert Garry] Really important stuff here Eddie! Important question: why isn't Linfa's ACE2 blockade of binding [ACE2BOB] assay not be deployed in the animals? Serology much better than NAT/NGS - which obviously only detect virus during the infection period - to find a reservoir species. [2021-04-23 16:46:06] [Eddie Holmes] Totally agree that this assay - and things like VirScan - are the way to go, but Linfa is shutout of the Chinese system. He's looking for samples but these are coming from other countries in SE Asia. This is the key problem: there are great assays available, but there's no evidence they are actually using them. It's very unclear what they are actually doing in China. [2021-04-23 16:46:28] [Eddie Holmes] One more from the jounro: "Think I previously mentioned this Enshi area out in Western Hubei where there were at least 290 wildlife farming operations and 450,000 animals, right? It was one of the earliest places I saw that wildlife farms were shut down when I was monitoring all that last January into February. Appears there were people out there selling live pangolin in 2018 and were busted, but only got suspended sentences and minimal fines ranging from $500 USD and below. https://www.sohu.com/a/332872438_695387 Would need to Google translate it. Really hate these Chinese media reports on criminal cases since they never publish full names, so hard to backtrack to specific individuals. It appears that what was seized in Lichuan, Enshi in 2019 was taken to Wuhan in an armoured vehicle on Mar. 1, 2020, for investigation into the outbreak, but that's all I've found on that: http://lyj.hubei.gov.cn/bmdt/dfly/202003/t20200306_2174072.shtml It was taken to the provincial public security department though, and not apparently to any scientific investigation, at least on the surface of the story linked above. There's a huge 60km cave system out that way, probably bigger if it hasn't been fully explored. Bats carrying coronavirus were more common in Hubei than assumed according to a dissertation paper of a student of Shi Zhengli's that I've seen. They only were able to test bats for that paper in one part of Hubei, pretty close to Wuhan." [2021-04-24 05:32:52] [Robert Garry] Yes indeed - VirScan data would be valuable too. We're seeing high levels of exposure to sarbeco and merbecovirus in Sierra Leoneans by serology (including neutralization)- not sure where this will lead us. Your journo is on to something for sure - Daszak said wildlife farms were $70 billion industry and I believe him - equivalent to the American cattle industry. It would surprise me if wildlife trade of that magnitude just got wiped out in one fell swoop. Doesn't seem like they actually stopped selling civets after SARS1, but I dunno. Lab leak idiots pushing their nonsense is total BS. DRASTIC actually should be DISTRACT, because that is precisely what they are doing. We need a worldwide investigation of wildlife trade and wild coronaviruses, not some bs "forensic" investigation of WIV. [2021-04-24 08:12:38] [Robert Garry]