Slack / Private Message Drop — page 754

First time I heard the PBS interview with Relman - did he actually _read_ the report? [2021-05-05 15:51:37] [Eddie Holmes] He clearly never looked at the Annexes. [2021-05-05 15:52:58] [Kristian Andersen] Nope. If people want to disagree with the conclusions, data, or methodology, fine - but to say that there's "no data" very clearly shows that somebody didn't actually look at the report. It's flat out false. [2021-05-05 16:28:37] [Robert Garry] It is a lie. It's meant to distract. It's also easier than arguing the science. [2021-05-05 22:18:23] [Eddie Holmes] From Daszak today: [2021-05-05 22:18:35] [Eddie Holmes] shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-05-06 at 3.17.43 pm.png [2021-05-06 04:58:10] [Robert Garry] Dazsak is right. The journalists are falling for the internet sleuths/maligned post-doc bullshit. More like lies to power but the effect is the same. [2021-05-06 05:19:20] [Robert Garry] It might be worth putting in either a counter letter or perhaps better a technical comment in response to Relman and Bloom. [2021-05-06 05:19:29] [Robert Garry] *Technical Comments* (up to 1000 words, 2 figures or tables, 15 references, and no Supplementary Materials), are published online and critique the core conclusions and/or methodology of research published in *Science* within the previous 3 months. [2021-05-06 05:42:38] [Robert Garry] "When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus," said David Baltimore, an eminent virologist and former president of the California Institute of Technology, often known as CalTech. "These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2," he said. (1) This is a quote added to Wade's piece in The Bulletin. [2021-05-06 05:44:36] [Andrew Rambaut] And the WIV has recently sent a firmware update to give it 618R using 5G mobile phones [2021-05-06 07:02:47] [Kristian Andersen] Peter emailed me yesterday as well - I'll talk to Eben today. He seems pretty desperate.... We all picked up on that FCS, Baltimore - but then we dug a little deeper... Those codons - if they were so unusual don't you think they would have reverted by now?