Slack / Private Message Drop — page 76

Africa is also kicking off. [2020-06-12 15:59:24] [Kristian Andersen] > climatic conditions play a secondary role when the population is completely susceptible Maybe. This has been my thinking as well, but I'm not convinced. *Clearly* seasonality is incapable of halting transmission, but that's not the same as having no effect. What my concern for e.g., the US is that the question isn't whether "summer will slow down (or stop) transmission", but rather whether "we should expect the fall to be even worse". It's subtle - but I think it's critical that we don't assume that weather has no effect because it didn't stop (or even slow down - although I'm not convinced it hasn't) the virus. Since Australia and NZ will head into winter with extremely limited transmission and seemingly good programs in place, I'm less concerned. However, in a place like the US, the situation could turn from severe to catastrophic. [2020-06-12 16:03:01] [Eddie Holmes] It would be much better if the virus were seasonal...that would make planning much easier. I think that it will likely become a seasonal endemic virus but thay may take a little time. Obviously, the public health authorities need to be vigilant throughout. [2020-06-12 16:04:14] [Eddie Holmes] P.S. I didn't say it has no effect, but rather the huge number of susceptible hosts is more important at the moment. [2020-06-12 16:05:21] [Kristian Andersen] Yup, agreed - 1% immunity and there's a pretty long way to go... [2020-06-12 16:05:45] [Kristian Andersen] (to herd immunity - but also to when we might actually see seasonal forcing) [2020-06-12 16:05:45] [Eddie Holmes] And globally the pandemic is getting worse. [2020-06-12 16:06:00] [Kristian Andersen] Absolutely. [2020-06-13 02:43:37] [Eddie Holmes] I honestly can't take much more of this. It will be the death of me. A pangolin is the obvious animal you'd have in the lab. [2020-06-13 02:47:43] [Eddie Holmes] By the way, I think it might be Pain-Hobson, although it sounds like it he has other people as well. [2020-06-13 03:26:26] [Eddie Holmes] We have two choices: just ignore it or make a group response. I vote for the former, because I am so tired of all this, although it is deeply irritating that we raised all these concerns ourselves months ago and the tone of the email is that we are guilty of something, or trying to cover up. Also, many of the points are stupid/wrong: (i) why anyone would have a pangolin virus in the lab is beyond me and obviously idiotic. That Viruses paper on the pangolin virus, which does not even describe the sequence, was published online in Oct. 24th 2019. It's obviously not credible to have read this, got the pangolins and the viruses and done the leaky experiments in this timeline; (ii) the WIV is not