Slack / Private Message Drop — page 855

My response to Betsy McKay at WSJ: It's a big deal - in terms of the origins "debate." It's a major arrow taken from the quiver of lab leak proponents and snapped into bits. Bloom, Chan and other Science letter signees have make a major issue that Shi had not released these mine virus sequences. The DRASTIC krewe even more obsessive regarding the mine viruses. The repeat of the claims of a cover-up are likely coming (cue ominious questions: why not release sooner/are the sequences now fake?). Seems to me that Shi herself had enough and put the sequences out there. It shows that WIV was not covering up a mine virus that was closer to SC2. Like RatG13 none of the new viruses could have been used to engineer SC2 (make a chimera) or derive SC2 by other types of "GoF research." The mine viruses are interesting, but not a priority [so many viruses, so little time]. The paper confirms that that even among related sarbecoviruses there is a lot of diversity in spike, particularly [but predictably based on other CoVs] around the S1/S2 junction where SC2 has the FCS. [2021-05-22 06:50:13] [Kristian Andersen] This is good. And worth adding - not only did they not cover up these sequences, they're continuing to try and figure out where these viruses come from and how we can be safer in the future. [2021-05-22 06:54:33] [Kristian Andersen] For the unsurprising DISTRACT take on these sequences, look no further https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1395898890294026243?s=21 [2021-05-22 06:56:49] [Kristian Andersen] "Likes" of that thread includes Sharri Markson... [2021-05-22 07:12:53] [Robert Garry] DRASTIC should be considered part of the Murdock media empire - the really dark part - so is the WSJ - the WSJ news division though including Betsy McKay is relatively isolated and have been pretty balanced on C19. Editorial page - not so much. [2021-05-22 07:51:22] [Robert Garry] https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1395550790228529152 eDim [2021-05-22 08:22:51] [Kristian Andersen] This is exactly right. Nailed it. [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-05-22 at 8.20.50 AM.png] [2021-05-22 08:37:22] [Kristian Andersen] Just read the pangolin CoV paper from Joe Grove again - such a great paper. If you haven't already, make sure you read - so weird. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.22.436468v1 [2021-05-22 14:32:21] [Andrew Rambaut] I heard him talk about it but didn't see the paper. Will read tomorrow. [2021-05-22 17:38:51] [Kristian Andersen]