Slack / Private Message Drop — page 868

I'm now getting emails from the FBI. This could get interesting... Is everybody else being absolutely bombarded at the moment to respond about our conclusions from last year? It might be worth drafting something from the entire group - I'll work on it and have our comms folks take a look at it. [2021-05-25 12:46:55] [Robert Garry] Newsweek [2021-05-25 13:02:04] [Kristian Andersen] Same. The Epoch times too. BBC with a similar request - and just now NYTimes (their angle seems different). I just emailed our comms office - I'll share what they draft. The issue is that if we don't respond, they'll write whatever the fuck they want. [2021-05-25 13:03:10] [Robert Garry] PO1 holds up extremely well! [2021-05-25 13:05:47] [Robert Garry] Absolutely - The Proximal Origins papers has stood up very well since it was written, peer-reviewed and published. The only change since we wrote our manuscript on the Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2 is that I now consider any of the lab leak hypotheses to be extremely unlikely. There is currently no scientific (or other ) evidence for a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2. The intelligence "declassified" at the end of the Trump Administration suggesting that 3 WIV workers were ill {with something] is disputed by WIV. There is no evidence that one of them was "patient zero." As reported by the WHO team they were negative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. In contrast, there is significant scientific evidence pointing to a natural [zoonotic] origin for SARS-CoV-2. Unfortunately, the authors of recent letters in support of the Lab Leak hypotheses either ignore and/or misrepresent this data. Our Nature Medicine article directly addressed the notion that that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered and/or somehow pre-adapted to humans. We wrote, "However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone." This remains true today. There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 or an immediate progenitor virus existed in any laboratory before the pandemic. The viruses from the Yunnan mine including RaTG13 are not close enough to SARS-CoV-2 to have served as a backbone (recently described in as preprint from WIV and discussed here: https://virological.org/t/spikeprotein-sequences-of-cambodian-thai-and-japanese-bat-sarbecoviruses-provide-insights-into-the-natural-evolutionof-the-receptor-binding-domain-and-s1-s2-cleavage-site/622/2). No virus close enough to SARS-CoV-2 has yet been described in any lab. For such a virus to have served as the backbone for SARS-CoV-2 in lab experimentation it would need to be 99% similar to SARS-Cov-2. If you believe that SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor was in WIV and being actively worked on then you are supposing a major cover up and complex conspiracy. The idea that infection of humans is a unique barrier overcome in the in the lab is incorrect. SARS-CoV-2 has undergone continuous significant adaptation to humans over the course of the pandemic (the variants of concern). It's also not specially adapted (in the lab or otherwise) to replicate in humas. SARS-CoV-2 replicates in and transmits among numerous animal species, including mink, cats, great apes, dogs, ferrets, etc which is precisely the characteristic you'd expect of a successful pathogen emerging from nature. ```The fact that the pandemic began in Wuhan is likely a coincidence. Wuhan is a major hub of travel and commerce. It contains numerous live animal markets supplied by farms throughout China, including where the closest viruses to SARS-CoV-2 have been found.