Slack / Private Message Drop — page 90

I guess Bette's paper is landing tomorrow in Cell...? @Andrew Rambaut - any new insights on Doug vs Dougless from the UK cohort? [2020-06-29 15:36:51] [Andrew Rambaut] Yeah. We are just writing it up. We get a marginal signal for higher growth rate in Doug lineages over Dougless but it is a struggle. It is really not clear there is much in it (in terms of transmissibility). [2020-06-29 15:42:10] [Kristian Andersen] Okay, thanks. So it might be true that G _may_ be marginally more transmissible than D but that there is not a major effect? Would make sense given some of the hypotheses about how this mutation increases infectivity. [2020-06-29 15:48:10] [Andrew Rambaut] How do you know Bette's paper is coming out? [2020-06-29 15:48:52] [Kristian Andersen] Jim + Ben from NYT asked me over the weekend - I think Marc may be commenting on it (I didn't have time to read it...). [2020-06-29 17:22:22] [Eddie Holmes] I reviewed the revision of Bette's paper for Cell: Cell were clearly desperate for it. The phylogenetics/population analysis was still shit and I told them to redo all that, but I bet they didn't. [2020-06-30 05:06:51] [Robert Garry] Has anyone looked at pH? The D in that location between the monomers of the trimer likely involves entry. Ironically chloroquine - to the extent it does have antiviral activity - raises endosomal/lysosomal pH. Lots of hydroxychloroquine was poured into COVID patients. Just throwing this out - if anything HCQ made things worse in some patients. [2020-06-30 06:17:51] [Andrew Rambaut] The paper that suggested HCQ was killing people turned out to be a complete fraud and was retracted. WHO have resumed HCQ trials but I assume there is no great effect. [2020-06-30 07:13:13] [Robert Garry] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine/global-covid-19-prevention-trial-of-hydrox ychloroquine-to-resume-idUSKBN2410SW Agreed, but HCQ still being tested for "prevention." [2020-06-30 07:14:09] [Robert Garry] And WHO is going to China to investigate the origins [2020-06-30 07:14:12] [Robert Garry] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-origins/who-sending-team-to-china-to-investigate-origins -of-coronavirus-idUSKBN2402BH [2020-06-30 07:16:57] [Andrew Rambaut] Ha. 'Look, here is our lab. As you can see - no bat viruses'.