Jan 31: Looks Engineered

From: Kristian G. Andersen 

Sent : Friday, January 31, 2020 10:32 PM

To: Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID)

Cc: Jeremy Farrar

Subject : Re: FW: Science: Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak 's origins (Jon Cohen article - conspiracy theorist template)

Hi Tony,

Thanks for sharing. Yes, I saw this earlier today and both Eddie and myself are actually quoted in it . It's a great article, but the problem is that our phylogenetic analyses aren't able to answer whether the sequences are unusual at individual residues, except if they are completely off. On a phylogenetic tree the virus looks totally normal and the close clustering with bats suggest that bats serve as the reservoir .

The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered. (Andersen’s brackets)

We have a good team lined up to look very critically at this, so we should know much more at the end of the weekend . I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie (Holmes), Bob (Garry), Mike (Ferguson) (Wellcome Trust Governor), and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. 

But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.

Best,

Kristian

Not sure the opinions changed privately but they changed 180 degrees publicly - literally overnight - when Kristian and Eddie delivered Prox O’s alternative truth option at the following day’s Teleconference - arguing a natural origin from bats via pangolin.