The Authors
In no particular order:
Andrew Rambaut:
Man of Mystery. All the others have put themselves out there to pump the paper - but Rambaut stayed in the shadows. Still, you can judge a man by the company he keeps - Oxford - specifically Nuffield Department. DPhil from Oxford in 1997 places him there at the same time as brothers-in-arms Farrar, Gao, Holmes, Worobey. Evolutionary biologist specializing in emerging human viral pathogens (funny how the more human viral pathogenicists emerged as a fund-attracting force - the more emerging human viral pathogens emerged), genomic surveillance enthusiast, Feb 1 Teleconferencer, first person Holmes called with the sequence - published on his website, SAGE member (with Jeremy Farrar), futurist (as is Farrar), the blank photo above is from a conference titled: Next-generation molecular and evolutionary epidemiology of infectious disease: challenges and opportunities
Robert Garry: Tulane (since 1983)/Zalgen labs, NIH funded bioweapons expert (according to Andersen), member of The Consortium mixed up in the 2013-14 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone - which was suss at the time - origin never found despite the toddler, the hollow tree, and the bat narrative in a remote village narrative that was promulgated without evidence by scientists - the got up as what happened - lab-exit candidate) Actually the TWIV love-in panelist putputs it best: 608 So you got into immuno-suppressive retroviruses - before HIV came along - and then worked on HIV - and then you got into emerging diseases - emerging infections - ahr - now of course we have a global pandemic of SARS-Covid-2, so i’m gonna be really really closely tracking what you do next! (general laughter)
Me too!
TWIV forgot to mention Ebola.
Stalwart at Tulane (since 1983), founded Zalgen labs, NIH funded bioweapons expert (according to Andersen), member of The Consortium mixed up in the 2013-14 Ebola outbreak in west Africa. Origin never found but a narrative was: the toddler, the hollow tree, and the bat in a remote Guinea village. GoF lab-exit candidate - never investigated. Instead: Science: (R)esearchers learned of the tree and linked it to one of the outbreak's first victims. But, in a frustrating twist, the tree had burned to a stump just before they arrived, thwarting their search for evidence that might confirm the scenario.
Kristian Andersen: Scripps hotshot - youngest - lead-author - got his own lab. Scripps washad been hemorrhaging money for years when on Nov 27, 2019 Scripps announced joint Shenzhen Bay Laboratory a trans-Pacific chemical biology research collaboration ) - Garry describes Andersen as a generational scientist - Once was a Twitter warrior - closed his account when the battle heated-up with Drastic. Joint author with Holmes and Rambaut on Nature Ebola origin paper.
W. Ian Lipkin - was brought on a little bit later as the celebrity scientist salesman (with more ties to high-ranking China officials than Marco Polo), was in China meeting Li Ke-chiang and George Gao (18:30) when Feb 1 teleconference happened. Has(41:46): metI Xioffered Jinpingmy -services to President Xi, who I found him very impressive. Co-author of murky MERS-origin paper with Daszak in Saudi Arabia. Contagion advisor: I devised the imaginary virus that wreaks havoc in the film. Cool!
Fast Factoids: Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2:
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displays a beautiful irony in it’s title
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was, according to the authors, purpose-written to quell conspiracy theories around a possible lab-leak (theories originated by Chinese netizens, btw)
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was partially funded by NIH/Francis Collins (H3Africa co-funder)
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draft, according to Garry, was complete .. Feb 1st - same date as authors held strategy-session conference call with Farrar and Fauci. (Flashback: On Jan 31, Andersen (lead author) emailed Farrar/Fauci/Collins saying it looks engineered. That means - literally overnight - the authors changed their thinking 180 degrees, then re-researched/re-wrote/re-edited to - first draft - delivered (at MOU’s Feb 1 teleconference) a paper that clearly show(s) SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.)
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Or …they made it up.
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1707 citations so far - mostly positive ones. An altmetric score of 36,768 - which blows the previous world record of 11,980 out of the water. Once Prox O breaks new ground as Exhibit A in the cover-up - which it’s about to - all bets are off
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mega-platformed (via Nature, Guardian, CNN et al media) the pangolin/wetmarket discourse to irrefutably show Covid couldn’t possibly be a lab-leak.
All this In the crucial nascent period. Where if we’d known it was a GoFFed-up lab bug on the loose - we could have reacted accordingly.
But wait - there’s a silver lining!
Nature, Sep 2020: Through the ‘Solidarity’ trials, the WHO has launched a global campaign to test therapeutic agents and vaccines on an unprecedented scale5.
No, we’ll get to that in a different thread Nature, but we’re not going to be diverted from this question:
Was Proximal Origin knowingly concocted/pro-moed with the full-might of One-Everything - to cover up the origin of Covid?
You’re thinking Fauci - yes of course he’s in the mix - but the man who took the reins - in a crisis - brought it all together is:
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Convened/chaired the Feb 1 teleconference -
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On-sold-it Feb 2 in a teleconference to Tedros
Doesn’t seem like a long rap-sheet - but these were crucial plays - without which - none of this could have happened.
Farrar sees himself, as others do, as indeed he is: a PR genius. An ahead-of-the-curve calculator - decisive - man of action - not afraid to think big.
This was Jeremy’s time to shine. For the public good.
Once you make that decision - the truth - no longer matters - you prosecute your case the same way a good lawyer would.