Analysis

Below are the parts which I think are of interest. These items show that Kristian Anderson and Robert Barry could not rule out the lab release hypothesis. The last item shows the authors are following instructions from "on high" - Fauci, Collins and Farrar.

As the Select Committee report shows, the article they submitted to Nature was rejected by reviewer #2 because it did not clearly rule out the possibility of lab release. The authors' response was to revise the article somewhat, with the addition of a statement ruling out the lab release hypothesis, and to send it to Nature Medicine, which approved it. That statement was:

we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.

It seems that pressure from the "higher ups" - Fauci, Collins and Farrar (Wellcome Trust - why did he play such a powerful role?), who collectively orchestrated gave feedback on, in one case edited and eventually approved of the article, plus the Nature rejection, caused them to write the final version which rules out a lab release, while there is no evidence that they really believed this. The quotes below indicate these individuals considered lab release unlikely, but they acknowledged that there were no solid arguments as to why it could not have occurred.

I believe that the Proximal Origins article is fraudulent in at least two respects:

1 - The impetus for the article and guidance on its development came from people who are not acknowledged or listed as authors.

2 - We can see that key aspects of the content of the article do not represent the views of the authors (at least as expressed in the correspondence we have access to) and that this final content, with the absolute certainty about the origin not being a lab release, was added to gain publication approval and quite likely to satisfy the desires of Fauci, Collins and Farrar.

It is highly pertinent that on 22 February, two days after their article was rejected by Nature, Robert Garry, Kristian Anderson and Edward Holmes worked on a letter to be sent to Nature, rebutting the rejection of their article, due to reviewer #2's concerns about the article not being clear enough that a lab release was absolutely not the cause.

See the quotes below. It is clear that on 22 February they objected to the suggestion that they rule out lab release. Yet on 27 February they submitted a revised version of the article ruling it out, to Nature Medicine.

Page 45 of the Select Committee report quotes Kristian Anderson's response to Committee questions on these events. There's no indication of what new evidence or arguments changed the author's minds about this. So it is reasonable to assume that they caved in to pressure from Nature and from Fauci, Collins and Farrar, to add such a statement although they did not agree with it.

One important point which the authors and the Select Committee seem not to be aware of is that the exact codons which specify the proteins of the furin cleavage site are one of multiple ways of specifying this. In SARS-CoV-2, the site is specified in a way favoured by genetic engineers, which is almost the least likely set of codons to be found in Nature. (https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202102.0264/v1 and some other reference I can't find now.) This is a very strong argument for the furin cleavage site having been the product of direct genetic engineering: a chimeric virus made from multiple pieces of the genomes of at least two different viruses, likely with short, specifically synthesised RNA/DNA spliced in, such as for the furin cleavage site.

Here are the quotes of interest. Page numbers refer to the full image found behind a box on the page of the Select Committee report with that number on the bottom right.

I have added red colour to highlight the most significant text.

2022-02-02 (page 20. PDF page 22):

Kristian Andersen:

"Both Ron and Christian are much too conflicted to think about this issue straight - to them, the hypothesis of accidental lab escape is so unlikely and not something they want to consider. The main issue is that accidental escape is in fact highly likely - It’s not some fringe theory. I absolutely agree that we can't prove one way or the other, but we never will be able to - however, that doesn't mean that by default the data is currently much more suggestive of a natural origin as opposed to e.g. passage. It is not - the furin cleavage site is very hard to explain."

Interesting. I'm all for GOF experiments, I think they’re really important* - however performing these in BSL-3 (or less) is just completely nuts! IMO it has to be performed at BSL-4 with extra precautions.

* I have evolved a bit on this point. I used to think they’re really important, but I'm actually not so sure anymore. I thought it was really important that we understood whether e.g., avian influenza could be transmissible between humans - and importantly which steps (and how many] would need to be involved - but honestly I’m not sure that type of knowledge is at all actionable, while, of course, being exceptionally dangerous. It only takes one mistake.

2020-02-02 (page 38 bottom frame)

Andrew Rambaut:

The truth is never going to come out (if escape is the truth). Would need to be irrefutable evidence. My position is that the natural evolution is entirely plausible and we will have to leave it at that. Lab passaging might also generate this mutation but we have no evidence that that happened.

"I think it would be. good idea to lay out these arguments for limited dissemination. And quite frankly so we can learn from it even if it wasn't an escape - it easily could have ..." [The last word is obscured, and probably starts with 'b'. So it is probably was "been".]

Yeah, I'm conflicted - 1 honestly don’t know if any of this information is useful without having read all the various papers. Personally, it’s useful for context, but even though there's some strange research going on here, there’s no smoking gun. Not quite sure what such a gun would look like though. Bob said it well though - I'd prefer this thing being a lab escape so we have less reason to believe other coronas might do this again in the future. What is useful is to summarize the main points considered and discussed. I'll get back on that document tomorrow - for now I still need to read more and also want to take a closer look at the alignments.

Bottom line is that we can’t prove whether this is natural or escape - leaving it to others to make that decision, but hopefully we can ensure they're more informed.

2020-02-04 (page 24 top frame)

Kristian Andersen:

I was on a conference call hosted by the National Academy of Sciences yesterday and a statement about this not being "engineering" should be coming out from them - I believe Tony called that meeting. Let's see what comes out of that as well.

The idea of engineering and bioweapon is definitely not going away and I'm still getting pinged by journalists. I have noticed some of them starting to ask more broadly about "lab escape" and for now I have just ignored them - there might be a time where we need to tackle that more directly head on, but I'll let the likes of Jeremy and Tony figure out how to do that.

2020-02-05 (page 25)

Robert Garry:

Accidental release is a scenario many will not be comfortable with but it would be irresponsible to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

2020-02-06 (page 36 top frame)

Kristian Andersen:

Agreed - this'll amplify over the next couple of weeks.

I just wish there was a way to conclusively say one or the other, but without that intermediate host or very earlier cases, there’s just no telling IMO. Which all means it's back to opinions - and honestly, for this type of question I don't think opinions are helpful - unless they have some damn strong science behind them.

Robert Garry:

"So. he argued, it could have entered humans from the cave in Yunnan or another cave, or a wet market. Or, alternatively, it could have escaped into a human from the lab".

Three hypotheses here.

1. not likely a bat virus right into a human - could have happen long ago but not so likely.

2. Wet market -ok maybe an intermediate host. I think pangolin viruses sequences still too far afield but could be part of an animal circulation that generated the virus.

3. lab passage I'm open to and can't discount - that just because I don t know the data and few others do. Either furin sites have been generated or they haven't. If they have I'm suspicious of lab escape, but not conclusive evidence. If furin sites have not been generated on cell culture passive, then were looking at either a long circulation or a very intense circulation in either humans or animals.

2020-02-17 (page 41)

Edward Holmes, in Sydney, apparently after posting the Proximal Origins article on a preprint server:

Anyway, it’s done. Sorry the last bit had to be done without you. . . pressure from on high.

Fair point about bioRxiv. I’ve asked Nature what they want. Virological will work.

2022-02-22 (page 38 top frame)

Robert Garry

Reviewer #2 pretty much got it all wrong - Nature should reconsider. Andrew did a great job upgrading the lab origin response.

Kristian - what do you think of starting a google for the rebuttal letter? One page. Seems the 3 major points are 1) pangolin seq give no def answer, 2) lab escape and 3) new data- if it comes at all - not a show-stopper.

Just a brief intro letter that points the eds to the key points in the current response and not so subtle that reviewer #2 clearly was biased and got it all wrong.

Kristian Andersen

Just created a document, but no text yet. Also shared the whole Google folder with y'all so it’s easier to access these individual documents.

Waiting to hear from Eddie what's up in China before next steps.

[He linked to a Google Docs URL and there is an icon and text which seems to represent a document "Nature rebuttal letter" being shared with the Slack group.]

Robert Garry

We need to give Clare [editor of Nature] several reasons to reconsider.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51596665
® BBC News February 22nd, 2020 -

Coronavirus cases double in one day in South Korea

The PM describes the situation as grave as the total number of confirmed infections rises to 433.

One reason to reconsider is that this epidemic is looking more and more like a pandemic.

Edward Holmes

I II hopefully be able to update on any new data tomorrow. Pretty obvious it was going pandemic. I think Nature have just bought Reviewer #2's argument that we just going to fan the flames by adding speculation.

I've just done some edits on the original version of the rebuttal in Google docs. Looks pretty good to me.

Origins of SARS-CoV-2