Interview with Bobby Rajesh Malhotra, second co-author of the Corman-Drosten Retraction Demand
What does “in silico production” mean?
Malhotra: This is the theoretical production of virus fragments and protein parts. The whole thing suddenly seemed Spanish to me. Added to this was the problem of primary patient isolates. The lab was just busy isolating and sequencing 1,000 Austrian samples. In the process, more and more mutations were coming out. I wondered how there could be so many mutations in a country cluster all at once. It was quite unrealistic. The day came when I was told that my employment contract would not be renewed (4th quarter 2020). That was more or less the starting signal for me — to become even more critical (laughs). On a day when I was very upset, I created a mega thread on Twitter with 124 tweets. In “Corona Ausschuss Nr. 22”, Corona Committee №22, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Kämmerer had explained the problem of Drosten PCR tests. I linked this with my knowledge and tried to explain it for the beginner on Twitter — a mixture of corruption, bioinformatics and the PCR problem. This thread pretty much hit home.