I said:

>> may have detected genetic evidence of PRIOR IAPV exposure, 
>> rather than the evidence of an actual virus.

Randy said:

> I asked Dr Cox Foster about this point, and it appears from her
detailed 
> answer that they addressed this issue by looking for entire copies of
the 
> virus, rather than a few fragments.  I'd give them the benefit of the
doubt 
> on this one.

That makes zero sense.  

If they had sequenced the full gene of the virus they said they had
found, 
they would have crowed about it in the paper, as that WOULD have been as

good as a mug shot and fingerprints.

"Full sequencing of a hitherto unknown exotic invasive pathogen of US
bees"
would have been a major finding.  It might have even been the title of
the paper!

What was in the paper was talk of segments "averaging 150 base pairs
long"
and such.  Talk of which end of the gene the fragments might have come
from.

There also wouldn't have been quite so much qualification and
backpedaling
in the news conference.  I call specific attention to what Dr. Holmes
said:

"As for IAPV itself, again, the big unknown that comes out is 
'what is IAPV?'... Is this a distinct virus in itself, is it 
a distinct lineage of an another virus called KBV? 
We really don't know that yet."

If they had the virus they think they found fully sequenced, they could
have compared that full sequence to the existing full sequence for the
IAPV found in Israel.  They would have said if it matched perfectly or
not.
They also could have compared it to KVB.

They would KNOW what "IAPV" was, and know if ours was the same as
Israel's.

They also would have uploaded a reference copy of what they found to
the genbank and/or NCBI.  I've never found any genes, so I don't know 
the exact protocol, but the usual reference found in papers is something
like:

"The GenBank accession number of the sequence reported 
upon in this paper is XY1234567."

So, no new genbank citation, no full sequence found.

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