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Transcript segment

Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted), p.79 · baric_ti:utt:00704

Page text: p.79 · original PDF

Date
2026-04-10 09:00 (day precision)
Type
transcript segment · interview
recipient
Ralph S. Baric, Harry Kazenoff, David T. Lambeth III, William Henderson, Clark Ervin, Jake Greenberg
speaker
Christina Salazar
This is --

In context

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  1. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    Did they discuss it?
  2. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    Yes. The main problem that the evolutionary biologists were running into was about that time they only had 8 to 15 full-length genomes of the virus DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com sequenced, and they had no other sequences of related viruses. There was a rumor that a pangolin virus existed with 100 percent identity, or close to 100 percent identity to SARS-2. That turned out not to be true, as the pangolin, called the pangolin GD strain, which was about 90 percent identical, I believe, is the virus they were talking about. It has a receptor binding domain that is almost identical, nearly identical to SARS-2, but it does have a couple point mutations in it. And the reason that's important is that that meant that there were natural isolates in nature that had that sequence, which means it's not engineered.
  3. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    Okay.
  4. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    It was later then found that the BANAL strains on the Cambodian-Thailand-Chinese border --
  5. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar
    This is --
  6. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    BANAL-52 and BANAL-1-something or another, also had receptor binding domains that were virtually identical to SARS-2. So there's two bad viruses and pangolin virus within the clade, within that branch of SARS-2 that had identical receptor binding domains, which means that it's not engineered.
  7. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    Would your opinion change if you knew that they WIV was conducting work on pangolin viruses around 2019, 2018? DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com
  8. 2026-04-10 09:00 Ralph S. Baric open
    It would depend on what strain they had. It would depend on what strain they had.
  9. 2026-04-10 09:00 Christina Salazar open
    Is that conversation that you've had with anyone?

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