Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted) — page 138

DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com DR. BARIC: Maybe two and a half years ago. MS. SALAZAR: Okay. Do you think that Dr. Shi and WIV had the technical capability of doing the work proposed in DEFUSE on their own? DR. BARIC: With WIV1, absolutely. MS. SALAZAR: Okay. DR. BARIC: I mean, they had the molecular clone. MS. SALAZAR: So they couldn't have. DR. BARIC: Yeah. They had a molecular clone. They've dropped different spike genes in it. So it's the question of basically, I don't know, I'd have to look at the S1/S2 junction. But it would be three or four amino acids that they'd have to drop in. They certainly would have that technology. MS. SALAZAR: And one last question before we have to break. Do you find it odd that the WIV database went down when it did? DR. BARIC: I mean, if they really wanted to conclusively demonstrate that the virus did not come out of the laboratory, they could have made that available. The problem is for example, is they may have things in there that they don't want to share, and the immediate thing that comes to mind is the Mojiang mine in Yunnan, where six miners were infected with virus. Two reports from Chinese researchers say it's a SARS coronavirus-like virus. Some