Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted) — page 150

trongly believe we have just tried to get on For Tony's benefit a revised draft of the email to Jon is pasted below. I can't for the life of me see what we have done wrong here. I strongly believe we have just tried to get on top of a very vexing question as quickly and openly as possible. Cheers, Eddie ------------------------ Hi Jon, Here are the facts: 1. In early Feb we had spotted some features in the SARS-CoV-2 genome that at the time appeared unusual - particularly the furin cleavage site and the receptor binding domain. 2. At this stage we thought it was wise to ask for other expert's opinions on this, so a conference call was arranged. There were indeed other coronavirus experts on the call. It is worth pointing out that the senior author on our paper - Bob Garry - has published a significant number of papers on coronaviruses, including on the SARS spike protein, and even commented on this on the virological.org website prior to the call taking place (https://virological.org/t/analysis-ofwuhan-coronavirus-deja-vu/357). Importantly, our study was an evolutionary study based on genomic information, which is the only way to investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2 - we believe all the authors on our paper have a strong demonstrated record in answering exactly those types of questions for a multitude of viruses. 3. Clearly, some people on the call were very strongly of the opinion that the possibility of a lab escape was ridiculous and listed reasons why it should be dismissed out of hand (although there was also some initial confusion about whether we were referring to the crazy HIV origins theory that had just been touted - obviously we were not). Some of those comments we agreed with, others we did not. A take-home message from the call was that we should investigate further and write a scientific paper to clearly set-out the background on the topic and our findings. Indeed, one the of emailed agenda items for discussion after the call was "Advice on whether KA, AR, RG and EH should publish this". 4. We eventually wrote up our findings as a scientific (peer reviewed) paper. Critically, drafts of this paper were sent to all the people on the call, including those with the information that has been emailed to you. We have attached our first draft of what would eventually become our paper from Feb 7, which was circulated to everyone on the call. As you can see, it is essentially the basis of our final study and people on the call commented on it. 5. Very shortly after the call, the pangolin data came out. This was critical and as Eddie wrote in an email to everyone on the call on Feb 9th: "Personally, with the pangolin virus possessing 6/6 key sites in the receptor binding domain, I am in favour of the natural evolution theory." and Rndrew Rambaut replied to this stating: "I am of the view that the natural selection hypothesis is the most likely (specifically the non-bat reservoir). And as Eddie mentioned this is becoming more likely from day to day with the pangolin story." 6. Hence, it is completely and utterly false to claim that we (1) all thought it was a lab escape, (2) that we were corrected ("schooled") in our views by the coronavirus experts on the call, and (3) then submitted a Nature paper without anyone else knowing about it. The truth is that we had a range of views among us, our paper included the pangolin data that was not available at the time of the call, and we circulated drafts of our document to everyone. 7. We categorically deny that we were "spreading the rumor" that the virus was human engineered. At the time, there were indeed rumours - which persists to this day - that SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered virus, but these certainly did not