Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted) — page 32

DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com DR. BARIC: Well, yeah, really. MS. SALAZAR: I mean, was the conversation, were they worried? What was the tone of it? I mean, we see -- and again, these have been FOIA'd -- there's a spur of sending out that paper, within hours, to multiple different people. Now, you know, a lot of the emails don't have commentary, but it's on February 1st. We know what else happened on February 1st. DR. BARIC: Well, I think you need to put it in context. So in China there was a massive social media barrage of speculation that the 2015 virus was the cause of the pandemic. NIH had to become aware of that at some point, and they would immediately then be worried whether everything was done properly. They had to be. And it's five years back, so again, these are things that are not going to be at the top of anyone's mind. But at the same time, they're going to want to know was everything done properly. So yeah, I think naturally that they would be concerned, naturally they'd want to know, is that virus the cause of the pandemic or not? I mean, if they didn't ask those kinds of question, they would be really irresponsible. MS. SALAZAR: That's kind of irresponsible that they didn't have the paperwork too. DR. BARIC: Well --