Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted) — page 33

DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com MS. SALAZAR: That's just my commentary. DR. BARIC: I would guess that most large organizations will take a while to find the paperwork. MS. SALAZAR: So they asked you to provide the paperwork. I mean, did you alert them that this was an accusation that it could have been the 2015 virus? You know, where did that come from? DR. BARIC: Initially it came from the Chinese, social media speculation about what was the cause of the pandemic. The question certainly came up, and I can tell you the same thing that I told them, as far as this virus differs from the SARS coronavirus-2 strain by over 6,000 nucleotides, which means that it's incredibly different. So there's no way it could ever be associated with the emergence of this virus. It's just not possible. Same thing with the WIV1 virus. That's been validated by I don't know how many independent investigators around the globe. When they compare the sequence they say it is not the cause of the pandemic. MS. SALAZAR: Okay. So what else was discussed in the meeting? DR. BARIC: We discussed the P3CO documents. I sort of told them why we felt that the data didn't demonstrate a gain-of-function phenotype, and that was because there was no change or increased replication of the virus in human