What's in your freezer Dr Baric?
What's in your freezer Dr Baric?
Weekly lab leaker
Baric’s testimony
On Jan 24, 2024, Baric traveled to Washington, D.C., to give testimony. The 200-page interview is more interesting than the puff piece at Vanity Fair. Baric provided over six hours of testimony but never provided an alibi. The biggest shocker? Baric was on the Feb 1, 2020, call, but he thought everyone knew that. No one knew that. They didn’t invite him because of his connections to Wuhan!
Committee: The Feb 1st call with Dr. Fauci, Dr. Andersen, and Dr. Farrar, and ten or so others, we have gotten emails from almost every American participant on the call, and haven't seen your name come up anywhere. So I was surprised to hear that you were on it. But I want to confirm that you were on the call?
Baric: I think I was…I must have been on that call. (Andersen) may not have known it.
Farrar scheduled the secret teleconference because Andersen told Fauci, “We find the (SARS2) genome inconsistent with expectations of evolutionary theory.” Baric proved he was on the Feb 1st call since “NIH staff” invited him. Two days later, during Fauci’s Feb 3rd follow-up call, Baric ambushed Andersen.
Committee: Regarding this (Feb 3rd) meeting, (Andersen) said something about you, and I would like to get your side of the story on what he said. So this is…
Baric: Hopefully, he didn't say anything negative.
Committee: This is a quote from Dr. Andersen's Slack messages. “I should mention that Ralph Baric pretty much attacked me on the call with NASEM, essentially calling anything related to potential lab escape ludicrous, crackpot theories. I wonder if he, himself, is worried about this, too.”
I'm just trying to get your side of this.
Baric: Can you read that again?
The committee asked Baric what was in his UNC freezer?
Committee: In all of your research over the years, how close have you ever come to creating a virus similar to SARS-CoV-2, as far as structure, pathogenicity?
Baric: Before or after it emerged?
Committee: Well, in retrospect, or after it emerged.
Baric: So before, I think what you need to think about is that no one had the sequence. So if you don't have the sequence of the pathogen, you don't have any guide to how to synthesize it or make it.
Committee: But looking back?
Baric: Just to give you an example…
Baric went into professor mode and rambled. He is nervous because this interview was on Jan 22, 2024, one week after USRTK released the USGS FOIA. The 2018 documents showed Baric with a novel SARS-like genome <0.1% different from SARS2. In other words, Baric has a genome 40x closer than Shi Zhengli’s RaTG13 (4%). But Baric rambled about that.
Committee: Let me clarify, because I'm not trying to get into that.
Baric: Well, statistically, you have to make 4 to the 6,000 mutants which can't be done.
Committee: My question really is maybe unrelated, maybe it's from a MERS virus, whatever. Anything close to the pathogenicity?
Baric: Never.
Baric ignored the freezer question a second time. The word “pathogenicity” was wrong, so the committee asked the same question differently for a third time.
Committee: I guess my question is, Shi Zhengli went back to her holdings and found RaTG13. I don't know if you did a similar one just to see if you had something similar from a previous --
Baric: I don't do surveillance.
Committee: Well, that would be --
Baric: So I don't go out and collect bat samples. I had a research assistant professor that did some bat discovery work in Maryland, and he found mostly group 1 coronaviruses at the time. So we didn't -- I don't do bat discovery, so I don't have large repositories of bat samples to look for coronaviruses.
Committee: Okay.
Baric: I usually look for sequences, and if I find something interesting, then I'll go after it.
Baric was known on the UNC campus as the Coronavirus Hunter but now wants to be known as the ‘sequence hunter.’ In Feb 2018, he experimented with a piece of RaTG13 and Banal-52. The same year, Baric proposed inserting furin cleavage sites into novel coronaviruses and testing them on bats in Wuhan. Baric testified:
I forget about DARPA Defuse, but people probably say no chance…But the idea of manipulating the protease was clearly mine. No question….We were fundamentally interested in why didn't sarbecoviruses have a furin cleavage site?
SARS2 is the only sarbecovirus with a furin cleavage site. The committee asked Baric if Bob Garry of Tulane was wrong when he wrote “Do the alignment at the amino acid level-it's stunning…I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature, but it would be easy in the lab (inserting a furin cleavage site).”
Committee: So Dr. Garry was just kind of wrong?
Baric: You can make - no, I'm not saying he's wrong. I'm just saying that means if it went in that way, then it was nefarious purposes to begin with, right? Because you're basically trying to cover up what you did.
Baric is stuck in a prisoner’s dilemma. He engineered the SARS2 genome for bats, not humans or “humanized” mice. Dani was testing his genome in her BSL4. Ironically, Baric is trying to blame Peter Daszak and Shi’s R01 gain-of-function experiments in her BSL2 because they distance him. Baric was adamant Shi and Wuhan couldn’t copy his methods.
In terms of how we built the (SCH014) chimera, we didn’t publish the sequence of the virus that we built, and we didn’t share the sequence of that chimera with anyone at the WIV. So we didn’t give them the template on how to build the recombinant virus.
Baric noted Shi’s molecular clone is only WIV1 and ~25% percent from SARS2.
(Wuhan) uses baculoviruses, and their molecular clone is a virus called WIV1, which I don't think they engineered with class IIS restriction enzymes that don't leave any sequence. So I think there's a sequence signature in that virus. But in general, yes, they had the technology to do it, but they would have really struggled with trying to develop other molecular clones, like they were working on developing the SADS molecular clone (Chinese pig coronavirus) from 2016 on, and they failed. It's not easy technology. So we started three years later and beat them to press, just to show you. And I had no interest in teaching them how to do it faster, either.
Baric used that SADS molecular clone to create the SARS-CoV-2 genome.
Bruttel et al
During testimony, Baric admitted his engineering approach was “safer because we've divided the genome into six pieces.” This is a key piece of evidence in the paper by Bruttel et al. An anonymous review was released years late, but is to the point:
“The authors should consider discussing the 2018 DEFUSE proposal, which proposes the construction of a reverse-genetic system from novel SARS-like coronaviruses similar to the reverse-genetic system that the authors propose here to have resulted in SARS-CoV-2.”
The reviewer reads like an anonymous whistleblower:
For example, the Baric lab established a seamless reverse-genetic system for constructing the SARS2 genome early in the pandemic using BsaI and BsmBI (Hou et al., 2020). Note that this reverse-genetic system does not use the BsaI/BsmBI sites present in the SARS2 genome but rather BsaI/BsmBI sites that are clipped out before genome fragment ligation.
Baric pathetically called
“a pathetic piece of work.” However, Baric deleted the SARS2 restriction sites during the reassembly in early 2020, covering his biological tracks. Baric even brought this up during Congressional testimony:By the way, you can see how I engineered the SARS-CoV-2 genome since it was published, and you will see that it's completely different from this.
Bruttel et al co-author
Valentine’s co-author
oddly hides this fact, along with Baric’s six-piece genome. Alex also wrote Vincent Munster’s 2018 DARPA Preempt bid.Dani and Linfa
revisits Linfa’s January 10th resignation. He gets it; it’s the first puzzle piece of many. On September 24th, 2021, Baric told CNN, “It’s not the BSL4 (of Dani’s) that concerns (me)—it’s coronavirus being worked on at lower biosafety level conditions, like (Shi’s) BSL2.” DARPA Defuse leaked two days later, and Baric remained radio silent until the January 2024 interview.UNC FOIA
Tyler Stepke obtained 427 pages of UNC meeting minutes from Jan 2016 - Jan 2024. Baric resurrected Shi’s RaTG13 genome in March 2020. In March 2018, he looked at ENaC (the furin cleavage site in SARS2). In Sep 2018, he experimented with HKU3 (aka SARS2).
Daszak’s ‘incredibly accurate’ testimony
Baric tossed Daszak under the bus for using his Gmail. “He didn't do that email on my request.” But Baric’s wife told Daszak to use their Gmail.
Daszak said NIH deemed his work in China a “high priority” in 2019. Is this a clever British way of saying Fauci funded his DARPA Defuse grant? On Dec 30th, 2019, Daszak heard about a Wuhan virus that was 20% different from SARS1. SARS2 was 20% different, so it was “incredibly accurate.” Remember, Baric had a 20% different genome in his UNC freezer.
Daszak is guilty of some sloppy paperwork, like Shi. He admitted Wuhan had a live bat colony, but Shi “may not remember the Defuse proposal.” Shi only responded once in 1400 pages of FOIA and was out of the country towards the end of 2019.
Chinese journalist released from prison?
Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan is supposed to be released from jail on May 13, 2024. She was arrested in May 2020 for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” She’s the only person arrested for a lab leak after uploading videos of the Wuhan BSL4.
China’s brave scientist silenced?
Zhang Yongzhen was temporarily evicted from his Shanghai area lab, but it sounds like a contractual issue with his lab lease. Zhang tested 15 raccoon dogs in the Wuhan market and 334 bats in the Wuhan area, all of which were negative. He was the first Chinese scientist to publish the SARS2 genome. “When we posted the genome on Jan 5th, 2020, the United States certainly knew about this virus,” he said. A NIAID contractor in Beijing uploaded the genome on Dec 28, 2019.
Baric testified he saw the SARS2 genome (and its furin cleavage site) on Jan 6th.
Mark Zuckerberg email
Zuck asked if Facebook could announce “the [Biden] White House put pressure on us to censor the lab leak theory?"
Yuri on Wuhan
Yuri Deigin’s one-hour essay regurgitates old lab leak talking points. It’s based on a 2015 Ralph Baric quote (searching for <25% genomes) and a 2019 University of Minnesota paper. The entire lab leak narrative was based on Baric’s scientific research.
How a Ralph Nader disciple helped legitimize the Covid lab leak theory
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/30/us-right-to-know-covid-lab-leak-00155011
Fauci’s calendar
Somebody FOIA’d Fauci’s text messages with his assistant David Morens?
Center for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID) Network
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24576350-nih-foia-request-59096-april-production_redacted
Bat penis size
https://www.newsweek.com/bats-evolving-parallel-sizes-solomon-islands-1893237
Self-spreading vaccines
The usual list of suspects published a new transmissible vaccine paper. Tonie Rocke represents USGS with DARPA Defuse, and Kyle Rosenke works in Munster’s lab. They describe ‘transmissibility’ studies on live bats in labs.
Covid for 2 years?
“While the patient sadly died from an unrelated blood disorder, this variant wasn’t passed on to anyone else.” Many assume Omicron came from an immunocompromised patient, but TWiV assumes it came from deer and/or deer mice.
Reader Q&A
How does SARS2 live in deer mice...I wonder about all 5 of the RML mammals that efficiently transmit Sars2 (American mink, deer, deer mice, Syrian hamsters, and Egyptian fruit bats). What characteristics? For example, immune system, phenotype, high viral load in upper respiratory tract, low dose, common ACE2 receptors? What do they all have in common that permits the transmission of Sars2 via aerosol? Is it likely that to make Sars2 airborne-transmissible that RML used only the Syrian hamsters for serial passage experiments? Or do you think more than one animal would have been necessary for the final outcome?
Basically, yes to all the questions. Four of the five animals (except mink) have been previously referenced in self-spreading vaccine research. Munsters started small (hamsters) and went big (deer) to get maximum outdoor transmission. What do they all have in common? I think it's the K31 hotspot in their receptor binding domain, which I believe was their (failed) safety kill switch. Munster (learning under Fouchier) used all five lab animals to train the genome to transmit at greater distances (higher R0).
Munster’s DARPA Preempt docs reference Syrian hamsters. Deer mice are also mentioned as his T-cell model and self-spreading vaccine models. Deer are mentioned in this Science podcast at 14 minutes.
"Baric: So before, I think what you need to think about is that no one had the sequence. So if you don't have the sequence of the pathogen, you don't have any guide to how to synthesize it or make it."
Clearly this is a non-answer to the question, since if Baric made SARS-2 he would already be the source of the genome. Was the committee so dumb they couldn't pick this up? Apparently so. Why didn't they insist on a simple yes/no answer?
Since Baric avoided answering the question "Did you make a virus similar to SARS-2 before the outbreak?" it is strongly implied that he did.
I made a PDF, with searchable, copyable, text and a very much more readable layout, of Ralph Baric's 2024-01-22 interview with the Select Subcommittee. This also has links to some of the exhibits.
https://vitamindstopscovid.info/07-origins/#baric
The PDF transcripts this Subcommittee produces are scans of paper printouts. The layout is terrible and there is no text layer to search or copy-paste.
I am still reading the testimony and will revise the PDF to fix typos when I have finished.
Then I will read Alex Washburne's response https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/science-spills-over-into-congress to Ralph Baric's dismissal / critique of the article he and two colleagues wrote about the SARS-CoV-2 genome showing clear signs that it was assembled in the lab: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1 (Preprint, being worked on for peer-reviewed publication.)
Then I will read the anonymous review of this preprint, as linked to above: https://twitter.com/Bryce_Nickels/status/1786206196447289768
Not being a virologist, I did not understand the genetic techniques which were being discussed here. On 2024-01-30 I cobbled together an explanation for non-virologists, which I wrote as a comment to one of Alex's articles. https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/the-strength-of-evidence-for-a-lab/comment/48372178?utm_campaign=reaction&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack&utm_content=comment He liked it, so I guess it was on the right track. I would very much appreciate any suitably informed person checking what I wrote and suggesting corrections and improvements.
Then I will listen to Peter Daszak's testimony.