The researcher, UNC professor Ralph Baric, also privately downplayed the wet market theory but publicly lent it credit
A prominent U.S. virologist who collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the COVID-19 pandemic privately informed the U.S. intelligence community in January 2020 that the Chinese lab may be responsible for the outbreak. But in his public remarks to congressional staffers one month later—and after meeting with former White House health adviser Anthony Fauci—the researcher stayed mum about the Wuhan lab and lent credence to the discredited wet market theory.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill virologist Dr. Ralph Baric warned the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during a closed-door presentation with the agency’s Biological Sciences Experts Group on or around Jan. 29, 2020, that the Wuhan lab, which was conducting risky gain-of-function experiments on bat viruses similar to the one that causes COVID-19, may have accidentally released the virus into the human population. Baric’s presentation, which the Washington Free Beacon obtained from a whistleblower, went beyond mere speculation: Considered one of the world’s foremost experts on coronaviruses, Baric experimented with coronaviruses in 2015 with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s top researcher, Shi Zhengli. Later, in early 2024, he testified to House investigators that he had privately warned Shi that her lab lacked sufficient biosafety protections and that he always believed a lab leak origin was possible.
But Baric had nothing to say about the Wuhan lab in his public remarks during the early days of the pandemic as the press cast Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and other proponents of the lab leak theory as unhinged conspiracy theorists.
Baric’s private presentation to the intelligence community in January 2020, which was first disclosed Friday by Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), was almost identical to a public briefing he delivered to the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus the following month on Feb. 26, 2020. For the public presentation, however, Baric removed the slides referencing the possibility that the virus could have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Baric, during his private briefing, also downplayed the theory that a Wuhan wet market was responsible for the outbreak, noting that most of the first known cases of COVID-19 had no exposure to the market. He removed those slides as well and instead lent credibility to the wet market theory.
“From what I understand, bats are used in certain delicacy dishes and also used in medicinal medicines, so there’s a possibility that bat parts were in the market,” Baric said during his public congressional briefing.
Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard Ebright, one of the most prominent academic proponents of the lab leak theory, said it was no coincidence that Baric omitted his references to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in his public presentation. Ebright said Baric held a “highly unusual one-on-one meeting” with Fauci on Feb. 11, 2020, an appointment reflected in a copy of Fauci’s schedule obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request.
At the time, Fauci was quietly coordinating efforts to cast the lab leak theory as a baseless conspiracy. Fauci and former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins were also warned about the Wuhan lab’s potential role in the outbreak during a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call. But instead of heeding those warnings, Collins and Fauci, who led the federal agencies that funded gain-of-function research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, set out to cast discussions of lab origin of COVID-19 as a baseless conspiracy theory.
Collins lamented in an email exchange with Fauci the next day that discussion of a lab origin of COVID-19 “would do great potential harm to science and international harmony.” And Fauci, according to the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, prompted the creation of the infamous “Proximal Origin” paper published in Nature Medicine that sought to disprove claims the pandemic originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci later cited the paper during White House press briefings to downplay the lab leak theory.
Baric did not return a request for comment.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) called on Baric to testify publicly before Congress to clarify why he changed his tune and stayed silent on the lab leak theory.
“Americans who simply dared to ask if COVID was from a lab were labeled conspiracy theorists, and yet we now learn that evidence was shown to the intelligence community supporting that theory before our country was locked down,” Ernst told the Free Beacon. “In the face of this new timeline, I won’t leave any stone unturned until we get to the bottom of COVID’s true origins. This includes unmasking the role of Dr. Ralph Baric, who was directly involved in batty Wuhan research, and determining why he pushed the wet market story and stayed silent on the lab leak possibility, even while presenting the opposite in closed-door briefings.”
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