The U.S. Scientist At the Heart of COVID-19 Lab Leak Conspiracies Is Still Trying to Save the World From the Next Pandemic

Ralph Baric stepped onto the auditorium stage at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and looked out at the sparse audience that had come to hear him speak. On the large projector screen hanging behind him, the following words appeared: How Bad the Next Pandemic Could Be, What Might It Look Like, and Will We be Ready. The date was May 29, 2018. “Well, I have to admit I’m a little worried about giving this talk,” Baric said. “The reason is being labelled a harbinger of doom.” The screen shifted, and images of the four horsemen of the apocalypse—Death, Famine, War, and Plague—came into view, next to a headshot of a smiling Baric. “This is not me,” he continued, “I’m not one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” Light laughter bubbled through the audience; Baric smiled. For the next 35 minutes, he laid out his prediction, with uncanny precision, of what the next pandemic would bring: a rush for bogus antiviral treatments, vast profits for companies making personal protective equipment, a global economic crash, and a rise in conspiracy theories claiming that the pandemic pathogen was designed by scientists. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] When SARS-CoV-2 emerged less than a year and a half later, Baric was among the first to raise the alarm. As early as January 2020, Baric felt certain that the new virus’s spread was more akin to the flu than any of the human coronaviruses he h...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 feature freelance Source Type: news