The question of how the COVID-19 pandemic began has been one of the most enduring and frustrating concerns I’ve grappled with since I joined TIME the summer of 2019, just months before the public health catastrophe started to spread outward from China. The necessary science developed in real time, making it near impossible to assess with any certainty pretty much anything about the virus, at least at first. And the dearth of clear, quality, vetted information coming out of China has meant that a forensic account of how the SARS-COV-2 virus first latched onto humans is out of reach.
At this point, there are fair arguments to be made that it could have been a lab leak out of the Biosafety Level-3 lab in Wuhan; there is also a compelling case it was from Wuhan residents coming into contact with an infected animal that had nothing to do with the lab.
One thing I am fairly certain of is that Ralph Baric, the American coronavirologist, was not part of any malicious plot to unleash SARS-COV-2 on the world—despite what some conspiracy theorists have alleged. In a deep, illuminating profile for TIME—reported over the course of over three years—scientist and journalist Dan Werb shows how Baric, whose work has utilized controversial gain-of-function research to develop vaccines for the viruses, came to be a scapegoat for many Americans desperate for answers. It also explores how the scientist continues to do the often drudge work of virology in order to help the world prepare for the inevitable next pandemic.
