Baric – who’s attended conferences at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and is described by Wuhan’s “bat woman” Shi Zhengli as one of her “longtime collaborators” – made the comments at an April 2018 event hosted at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Baric – who’s described lifting bans on gain-of-function research as “critical” – also provided the Wuhan lab with humanized mice to likely conduct the controversial form of research with SARS-like coronaviruses.

“I wanted to give you good news. There are winners out there, right? So if you ever want to be prepared and make money in the next pandemic, if that’s what you want to do, buy stock in Hazmat suit makers and protective clothing or companies that make antiviral drugs for that particular pandemic,” he notes.

While speaking over the following slide – “Pandemics: Opportunity” – Baric posits that “pandemics really are times of opportunity.”

“There is an opportunity for people to have political gain, financial gain, and personal gain during times of social upheaval, and that will probably occur,” he adds