This is for MERS, which was first identified in June 2012. Has nothing to do with SARS-CoV-2, except that they share the same family of viruses, of which 7 different ones are known to infect humans.
Sorry conspiracy theorists, your princess is in another castle.
It mentions Zika virus too.
Who is Ralph Baric?
Baric, who signed the material transfer agreement to investigate the mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidate before there was a known COVID-19 pandemic, pioneered techniques for genetically manipulating coronaviruses, according to Peter Gøtzsche with the Institute for Scientific Freedom,6 and these became a major focus for China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Baric worked closely with Shi Zhengli, Ph.D., the director of WIV’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, also known as “bat woman,” on research using genetic engineering to create a “new bat SARS-like virus … that can jump directly from its bat hosts to humans.” According to Gøtzsche:7
“Their work focused on enhancing the ability of bat viruses to attack humans so as to ‘examine the emergence potential.’ In 2015, they created a novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS virus replacing its spike protein with one from another bat virus known as SHC014-CoV. This manufactured virus was able to infect a lab culture of cells from the human airways.They wrote that scientific review panels might deem their research too risky to pursue but argued that it had the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks. However, the value of gain-of-function studies in preventing the COVID-19 pandemic was negative, as this research highly likely created the pandemic.”
Baric and others, including Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance president, to which he is closely tied, were quick to dismiss the lab-leak hypothesis, which suggests that SARS-CoV-2 accidently leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Regarding the novel SARS-like virus that Shi and Baric created in 2015, this research was conducted using a grant from EcoHealth Alliance.
“The work, ‘A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence,’20 published in Nature in 2015 during the NIH’s moratorium21 on gain-of-function research, was grandfathered in because it was initiated before the moratorium … and because the request by Shi and Baric to continue their research during the moratorium was approved by the NIH.As a condition of publication, Nature, like most scientific journals, requires22 authors to submit new DNA and RNA sequences to GenBank, the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information Database. Yet the new SARS-like virus Shi and Baric created wasn’t deposited23 in GenBank until May 2020.”
Meanwhile, both Baric24 and Daszak were involved in organizing the publication of a scientific statement, published in The Lancet and signed by 26 additional scientists, condemning inquiries into the lab-leak hypothesis as “conspiracy theory.”25
At the time The Lancet statement was released in February 2020, Daszak had advised Baric against adding his signature because he wanted to “put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.”27 The authors also declared no competing interests.
Who Knew What, and When?
We now have proof that Moderna and NIAID sent their mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates to Baric at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in mid-December 2019. Were they aware that COVID-19 was circulating at that time, or did they have knowledge far before that such a vaccine would soon be in demand? The red flags, and cover-ups, continue to mount, but ultimately the truth will prevail."
So the question the article is getting at is not that coronavirus has been around for decades (known commodity), not that Moderna was working on mRNA vaccines for LOTS of other diseases...including "coronavirus" (known commodity).
The question is...WHICH coronavirus vaccine?
So this guy, Baric is
(a) tied to Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance,
(b) tied to the "bat lady" researcher at WIV,
(c) tied to "gain of function" research on dangerous viral pathogens,
(d) in 2015, together with the bat lady, created a "novel virus by taking the backbone of the SARS virus replacing its spike protein with one from another bat virus known as SHC014-CoV. This manufactured virus was able to infect a lab culture of cells from the human airways."
And you think this is a giant nothing burger?
Your not the least bit interested in finding out WHAT "coronavirus" vaccine "candidate" Moderna shared with this Baric at UNC mid Dec 2019 when undoubtedly his associate the "bat lady" at a minimum would have known there was an emerging novel coronavirus?
Trust Moderna though, trust the "science" too that this was a "wet market" incident and not a "lab leak."