Coronavirus origins: ‘If nothing went wrong at Wuhan lab, why the obfuscations?’

Under the cover of a Chhau mask, an interview with the nameless-faceless ‘The Seeker’ who has been searching for the true origins of Covid-19 begins almost like a blind date. Like everyone else, the 29-year-old’s lockdown days were about ‘watching movies, reading books and browsing the Internet’ until web surfing took on a whole new meaning when he found himself at the centre of DRASTIC, short for Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating Covid-19. During an interaction with Mohua Das, he reveals how he plumbed the depths of the internet to find evidence that has compelled the world to re-examine whether the virus had indeed leaked from Wuhan Institute of Virology’s (WIV) lab

You don’t want to reveal your name but tell us a little about yourself.
I am a 29-year-old Bengali boy in Bhubaneswar with a mix of architectural, entrepreneurial, filmmaking and teaching experience. I was in Delhi working on a passion project — audiobooks —but then Covid changed our plans, our project got shelved and I came back to my family home in Bhubaneswar.

What made you believe that the lab leak theory was plausible?

Like most people, my initial impression was that it was a natural zoonosis — that the virus jumped from bats to humans via a pangolin — in the Huanan wet market. For me, it was stumbling on a 2013 Masters thesis, which I think, along with the RaTG13 (a SARS like betacoronavirus that infects the horseshoe bat) link that really blew this thing wide open.

It was Luigi Warren’s (scientist who pioneered the mRNA technology and a prominent member of DRASTIC) Twitter thread where it all started. Luigi did a brilliant distillation of what was known, and unknown about the miners. That fired up my curiosity, and I started digging into the Chinese academic journals.

How did you stumble upon the Chinese-language 2013 Masters and 2016 PhD theses, that took you inside the bat-filled mine shaft in Mojiang county, southern Yunnan where some miners had contracted a mystery disease in 2012?
The first time I heard about the sick miners, I had a flash of insight: ‘Wait, everyone’s typing queries on Google... Let me explore the Chinese academic publications and see if there are any skeletons in their closet’. I started keyword searching extensively in Chinese databases, and then one day, bang! I was led by an insatiable curiosity, patience, willingness and determination. And my knowledge of advanced search tricks came handy.

How do you feel about people dismissing DRASTIC investigations as a conspiracy theory?
Conspiracies are not needed to explain a lab leak. The problem is, there was, and continues to be, a complete lack of transparency.

WIV hasn’t yet shared the raw data, laboratory records, samples and specimens of its extensive collection of bat coronaviruses. They had one of the world’s largest databases of bat coronaviruses, but the databases were taken offline. If they have nothing to hide, and if nothing has gone wrong, why not show it? What we suspect is clumsy handling and an accident, and lab accidents are a well-known phenomenon. I think the facts speak for themselves. Active research on the same lineage of SARS-like coronaviruses was taking place in the vicinity of ground zero of the outbreak, and investigating how SARS-like coronaviruses infect humans was one of their primary research directions, they got grants for it. There is evidence of obfuscations, omissions, and inconsistencies in the data provided by the WIV. Significantly, safety concerns were documented in their facility, and Chinese authorities have made every effort to deny access to evidence.

I’m not saying the lab leak theory is one true holy theory, but that it is very clearly a plausible theory worth investigating.

What does it look like to you — a case of bioerror or bioterror?
My overall impression is that they found a variant of the coronavirus that infected the Mojiang miners, or at least it led them to the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2. With six human cases, the mine was their best bet to find a coronavirus whose spike protein was effective at attaching to receptors in human lung cells, i.e., a coronavirus that could potentially jump to humans. No wonder, they sampled the mine for at least four years (they didn’t reveal it until November last year). They got projects for testing them in animal models, cell lines, and for creating chimeras — combining different bat coronavirus backbones and spike proteins - to gain insight into its cross-species transmission mechanism, with the ultimate aim to create a vaccine. SARS-CoV-2 could have been generated by such an experiment, and then due to a lapse in safety protocols, escaped from that lab. Or it could be something more mundane like sampled from mine, sequenced, isolated, and somehow spilled over from the lab.

Why does the Wuhan lab leak theory matter?
In view of a global pandemic with four million deaths, hundreds of millions out of work, and trillions of dollars in economic damage, I think knowing the truth about its origins should be an end in itself. As for me, I am seeking the truth.