As majority global opinion takes a U-turn on the genesis of coronavirus – from natural origin to lab leak – we spotlight three Indians who contributed towards finding the answer.
One question on the mind of everybody on the planet for the past year-and-a-half is: where and how did the lethal coronavirus originate?
Even though major efforts of the entire world have been diverted to tackling the crisis, various theories have been doing the rounds on the possible origins of the deadly disease that has given rise to the unprecedented pandemic – having killed nearly 39 lakh people globally ever since it began early last year.
Speculations about its origins began almost simultaneously with the pandemic itself. The predominant hypothesis until recently was the natural origin of coronavirus as a big and important section of top scientists of the world and the mainstream Western media backed it. Even then, there was a second theory, called the lab leak theory, which looked at the possibility of the virus escaping a lab, specifically in Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 illness was first reported in late 2019.
This second theory was vehemently opposed by the supporters of the first, with many scientists and newspapers debunking it through carefully constructed reports and arguments. Chief among them was Dr Peter Daszak, head of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit that had close links with Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and its virologist Dr Shi Zhengli; WIV is suspected to be the location where virus originated, by the proponents of the lab leak theory. Anyone who dared to support the lab leak theory was accused of racism, Sinophobia, or even targetted as a conspiracy theorist.
As governments got busy in trying to contain the rampaging pandemic, a group of people, scattered all over the world, did not give up their search for the truth. Beginning April-May last year, they started collecting vital information that would go on to provide important clues about modern century’s biggest mystery. They came together on Twitter under a group called DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19), where they shared their findings, supported each other, and slowly, amassed so much credible information in a year that it became difficult for the scientific community and the Western media to ignore the probability of the theory.
Cut to the last week of May, 2021, when the US President Joe Biden called for an investigation into the coronavirus origins, lending credence to the lab leak theory and brining global spotlight on the work of DRASTIC. In a volte-face, the world media and top scientists are now backing the theory.
It remains to be seen if an investigation will, indeed, reveal the real truth behind COVID-19, but it’s a matter of pride that three Indians are actively involved with DRASTIC — an anonymous young man in his late 20s from West Bengal known as ‘The Seeker’, and a Pune-based scientist-couple Dr Monali C Rahalkar and Dr Rahul Bahulikar.
They are neither professional sleuths nor journos, but have displayed bravado in their risky investigations. This is especially true of The Seeker, who has been digging vital information from Chinese websites by trawling the dark alleys beyond Google’s purview through OSINT skills, Advanced Google Tricks and Boolean search operators. He has even translated from Chinese to English. Dr Rahalkar calls him “an open source intelligence expert.” The Seeker, who was a science teacher, is into architecture, filmmaking and painting. He remains elusive despite the global spotlight on him, and stays away from media radar.
Science India reached out to the three to help understand the century’s biggest dark secret. Affirms The Seeker: “I hope the theory will be investigated and someday known why so many millions of people died. The world deserves an explanation.”
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: THE SEEKER
‘I may have some keys to solve the mystery’
It has been a year since conscientious citizens across the globe started undertaking research to go to the bottom of the coronavirus mystery. These individuals from around the world soon came together on Twitter, under a group called DRASTIC. Its most mysterious member, however, is an Indian known only by his Twitter handle, ‘The Seeker’. Available only on Twitter, he uses a pencil drawing of the mask used by the folk ‘Chhau’ dancers of West Bengal, as his profile picture.
Last year, The Seeker pried open the massive Chinese database of academic journals and theses called CNKI — a key source for DRASTIC to find missing links behind the death of three miners in Mojiang in Yunnan, China, in 2012, due to an illness possibly caused by the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 virus. The dots led them to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), in Wuhan, where the COVID-19 outbreak took place in late 2019.
The Seeker shares the details of his journey on the trail of coronavirus in an exclusive email interview with Debobrat Ghose.
When did you feel there were suspicious gaps in the coronavirus origin narrative and they needed to be probed?
It was in April 2020, when the inconsistencies in the wet market origin theory started surfacing. For me, the turning point came in May last year, when I discovered the Mojiang miners’ thesis.
What convinced you that organisations with greater resources were not doing enough? Was there a reason for their reluctance to go the whole hog and expose the truth?
First, the scientific world debunking the lab leak theory was hasty and without foundation. Second, the media started presenting natural origin theory as the only possibility, while claiming a scientific consensus. I think the main reason they covered their eyes, mouth and ears, was that Donald Trump (the then US President) supported the theory. From that point, the theory became an article of political faith, rather than a scientific quest.
You are, as you mention in your Twitter account, not a journalist or a scientist. What convinced you that data mining could provide the key to the Wuhan Lab mystery?
Early in the pandemic, there was an information monopoly, and I thought it was important to try to acquire as much data as possible to understand what happened. Like any investigative process, you want to know everything about the suspects.
How did the collaboration come about?
On Twitter. It was very organic, and we were brought together by our thirst for knowledge.
From your investigation it is clear that novel coronavirus has been known to the Chinese since close to a decade. What possibly could have stopped them from revealing it to the world?
No, I won’t say “it is clear” — we should not jump from what seems a very plausible scenario to assuming that’s what happened. I don’t have clear answers at the moment, but I may have some of the keys to solving the mystery.
Is there any indication that they were planning to develop it as a biological weapon? Is there evidence of other similar viruses from the lab?
No, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that SARS-CoV-2 was developed as a bioweapon. The claim is scientifically unfounded. If it did come from a lab, then it speaks of an accident, rather than anything malicious. Yes, it is now more than obvious that Wuhan Institute of Virology didn’t disclose all the sequences they were studying, and it is very much possible that there are other similar unpublished viruses — or several — sitting in their database, which mysteriously vanished.
As a lot of evidence has come up now, what next?
A multi-disciplinary team of scientists and experts with the necessary forensic skills would be necessary to clarify questions about the origins of COVID-19.
As you have been successful in digging out evidence as an ‘amateur sleuth’ in this case, is there a background of personal interest in investigations or did you have a favourite detective character or author while growing up that inspired you to take up this sleuthing operation?
Indeed, I am a voracious reader of detective novels, and I grew up reading the works of Bengali authors like Satyajit Ray, Nihar Ranjan Gupta, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay and Ibn-e-Safi, and they have had a huge influence on me. My favourite detective character is, of course, Feluda (aka Prodosh Chandra Mitter) — the famous Bengali ‘Private Investigator’ created by author-filmmaker Satyajit Ray.
Interview: Dr Monali C Rahalkar
Putting Spotlight on Chinese Miners, the First Possible Victims of a COVID-like Illness.
Pune-based microbiologist, Dr Monali C Rahalkar, working with the Agharkar Research Institute’s Bioenergy group, was more than just curious about the genesis of COVID-19 when the pandemic broke out early last year. So, she decided to dig deep on the Internet and within weeks of her pithy research, along with husband and scientist Dr Rahul Bahulikar, had unearthed a treasure trove of information that the duo published in a paper last summer, titled Lethal Pneumonia Cases in Mojiang Miners (2012) and the Mineshaft Could Provide Important Clues to the Origin of SARS-CoV-2.
The couple’s findings were an important link in the chain of believers across the world who felt that the origin of coronavirus was not natural but possibly a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the disease was first reported in late 2019. Soon, the Pune couple became part of a growing tribe on Twitter working to find evidence for the origins of COVID-19, under an umbrella name called DRASTIC.
In an interview with Science India, Dr Rahalkar, who holds a doctorate in Microbial Ecology from the University of Konstanz, Germany, shares her journey of the past one year that has brought her international spotlight, and how her research has helped top scientists of the world to begin believing in the Wuhan ‘lab leak theory’, which was repudiated vehemently last year by the global scientific community.
When did you feel there were suspicious gaps in the coronavirus origin narrative that needed to be probed?
I started reading more about COVID-19 from February 2020. It was surprising to see that a paper on Biorxiv (an open access pre-print repository for biological sciences) by some Indian scientists from IIT was withdrawn, though it had been online on January 31, 2020.
Second came the letter in The Lancet published in February, signed by 27 scientists, including Peter Daszak, an American biologist who heads the EcoHealth Alliance that has been collaborating with Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) for years on research on viruses. The letter had no substance and stated that the virus was completely natural and that the signatories stood in solidarity with the Chinese scientists and health professionals. Then, I came across an interview of Dr Shi Zhengli of the WIV, on March 11, 2020. It became clear that the WIV, and especially Dr Shi, were collecting a lot of samples from Yunnan and Guangdong and her work on coronaviruses especially, the SARS-like viruses, was going on for more than 15 years.
The Kristian Andersen paper in Nature Medicine appeared around the same time but I did not find some of its arguments convincing. He had mentioned about RaTG13, a virus which is 96.2% similar to SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19. I had also read a paper by Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina who has been working on coronaviruses, and found that his team was collaborating with WIV’s Shi Zhengli, who was providing the spike sequences and plasmids from wild viruses. Around the same time, three or four other papers were published about pangolin being the intermediate host. Putting all of this together, I became suspicious about the virus — if it was entirely natural or jumped from bats, or intermediate hosts. The WIV having the largest collection of coronavirus samples was also a red flag, as it had all started there.
When did you become convinced about important clues lying in Mojiang mines and how did you go about collecting information on the earliest cases of coronavirus like infections among the miners there in 2012?
It was around May 5 last year when I started to find more about RaTG13. I read Zhou 2020, the first paper in Nature by WIV on SARS-CoV-2, three to four times but got no clue on RaTG13, the virus closest to SARS-CoV-2 as the two are 96.2% similar. Then, I started to search on Google, and I found three-four preprints or open eds saying different things about RaTG13. I smelled a rat in RaTG13.
According to a preprint by Dean Bengston, published late April 2020, RaTG13 was similar to a sample also collected by the WIV and known as Bt/CoV4991. The date of collection of 4991 and RaTG13 and the region from where they were collected — the Yunnan province of China — matched. And the 370 base sequence of 4991 was 100% similar to the region in RaTG13, therefore, according to him they were the same. This was an important clue, so I followed this and found a reference for the 4991 sample. It mentioned about an abandoned mineshaft in Mojiang, the site from where these samples were collected. The name Mojiang struck me as I remembered reading about it in Shi Zhengli’s interview to the Scientific American. The third paper published in Science, a news saying New Killer Virus in China, was also found.
My husband Dr Rahul Bahulikar and I found all these clues around May 10, 2020, and saw this straight connection of the Mojiang mineshaft with RaTG13 and the death of three men who had suffered from a SARS-like disease while cleaning up the Mojiang mine in 2012. Then, The Seeker268, a Twitter user, emailed us, when we had published our findings in a preprint on May 19, 2020. The preprint described the connection; we had also sent the same to Nature, on May 16, 2020. The Seeker sent us the link of the Master Thesis describing the illness of six men in Mojiang.
What are the challenges you faced while accessing Chinese websites and documents?
It was not difficult to obtain a login and password for cnki.net, the Chinese national resource of knowledge and research. We could download our own copy of the thesis describing the aforementioned illness of six men in Mojiang mines. We translated the text using Google Translation. Of course, I never had a clue about searching Chinese documents; The Seeker used to do this. We only translated the Master and PhD thesis. Other members in DRASTIC were expert at this.
Why did the illness of Mojiang miners not spread to anyone else? Is there a possibility that the virus that ultimately caused COVID-19 could have been manipulated?
The six workers were exposed to a large amount of bat guano while cleaning the mine, as also to bats present in the caves. The others, if at all, could have entered the mine for a short while. However, the mine was abandoned, and we don’t know why. The disease that affected the six miners could be limited to them, as this could be a zoonotic jump. But the virus might have not been transmissible. And, perhaps, due to the horse shoe bats in the mine, the doctors may have already been suspicious that this was like SARS. Dr Zhong Nanshan had said that this could be primary viral pneumonia, and related to bat coronaviruses. The doctors, too, would have taken utmost care if they suspected a SARS like infection.
Therefore, I suspect that the virus which infected the miners could have been similar to SARS-CoV-2 but not exactly, as it might not be adapted enough to human beings and not transmissible. Therefore, it is possible that if the SARS-CoV-2 came from the mine or the miners, it was genetically manipulated in some sense.
After all these months of research, how will you sum up the collective result of DRASTIC members?
I would say that we — us and the DRASTIC — together collected many clues on the COVID-19 origins. Many of these clues have been important pieces of circumstantial evidence, mainly pointing to a lab-derived origin. This could be either a sample, or a modified or an engineered virus, or a live virus from the bats or the miners. The lab theory is now viral and many people believe this is a plausible explanation of what had really happened.
A big and important part of the international scientific community was vociferous in debunking the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis, especially when the pandemic began early last year. Did it try to repudiate your findings? How did you surpass this challenge?
Yes. People like Kristian Andersen, Eddie Holmes, Peter Daszak, Andrew Rambaut, Angela Rasmussen, and many others were debunking the lab origin theory. These people have conflict of interest and some also have ties to Chinese laboratories. Daszak has major conflict of interest. We and many others on the DRASTIC team tried to converse with these people, but instead of talking to us, they blocked us on Twitter. A good point is that no one criticised our paper, the one published in Frontiers in Public Health. In fact, after we published our paper, Shi Zhengli published an Addendum, where for the first time she admitted that WIV had worked on the miners’ samples.
Members of DRASTIC were criticised for not being virologists or not having experience of research on coronaviruses. But the virology community had ignored the origin of COVID-19 for too long. Therefore, people like us, Yuri Deigin, Rossana Segreto, Billy Bostickson, Gilles Demenauef, Rodolfe-de-Maistre, Francisco de Asis had to put a lot of time and expertise to publish pre-prints, articles and peer reviewed papers in scientific journals.
Where does the international scientific community stand today on the Wuhan Lab leak theory?
Many top scientists, including Jesse Bloom, Ralph Baric, Ian Lipkin, David Relman, have been part of the signatory group demanding investigation into the lab leak or lab origin theory. Ralph Baric is the biggest name in the field of genetic engineering in coronaviruses and especially SARS-like coronaviruses. He has also commented that the answers to the origins of this virus may lie in the archives or databases of WIV. The bat and rodent coronavirus database has been offline since September 12, 2019, well before the pandemic was declared. Ian Lipkin was also part of the proximal origin paper. But it seems that when he understood that the WIV labs used S2 or S3, i.e., low level security, he also joined the letter, published in Science, in May 2021. Noteworthy is Prof Richard Ebright, who has always been advocating about biosafety and problems associated with gain-of-function research.
Interview: Dr Rahul Bahulikar
‘Everyone Deserves to Know The Truth Behind Millions of Deaths’
Dr Rahul Bahulikar, a scientist at the BAIF Development Research Foundation, Pune, is the other half of the Indian scientist-couple, who along with The Seeker, has contributed significantly to the global research on the possible lab-leak hypothesis for the origin of COVID-19 disease. Dr Bahulikar, who holds a PhD in diatom ecology from University Konstanz, Germany, got involved actively in the independent research to seek answer to the biggest question faced by humanity in a century, when his wife started trawling the Internet for possible clues to the origin of the deadly pandemic. Soon, the duo was coasting on the Internet, accumulating vital pieces of the puzzle that is COVID-19. He speaks to Science India on the research, the hurdles they faced and the conclusions they have drawn through their bravado.
What was the biggest driving force behind your quest to trace the origin of COVID-19?
For me, the biggest driving force was my wife Monali. She found several references and used to discuss with me. After going through those articles or clues, we would discuss each possible point. Then, based on our discussion, we would search further information or publication of scientists involved in the work. Later, DRASTIC team, especially people like Luigi Warren, Francisco de Asis, Billy Bostickson and others became our colleagues in this quest.
We discussed a lot about how the virus could have started in a crowded city like Wuhan. We also read about the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a laboratory famous for its coronavirus collection. Monali and I started reading more on chimeric virus research done at a North Carolina laboratory, which is known for its coronavirus genetic manipulation experiments. Also, the more we read, we became more and more suspicious that only natural origin of COVID-19 cannot be the answer and there could be possibilities of lab origin too. Shi Zhengli’s interview brought many new things to our notice and we started on a journey together in unravelling the truth.
What were the challenges you faced while accessing Chinese websites/ documents?
The publications of responsible people from China are available and can be accessed easily over the Internet. But to access the theses on Chinese websites, language was the major hurdle. We initially did not know whether such documents existed as they are not accessible on common scientific databases, search engines, etc. When The Seeker told us about the Master’s and PhD theses, it was easier to register and download from the cnki.net website.
Among the three Indians who have brought the spotlight on the theory of lab-manufactured virus, one of your co-researchers has maintained anonymity but the two of you have gone public with your profile and your study. Given the situation, how real is the threat perception to both of you — to your work and life?
Initially, we were a bit worried but were relieved to know that we were not alone. An international team including DRASTIC is speaking about this. We believe that this work is not against any country but is an effort to search the truth that everyone on this planet has the right to know. As our work is totally scientific, we are not worried much about the threats.
Given the scope and implications of your work, have you been supported by important scientists, people in important places, governments? Could you talk about the support you first received and how it has grown in subsequent weeks?
We have been encouraged by Dr Kishore Paknikar (Ex-Director, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune), Dr Vidya Gupta (Secretary, MACS, Pune; ex-Head, Division of Biochemical Sciences, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune), Dr Milind Watve (ex-Prof IISER, Pune), Prof Sujata Bhargav (ex-Head SPPU, Pune), Girish Sohani (ex-President, BAIF, Pune) and many BAIF colleagues and friends. Recently, Prof P Balaram (NCBS, ex-Director IISc, Bengaluru) also exhorted people to go through our research.
Initially, there was a theory on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from China’s wet market. What is its status now?
When the pandemic started, we were bombarded by TV channels, newspapers and scientific publications about possible origin of SARS-CoV-2 from China’s wet market. Scientific journals like The Lancet were also supporting the zoonotic origin of the virus. As days went by, we asked ourselves many questions, which forced us to dismiss the zoonotic origin and favour the lab leak hypothesis. Some points that led to this belief were:
1. WHO tested more than 80K samples from various animals from wet market but did any animal show signs of the virus?
2. The nearest neighbour of the SARS-CoV-2, the RaTG13 induced similar symptoms in the Mojiang miners who took ill. The RaTG13 was found more than 1500 km from Wuhan, and samples of bats and miners were transported to WIV for further work.
3. The WIV, in their previous publications, demonstrated high-end virus modification technologies, like cultivation of SARS-like virus from animal waste, development of chimeric viruses, cell line passaging, etc.
What has been WHO’s role in covering up the possible, man-manipulated virus that led to the pandemic?
Following points hint towards a possible cover-up:
1. Late announcement of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic by the WHO
2. Confusing remarks on various aspects of controlling the pandemic, such as the possibility of human-to-human spread, usefulness of masks or not, quality of masks and social distance needed, usefulness of medicines such as the HCQS, Remdesivir, etc.
3. Inclusion of Dr Peter Daszak in the team that visited Wuhan for inspection even when he has conflict of interest
4. Non-inclusion of possible lab-leak hypothesis for investigation.
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