Thank You Medium And Donald Trump: You Toppled The Dominoes For The Coronavirus Lab-Leak Theory

Thank you Yuri Deigin for your April 2020 Medium article

I never use clickbait titles in my stories. Please suspend your disbelief ( or disgust) and read further.

You may wonder what Medium and Donald Trump have to do with the now-popular lab-leak theory about the Coronavirus’ origin. Sure, Medium is not Wikileaks. It’s not in the business of blowing the whistle on lies and conspiracies. It’s a commercial platform where writers are free to publish their stories subject to certain guidelines.

I will deal with Medium’s role first. Donald Trump will appear later in the story.

Before proceeding with the story, I claim no scientific background. As a layperson, I propose to look at how the mainstream media, a section of the scientific community, and political elites actively colluded to suppress the voices of those who suggested that the Coonavirus could have escaped from the Wuhan lab. My personal belief is the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Medium deserves the world’s gratitude because it was a Medium article that unleashed the curiosity of a team of independent investigators who relentlessly pursued the trail of the virus’ origin. Had the author of this story, Yuri Deigin, submitted it to any mainstream media outlet or social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, the world would never have seen it. His social media accounts would have been suspended. Here is the link to the Medium story that triggered a flurry of investigations into the origin of the virus.

Thanks to the above Medium article, the tide has turned against China’s lie about Coronavirus’ origin in the Wuhan wet market. In a dramatic turn of events, the world is now seriously considering the theory that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The world should shout a big thank you to the brave and conscientious scientists and independent investigators who mined the Internet to unearth strong circumstantial evidence that supports the lab-leak theory.

Yuri Deigin begins his Medium story with a bold statement:

If you hear anyone claim “we know the virus didn’t come from a lab”, don’t buy it — it may well have.

Yuri Deigin talks about RaTG13, a virus that the Chinese bat virologist, Shi Zhengli, had revealed to the world in a paper published in the journal Nature in February 2020. Deigin speculates if COVID-19 might have emerged through some genetic work being done in a lab working with RaTG13 or related viruses.

Thousands of people read Yuri Deigin’s Medium story. One man decided to dig deeper. He was The Seeker- a 20-something old Indian citizen. He decided to pursue the RaTG13 thread.

The Seeker worked closely with a team of researchers, entrepreneurs and investigators called DRASTIC ( DECENTRALISED RADICAL AUTONOMOUS SEARCH TEAM INVESTIGATING COVID-19).

Newsweek described DRASTC as :

“They are a group of amateur sleuths, with few resources except curiosity and a willingness to spend days combing the internet for clues. Throughout the pandemic, about two dozen or so correspondents, many anonymous, working independently from many different countries, have uncovered obscure documents, pieced together the information, and explained it all in long threads on Twitter — in a kind of open-source, collective brainstorming session that was part forensic science, part citizen journalism, and entirely new.”

‘The Seeker’ dug up information that contradicted the wet market theory

Sherlock Holmes, the ace fictional English detective, knew criminals would leave some evidence behind however clever they might be. Based on this Holmesian wisdom, The Seeker used his online research skills to forage the Intenet for traces of information that China forgot to hide.

The Seeker unearthed CNKI, a database of Chinese academic journals. He came across a 60-page thesis by a student of Kumming Medical University in 2013. This report refers to a 2012 incident in which some miners died of a SARS-like virus. The Seeker again struck gold as he found a PhD thesis supervised by Gao Fu, head of the Chinese CDC where it was mentioned that four miners had SARS-like antibodies.

The Seeker also discovered a database of academic papers supervised by Shi Zhengli. He found she had detailed plans to test the infectivity of SARS-like viruses in lab animals and human cells, engineer cross-species mutation and genetic recombination of the viruses. The Seeker worked closely with Fransisco de Asis de Ribera, a Madrid-based data scientist. Rossana Segreto is another prominent member of DRASTIC.

The DRASTIC has published its findings on its website: (https://drasticresearch.org)

The mainstream and social media have started singing a different tune

In February 2020, The Washington Post published an article that attacked Senator Tom Cotton’s lab-leak theory as “a conspiracy theory” that had been “debunked”.

Recently, the paper edited the article and added:

“Earlier versions of this story and its headline inaccurately characterized comments by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) regarding the origins of the coronavirus. The term ‘debunked’ and The Post’s use of ‘conspiracy theory’ have been removed because, then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus,”

Facebook that once threatened to take down posts spreading false information about COVID-19, came up with a clarification on May 26, 2021.

“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps.

The New York Times had described the lab-origin theory as ‘debunked” while reporting former CDC head Dr Robert Redfield’s statement that the virus originated from a laboratory.

The New York Times, Vox, and Politifact have also changed their stance.

This brings us to Donald Trump as a facilitator of the lab-leak hypothesis.

The media’s hatred towards Donald Trump has been its blindspot

When the pandemic broke out in January 2020, Donald Trump had no qualms in asserting that the Chinese virus escaped from a lab. The media, blinded by its hatred towards him, accused him of being a conspiracist. Curiously, if Trump had supported the natural origin theory, the media would have tried investigating the lab-escape theory.

This is what The Seeker told the Indian media outlet, opindia.com

“If Donald Trump had said that COVID-19 suddenly jumped from animals to humans and had endorsed the wet market theory, then the media and the scientists would have focussed on finding the true origins of COVID-19. Since Trump suggested that COVID-19 came from a lab, everyone had to be contrarian. The media completely shut its eyes to what was right in front of them. Trump is largely to be credited for people talking about the origins of COVID-19 and the media shutting its eyes to it”.

Trump is enjoying his “I told you so’ moment of glory. In a statement Trump has said:

“China should pay 10 trillion dollars to US and the world for the death and destruction they have caused. Now everyone, even so-called ’enemy’, are beginning to say that PresidentTrump was right about China virus coming from the Wuhan lab.”

We cannot tar the entire media with the broad brush of partisanship. For instance, the New York Magazine consistently refused to parrot the politically correct liberal media’s cacophony of misinformation. On January 04, 2021, the New York Magazine published an excellent investigative piece by Nicholson Baker ( link at the end of this story).

In this story, Baker quoted Alina Chan, a scientist who works at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

“The world is sitting on a precedent-setting decision right now. It is unclear if SARS2 is 100 percent natural or emerged due to lab/research activities. If we walk away from this, demonstrating that we cannot effectively investigate its origins, it will pave the way for future COVIDS.”

When scientists shamed science

People lose respect for science when scientists actively collude to suppress plausible hypotheses. It has been revealed how many scientists actively worked to suppress the lab-leak theory.

Biologist Peter Daszak is President of EcoHealth Alliance, a research group that conducted an international programme to study natural pathogens with the potential to cause a pandemic. He had been collaborating with Shi Zhengli. He had co-authored many papers with Shi and channelled thousands of dollars of grant money to fund Shi’s research.

Daszak worked hard to discredit the scientists who suggested the lab-escape hypothesis. He persuaded 26 scientists to sign a letter that appeared in The Lancet on February 19, 2020. The letter stated that “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID19 does not have a natural origin”

Dr Anthony Fauci who was a member of Trump’s Covid-19 Task Force has emerged as another dubious scientist who worked to discredit the lab-leak theory. In a May 2020 interview with National Geographic he said:

“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, (the scientific evidence) is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.”

Fauci is singing a different tune now. When Politifact’s Katie Sanders asked him whether he was still confident that COVID-19 emerged naturally, he said:

“No, actually……No, I’m not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened.”

Many critics have accused Fauci of being too cosy with the Wuhan lab. Scientists who sold their souls to the Chinese dragon deserve our condemnation.

Closing thoughts

More skeletons are tumbling out from the Chinese cupboard. The Wall Street Journal recently quoted American intelligence reports about how three researchers in the Wuhan lab were hospitalised in November 2019 with COIVD-19 symptoms.

The pandemic crippled the world and has inflicted unimaginable suffering on the people. The lab-leak theory has gained wider acceptance but awaits scientific validation. China will do all it can to cover up evidence about the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab. It refused to share the lab’s raw data with the WHO’s team. Where does that leave us?

It’s likely that the lab origin of the virus will remain an untested hypothesis unless some whistleblower inside China exposed the dark truth. This is unlikely as nobody will want to play with their lives or the safety of their families. Or a political revolt against the Chinese Communist Party has to happen sooner than later.

Anyway, China has lost the perception battle. Its reputation as a responsible nation has been damaged beyond repair. Its credibility is in tatters. The world has lost its trust in China.

If you ask me personally, I will not rule out the bioterror angle, even if you accuse me of being a conspiracist. See, history tells us communist dictators like Stalin and Mao treated the death of millions as a mere statistic in their megalomaniacal and delusional quest for absolute power and world domination.

One day, whenever it is, the truth about the origin of the Coronavirus will come out because truth has an uncanny ability to escape through the crevices of falsehood.

Thanks for reading!

Referenced articles