COVID On Air #14: Sand Against The Wind with Yuri Deigin
In Episode 14: Sand Against the Wind, our host Josh Farden speaks with Yuri Deigin, CEO of Youthereum Genetics and author of the 16,000-word essay, “Lab-Made? SARS-CoV-2 Genealogy Through the Lens of Gain-of-Function Research.” Deigin has raised many questions over the past year regarding the origins of COVID that brought on a lot of skepticism. In recent months, however, his theories are gaining traction.
Deigin first jumps into discussing his years-long project: Youthereum Genetics. He and his team are figuring out preventative measures from getting older, including freezing or rolling back gene expressions, and learning what mechanisms within our bodies are preventing us from living a longer, more youthful life.
Josh then asks him why he wanted to learn the origins of COVID, a seeming departure from his usual line of work. Deigin mentions that he participates regularly in debating on social media - but with doing the research. Diving into Twitter, questions were starting to be raised about COVID that weren’t easily answerable.
In Deigin’s Medium essay, he makes the claim that the virus may have come from a lab versus something found in nature. Many viruses like COVID are created synthetically for years. Lab-made viruses are hard to detect because the genome may not necessarily contain the hallmarks of human manipulation. Modern technology makes it possible, in Deigin’s estimation, to alter genomes seamlessly.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the virus originated from. There is a gamut of possibilities, including contamination in a lab, where live virus samples being exposed, viruses on surfaces of machines that are being brought out to the general public from these facilities. It may be too late to do an investigation in China now, as it has likely been completely wiped clean.
Deigin doesn’t agree that virus facilities are being put to appropriate use, as many work with grant funding that has agendas. The grants inform the studies being produced, and some may include seeking out viruses in remote places and bringing them back into populated cities to work on in the lab.
Ralph Baric, an esteemed epidemiologist, recently announced that there’s a possibility that COVID could have been lab-made, causing a stir in the scientific community. It also gave more credibility to Deigin’s studies, as they have previously been criticized or ignored as they did not fit in with the common narrative that has been shared this past year.
Witnessing Baric make that statement, along with more journalists or popular media discussing it openly, Deigin finally sees a shift in what was previously thought of as a conspiracy theory. Most importantly, Deigin states, that it doesn’t matter if the virus is lab-made or was found in nature, getting the vaccine is the only way to eradicate it from the world.
Key Takeaways:
In 2012, six miners were in an abandoned copper mine in Mojiang cleaning bat feces and fell ill, three of which died. During this time there was an investigation about the nature of their illnesses. It is being called into question again today as the miners had similar symptoms as this strain of COVID.
Shortly after Deigin’s essay, bioengineer Rossana Segreto and Deigin wrote a research paper about how the genetic structure of SARS-CoV-2 does not rule out a laboratory origin.
The Seeker, an anonymous Twitter user posted the medical thesis of the miners, information that had not been previously seen. It showed they changed the name of the virus and other misleading data.
In 2002, there was a small outbreak of SARS-1 in which China cooperated with the rest of the world, and welcomed international help along with outside governments stepping in and testing animals to see where the outbreak came from. This time in 2020, Deigin suggests that there were no such resources given.
During the 2002-2003 outbreak in Toronto, they only had lockdowns at the hospitals. The symptoms were presented much quicker during this time which means the virus SARS-1 did not adapt to humans. This current variant is much more adaptable to humans, another clue that it may have been lab-made.
Deigin believes there’s a 90% chance that COVID was lab-made, but public perception of this idea wasn’t acknowledged during President Trump’s time in office because Trump spread the narrative, causing further division among party lines.
Nicolson Baker did an article for the New York Magazine about the possibility of a lab leak that gained a lot of attention in January of 2021.