6 ms·

How do you suggest research be done?

• mahesh_rm 7y ago
  In whatever fashion you might think of, which does not endanger the lives of millions of people?
• pengaru 7y ago
  With great care and from a distance. If we're manually catching and swabbing wild bat rectums, I don't think we're doing a good job of keeping a distance, especially considering how far technology has progressed.
  • throwanem 7y ago
    Humans and bats aren't going to stop interacting, not least because guano is an excellent fertilizer and the easiest way to get it is by giving bats incentives to defecate over your fields. That being so, and given the utter implausibility of bat-butthole-swabbing robots or whatever, would you rather we had people taking the negligible additional risk of doing this kind of research, so that we have a chance of being able to prepare in advance for the arrival of zoonoses like SARS-CoV-2? Or would you rather be taken by surprise? Going by the current state of affairs in the world, I have to say that being taken by surprise seems to have very little to recommend it.
• decebalus1 7y ago
  With great care, in isolation and with full transparency. Tthere are protocols for how to deal with lab accidents or outbreaks and prior incidents show that all of these have lower priority than 'saving face' for the Chinese government.