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This is concerning. My take on this might go against social norms, but the best place to put these bodies is in the ground, bury them quick. We have way better shot of controlling the spread of the virus if we recruit soil microbes to help.
A thread. 1/n https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/coronavirus-spread-dead-body-coroner?fbclid=IwAR2hK1h8NzDLzmL4spODFaMbkvfA3oGwBpDs63_h0XG8vVmIG76XInqtW48
A thread. 1/n https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/coronavirus-spread-dead-body-coroner?fbclid=IwAR2hK1h8NzDLzmL4spODFaMbkvfA3oGwBpDs63_h0XG8vVmIG76XInqtW48
I say this because, once the bodies are buried in soil, the transmission of the virus is likely to be reduced, possibly even stopped as soil microorganisms typically have efficient mechanisms to get rid of new, microbes and resist attack from novel microbial groups. 2/n
As the legend goes, this is how the antibiotic streptomycin was actually discovered, as they realized that once the TB infected people were dead and buried in the group, the disease spreading stopped. 3/n
Eventually, in Sal Waxman's soil microbiology lab in Rutgers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selman_Waksman, they figured out that the reason why transmission of TB stopped was because soil microbes (Streptomyces, bacteria) were able to synthesize the compound Streptomycin 4/n
Streptomycin that was isolated from S. griseus was found to be effective against tuberculosis, caused by tubercle bacillu. Now the compound is part of how we fight >70 different disease-causing bacterial species. 5/n
I hope this was helpful to demonstrate how soil has huge implications for public health. 6/6
