20200508F, Santa Cruz, CA: On Dec 30th, 2019, virologist Shi Zhengli began testing samples from patients who had a mysterious illness in Wuhan, China. An article by Scientific America was written about her, originally published online Mar 11, 2020: How China’s “Bat Woman” Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus.
Here are quotes of Shi Zhengli from the article:
I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong.
I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.
Could they have come from our lab?
Eight months of hard work seemed to have gone down the drain. [after not being able to find SARS virus in bats] We thought maybe bats had nothing to do with SARS.
The majority of them [coronaviruses] are harmless.
You don’t need to be a wildlife trader to be infected.
That really took a load off my mind. I had not slept a wink for days.
Wildlife trade and consumption are only part of problem.
Maybe we are getting used to it. The worst days are certainly over.
The Wuhan outbreak is a wake-up call.
The mission must go on.
What we have uncovered is just the tip of an iceberg.
Bat-borne coronaviruses will cause more outbreaks. We must find them before they find us.
Other quotes of Shi Zhengli:
The 2019 novel coronavirus is a punishment by nature to humans’ unsanitary life styles. I promise with my life that the virus has nothing to do with the lab. [WeChat Feb 2, 2020]
No matter how difficult things are, there will not be a ‘defector’ situation. We’ve done nothing wrong. With strong belief in science, we will see the day when the clouds disperse and the sun shines. [WeChat May 2, 2020]
I will save analysis of these quotes for another time.
20200511M: Here’s a looped photo I took on the 30th of December, 2019. I enjoy noticing the way the reflection of the light is affected by the interference of the waves on the lake. The path of the boat towards the rays of the sun is like the path we were on pre-pandemic. I imagine the portion of the lake with reflected light as representing the pandemic wormhole. The path that we take as we exit the wormhole is unknown, as is in which universe we will exit. What is more certain is that we will exit the wormhole. Personally, I’m targeting June 8th, 2020 as my exit date.
surfing the universe 