FROM: [email protected]
RE: Weird thing today
Hey there —
Coming in this A.M. to the lab I did the regular check with the test rats, but the count came up short. We were supposed to have 12 rats in the Southside RED cage infected with COVID-19 and the rest (22) in the Southside BLUE cage for control, and it looked like we only had 8 rats left in the COVID-19 cage.
So, weird, right? I looked around and noticed that there was a gap in the cage assembly for the COVID-19 rats and it looked to me like maybe that’s how 4 infected test specimens got loose, so I pulled the counter away from the wall and began to search and got nowhere until I heard some noise in the cleaning-utility closet, and there they were, all 4 of them, lapping up a small spill. One of the bleach containers I guess was leaking, so they’ve been drinking bleach all night.
I put them back into the secure extra cage and I guess we can wait for them to expire because I can’t imagine they’ll survive drinking bleach, right?
I’ll let the night shift know about this but we should let everyone in the lab know that the cage assemblies are faulty.
Thanks!
JP
FROM: [email protected]
RE: RE: Weird thing today
That is really weird. Just checked the lab. I think the COVID-19 specimens are dead already? Did you replace the bleach-drinking rats? Because I now count 4 healthy rats and 22 rats in the control cage and the rest I guess are dead from the bleach? Can you clarify this for me? I need to know how to report this to the CDC etc. when we do the final tabs. Thanks!
Bennet
FROM: [email protected]
RE: RE: RE: Weird thing today
No, the 4 rats that are alive are the ones that drank the bleach. They came from the COVID-19 cage and drank bleach by mistake and should probably be dead by now because they were infected with COVID before escaping. I’ll check later today when I do my lab rounds.
JP
FROM: [email protected]
RE: RE: RE: RE: Weird thing today
Okay, so yesterday I put the 4 healthy bleach-drinking rats in the infection cage and infected all of them with COVID-19 at the highest viral load we have.
This morning I expected to find 4 dead rats but instead they’re all fine and basically just chilling.
So I tested them for COVID-19 and discovered that none of them show any traces of infection. And the ear tags all match so I know the rats are the same. So the question is, did drinking bleach cure them of COVID-19???
We need to stop other testing and focus on this.
Bennet
FROM: [email protected]
RE: Using personal email
Hey there Bennet —
JP here. Using my non .edu email and suggest you do the same because the university email servers are not secure. I mentioned your findings to the lab supervisor and immediately was called to a meeting with the dean and the research fellows’ council and told in no uncertain terms that there’s no way drinking bleach can cure COVID-19 in rats or ANYONE ELSE and that we need to shut down whatever we’re doing to test that and neither one of us is to tell ANYONE about this at all. So, forget the bleach and just get rid of those healthy rats by giving them to the cancer teams or something, and let’s just do the other set of tests, the ones with the teeny tiny masks, which I know are a pain to tie onto the rats but that’s the direction they want us to investigate and boy were they mad to learn that drinking bleach cures COVID-19. So shut it down and let’s shred the notebooks and tell the night team you were just trolling them to be funny.
Okay?
JP
FROM: [email protected]
RE: RE: Using personal email
Hey JP:
Totally get it. I shut it all down and just for good measure I put the rest of the rats into the Southside RED cage and infected them all with COVID-19 at a HUGE viral load and left them overnight. Meanwhile let the night teams know it was all a funny haha joke, which they bought. Consider the situation over. Sorry to have caused such a problem with the bleach-drinking-cure discovery.
Was confused this afternoon to see that the whole cage of infected rats were still doing fine and realized that I had left the powerful UV lamp trained on them for 24 hours, so maybe the UV rays are also a cure? Should I shut this down, too? Say the word!
Bennet
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