Fuzzy little COVID detectors
temmuzcan/Getty Images
Before we get started, we need a moment to get our deep, movie trailer announcer-type voice ready. Okay, here goes.
“In a world where an organism too tiny to see brings entire economies to a standstill and pits scientists against doofuses, who can humanity turn to for help?”
How about bees? That’s right, we said bees. But not just any bees. Specially trained bees. Specially trained Dutch bees. Bees trained to sniff out our greatest nemesis. No, we’re not talking about Ted Cruz anymore. Let it go, that was just a joke. We’re talking COVID.
We’ll let Wim van der Poel, professor of virology at Wageningen (the Netherlands) University, explain the process: “We collect normal honeybees from a beekeeper, and we put the bees in harnesses.” And you thought their tulips were pretty great – the Dutch are putting harnesses on bees! (Which is much better than our previous story of bees involving a Taiwanese patient.)
The researchers presented the bees with two types of samples: COVID infected and non–COVID infected. The infected samples came with a sugary water reward and the noninfected samples did not, so the bees quickly learned to tell the difference.
The bees, then, could cut the waiting time for test results down to seconds, and at a fraction of the cost, making them an option in countries without a lot of testing infrastructure, the research team suggested.
The plan is not without its flaws, of course, but we’re convinced. More than that, we are true bee-lievers.
A little slice of … well, not heaven
risalbudiman006/Pixaby
If you’ve been around for the last 2 decades, you’ve seen your share of Internet trends: Remember the ice bucket challenge? Tide pod eating? We know what you’re thinking: Sigh, what could they be doing now?
Well, people are eating old meat, and before you think about the expired ground beef you got on special from the grocery store yesterday, that’s not quite what we mean. We all know expiration dates are “suggestions,” like yield signs and yellow lights. People are eating rotten, decomposing, borderline moldy meat.
They claim that the meat tastes better. We’re not so sure, but don’t worry, because it gets weirder. Some folks, apparently, are getting high from eating this meat, experiencing a feeling of euphoria. Personally, we think that rotten fumes probably knocked these people out and made them hallucinate.
Singaporean dietitian Naras Lapsys says that eating rotten meat can possibly cause a person to go into another state of consciousness, but it’s not a good thing. We don’t think you have to be a dietitian to know that.
It has not been definitively proven that eating rotting meat makes you high, but it’s definitely proven that this is disgusting … and very dangerous.