Question B

[Jonetta]

When it was determined that the research ducks were missing, investigators declared that they all needed to be destroyed because of the nature of the testing, as well as all of the other ducks in the lake. Was there any other alternative?

[Anita]

The were studying ways that viruses spread and some of the viruses they were testing could wipe out an entire population of birds. There really wasn't any way around destroying all the ducks the infected ducks may have come in contact with. The risk was just to great.

[Robin]

That was sad. I kept wondering if they could round up all of the ducks, take out the dozen research ducks that were tagged, and quarantine the rest until they were sure they had or hadn't been infected. Of course, this is assuming they had tests to tell if the ducks had been infected.

[Jonetta]

What Robin said. But, they’d been advised that the bug they were working with was highly infectious and dangerous so they couldn’t afford to take a chance with humans.

It was just so sad.

[Melissa]

I guess they could have tested one of the research ducks first just to make sure they were infected. It seemed like a very drastic decision.
I agree with Robin, but I can see where the human aspect comes into play as well.

[Charlene]

I thought it was a double blind test, that some were treated genetically to resist the virus while others weren't, but if any were contagious, it could have killed the entire wild population!

Too accurately close to things we have to think about today!

[Karen ♐]

I thought surely there must be some way to quarantine the ducks until they could determine if the others had been infected.

This did give me the shivers, Charlene. Way to close to what is going on today.

[Anita]

I thought the same thing. This could have been how Covid-19 began.