Thank you for this. I am a molecular biologist and cringe every time this gets shared. First, anyone with a PhD is probably not going to be working as a clinical lab scientist. Secondly, I've never heard of a clinical laboratory even owning a SEM (scanning electron microscope). These are mostly in university research laboratories and are expensive to run since you have to coat your sample in something that will reflect the electrons back to the scope (traditionally it was gold particles but there are other methods.) Lastly, SEM resolution is usually between 1-20 nm (nanometers). Let's say for the sake of argument that they used a 1 nm resolution one. 1 nm would be like one pixel in an image. SARS-CoV-2 is about 100 nm across. Influenza viruses are about 120 nm across. The scientist would be comparing something that looks really similar to one another at even the best resolution. Furthermore, the viruses would have been really hard to find in the sample since the vast majority of the sample would have been random proteins and general debris. I don't buy this bs story at all. Dont be fooled.
Thank you for this. I am a molecular biologist and cringe every time this gets shared. First, anyone with a PhD is probably not going to be working as a clinical lab scientist. Secondly, I've never heard of a clinical laboratory even owning a SEM (scanning electron microscope). These are mostly in university research laboratories and are expensive to run since you have to coat your sample in something that will reflect the electrons back to the scope (traditionally it was gold particles but there are other methods.) Lastly, SEM resolution is usually between 1-20 nm (nanometers). Let's say for the sake of argument that they used a 1 nm resolution one. 1 nm would be like one pixel in an image. SARS-CoV-2 is about 100 nm across. Influenza viruses are about 120 nm across. The scientist would be comparing something that looks really similar to one another at even the best resolution. Furthermore, the viruses would have been really hard to find in the sample since the vast majority of the sample would have been random proteins and general debris. I don't buy this bs story at all. Dont be fooled.