Understandably, E. coli is a scary word. It’s a bacteria that makes people violently sick, and can even lead to death. Why, then, mess with E. coli, and was I just asking to be another Patient Zero for the next Covid-style pandemic?

First off, unlike Covid, E. coli is a bacteria that cannot get airborne unless one snorts an entire liquid sample of it and immediately sneezes it out. Even then, E. coli can’t really get into the system via the respiratory system (nose and lungs). It has to be ingested, or somehow get into one’s bladder. E. coli exists in everyone’s digestive tract and feces. It just doesn’t always cause infections. 

In other words, every time someone takes a dump, they risk getting an E. coli infection in their bladder if they wipe the wrong way, though that risk is very low. It is even lower in the lab.

Every college lab in the United States follows extremely strict safety protocols. I had to take several other lab courses, along with two years of lectures about microbiology, before I was allowed to get into the E. coli lab. Had I done anything stupid in those previous labs, I would not have been allowed into the E. coli lab at all.

Long story short, as long as everyone wears gloves and nobody licks the sample, working with E. coli in the lab is safe. After all, nobody- especially those of us who took a handful of microbiology courses and learned about all of the terrible things that can go wrong- wants to get sick. 

So, given that the risk of me starting the next diarrhea epidemic was (and is) very low, what was I trying to do in this experiment with E. coli anyway?