[mercy_dude]

I am curious how we are going about studying these in Macaques. Are we trying to deliberately get them the virus and see how their brain respond? If so, haven’t we learned enough on how virus jumps species and can wreck havoc?

[MKRNYILGLD]

The idea is that the monkeys are being used as a 'model organism' for how humans react to getting the virus. Since it is not possible (typically) to extract brain tissue from living humans during Covid infection and see how it's affecting their brain. So macaques are used as a stand-in.

I believe the macaques are just infected with the same Covid strain that can infect humans.

[kadoban]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that covid has already made its way to humans, and doesn't need to jump from monkeys.

[pedalpete]

Doesn't that assume that it had already jumped to monkeys from humans, or from bat to monkey to human?

I have no idea how the process works, and if it easier for a disease to jump from primate to human or vice-versa than it is from other species.