FYI...This is a copy of another post on a different thread about the cremations....
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I cannot comment on the mechanics of the seepage to the water-table, other than stating that it's a concern and a possibility. Viruses do last for years in dead bodies and does reach
beyond the grave. I mentioned this before on another thread. Pls read below a part from that write-up.
"Recently in 2016, some researchers in Lithuania and Finland hoping to gather DNA from a more obscure virus collected tissue from the mummified remains of a young child found within the
mid-17th century crypt of the Dominican Church. The child had no visible pox marks, but when the researchers sent the sample of the ancient DNA there was a big surprise. The sample was rich with variola, the virus that causes smallpox. The large quantity of the virus allowed the researchers to construct a high-quality copy of its genome, the first from such an old virus.
The other surprise was that this viral DNA shared many distinct features with modern strains of the variola virus, including several mutations, suggesting they were closely related. The researchers built a family tree of 49 modern strains and the child’s ancient one, and traced the evolution of all of them back to a
common ancestor that arose between 1530 and 1654 C.E."
This is not the only instance. The complete genome of the Spanish Flu has been constructed from parts of dead bodies. That's how the scientists now know that it also started in China.
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Anyway, there were a couple of books on the Spanish Flu Epidemic by Mark Humphries.
The CDC's
"The Deadliest Flu: The Complete Story of the Discovery and Reconstruction of the 1918 Pandemic Virus" - on how the virus was reconstructed.