51–60 of 350 posts
If I were working in a lab I’d think it was hilarious to write “smallpox” on random bottles. Probably good that I work in software and not biology.
I thought that too. But then I use vintage lab glassware labeled Hydrochloric Acid and Potassium Hydroxide for oil & vinegar containers.
If I were working in a lab I’d think it was hilarious to write “smallpox” on random bottles. Probably good that I work in software and not biology.
I thought that too. But then I use vintage lab glassware labeled Hydrochloric Acid and Potassium Hydroxide for oil & vinegar containers.
Apparently this happened before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox > On July 1, 2014, six sealed glass vials of smallpox dated 1954, along with sample vials of other pathogens, were discovered in a cold storage room in an FDA laboratory at the National Institutes of Health location in Bethesda, Maryland. The smallpox vials were subsequently transferred to the custody of the CDC in Atlanta, where virus taken from…
Deciding to culture the samples, versus just destroying them without analysis, must be accompanied by an interesting risk/benefit analysis.
If I were working in a lab I’d think it was hilarious to write “smallpox” on random bottles. Probably good that I work in software and not biology.
A smallpox pandemic would be orders of magnitude more deadly than COVID. COVID has a very low death rate and is comparable to the flu, whereas Smallpox kills 30% of people it infects and disfigures an even higher percentage. And my understanding is that it is just as contagious (may be wrong on this). Read up on Operation Dark Winter (2001 era wargame of a US smallpox outbreak) for details on how this might play out.…
What data are you relying upon?
[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s1117-monkeypox.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully they're smart enough not to brag about it now that the feds are involved.
Handwriting or printer yellow dots can still lead to them. Sign of times though - calling law enforcement when you find old pathogen and its vaccine in a freezer in a vaccine development lab. MBA types. In order to mentally train myself for an MBA career i need to start calling law enforcement anytime i find a bug in the 20+ years old code.
It's not just MBA types. Needlessly escalating up the chain as a means to shirk responsibility is a broader societal trend. Post "what do I do" about anything anywhere short of a prepper forum and people will tell you to call some external authority, the police, your landlord, a credentialed professional, etc, etc, and wash your hands of the situation. Worse still, they will deride others for taking the responsibility of doing things themselves.
Odds are there's nothing of note in those vials. It's either a joke or the lab was previously doing something that's Nth order smallpox related so someone wrote smallpox on the vials because what's in them bears some logical relationship to something about smallpox, not because it's literally smallpox. And even if there is smallpox in there this is a facility that already works with similarly nasty things so they should already know how to deal with it.
Had the person cleaning the fridge brought this to their supervisor and they decided to dispose of it however the CDC will (there's published best practices for this stuff) people would be screeching about "why didn't you call the .gov to save you" as if the .gov would do anything other than follow the same best practices for disposal with the added extra step of collecting evidence to leave the door open to prosecuting people should they feel the can do so and stressing the crap out of everybody in the process.
Edit: Why don't any of the people that have decided my comment is wrongthink do me the courtesy of explaining why I'm so wrong?
A smallpox pandemic would be orders of magnitude more deadly than COVID. COVID has a very low death rate and is comparable to the flu, whereas Smallpox kills 30% of people it infects and disfigures an even higher percentage. And my understanding is that it is just as contagious (may be wrong on this). Read up on Operation Dark Winter (2001 era wargame of a US smallpox outbreak) for details on how this might play out.…
Huh, I got a smallpox vaccine when I was in the military in 2006. I assumed it was still a common thing, but I guess it hasn’t been done for civilians since the 70s? Crazy.
A smallpox pandemic would be orders of magnitude more deadly than COVID. COVID has a very low death rate and is comparable to the flu, whereas Smallpox kills 30% of people it infects and disfigures an even higher percentage. And my understanding is that it is just as contagious (may be wrong on this). Read up on Operation Dark Winter (2001 era wargame of a US smallpox outbreak) for details on how this might play out.…
Original variant was about half as infectious as measles (the most infectious known human disease), and some of the many of the new Covid variants are very very close (about 80%) as infectious as measles.
Difference between ‘you pass it to your friend’ and ‘you walk by a group of people in the park and they’re infected’