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Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

nytimes.com

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Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#131

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

trevyn wrote: post #111
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually just got my MBA so I feel extra qualified to answer this statement. When you see something that does not seem belong where it is, you cannot pretend that did not see it. In fact, willful blindness is a thing. There is a reason CYA has become a well known acronym.

I’m curious, do you see the fundamental vulnerability in this state of affairs?

That is an interesting question and I am inclined to answer it, but I don't want to assume the meaning behind it. Could you narrow it down a little to make sure I don't misinterpret it?

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#132

Post by killjoywashere »

lazide wrote: post #120
foo92691 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deciding to culture the samples, versus just destroying them without analysis, must be accompanied by an interesting risk/benefit analysis.

If you’re trying to decide how big a risk it is that there are other vials out there, definitely. Especially since we’ve stopped wide spread vaccination as it’s considered eradicated. If some gov’t lab deep in Siberia has some samples - how big a problem would i be? actually?

Spritz it on some freshly laundered towels in a 5-star hotel (lots of international travelers) and you have a hot mess fast. Same thing in a Motel 6, you get longer dwell the in the first country before it spreads overseas.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#133

Post by jart »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #103
jart wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In July 2018, the Food and Drug Administration approved tecovirimat, the first drug approved for treatment of smallpox" even though "the global eradication of smallpox was certified by the World Health Assembly on 8 May 1980" could a doctor please explain in what universe this makes sense?

The one where small vials of smallpox are occasionally found abandoned in lab freezers.

Biotech companies can create vaccines for new diseases within hours of receiving the source code. Why would pharma pay billions of dollars to get a treatment approved for an old disease zero people have?

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#134

Post by tigershark »

bastardoperator wrote: post #86
IAmWorried wrote: post #33

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.…

This is certifably false when it comes to covid and the flu: according to Johns Hopkins University, about 3.1 million people around the world had died of COVID-19 as of April 26, 2021. The flu, meanwhile, kills between 290,000 to 650,000 people every year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

These estimates are bullshit. Only in India there are 4.5M excess deaths.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#135

Post by ctoth »

It seems super unlikely, but can anyone here help reduce my anxiety that this might be related to the recent Monkeypox cases in the US? [0] Like, the timing doesn't work out, and the person who got infected came from Africa so we're probably not seeing something like community spread... And this would almost certainly be too old to infect people. Anything I'm missing?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29269936

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#136

Post by marcosdumay »

kupiakos wrote: post #66
IAmWorried wrote: post #33

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.…

COVID is not comparable to the flu. It's 3-20x as deadly depending on a variety of factors. Smallpox would still be significantly more deadly than COVID individually, but I'd bet people would take lockdowns much more seriously for smallpox than they did for COVID, preventing a pandemic and resulting in fewer deaths overall. Especially because people believe falsehoods like "COVID is comparable to the flu" because it…

> COVID is not comparable to the flu. It's 3-20x as deadly

Well, there are you, comparing them.

If you do the same with smallpox you will get unrecognizable high numbers.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#137

Post by gwerbret »

> Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said that smallpox can be lethal “even after it is freeze-dried.”

For context, the vials were probably found in a -80C or liquid nitrogen -140C freezer, so they are highly unlikely to be freeze dried (assuming they were properly sealed).

For additional possible context, it's not at all uncommon in the biomedical research world for vials to be forgotten in these freezers for decades. The classic situation is that a student or postdoctoral fellow has boxes in the freezer, and graduates or leaves without cleaning out the boxes. The boxes remain protected and ignored by producing a powerful "Somebody Else's Problem" field [0], usually until the need for freezer space becomes desperately dire (which I'm guessing is what happened here).

Given that likelihood, AND that this was a lab working on vaccine research, and that they found vials labeled "smallpox" and "vaccinia" (virus used to make the smallpox vaccine) side by side, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the CDC's concern were justified.

[0]: Obligatory Hitchhiker's Guide reference: https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Proble...

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#138

Post by kupiakos »

rossdavidh wrote: post #110
kupiakos wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID is not comparable to the flu. It's 3-20x as deadly depending on a variety of factors. Smallpox would still be significantly more deadly than COVID individually, but I'd bet people would take lockdowns much more seriously for smallpox than they did for COVID, preventing a pandemic and resulting in fewer deaths overall. Especially because people believe falsehoods like "COVID is comparable to the flu" because it…

Depends on the flu, and on how effective that year's flu vaccine is. The 1918-1919 flu had its highest mortality rate in the young adult range, where it was unquestionably higher than covid-19 (although the lack of PCR tests or equivalent back then make it difficult to arrive at precise numbers infected). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Epidemiology_and_p...

Comparing modern death rates to the 1919 flu, and to historical smallpox infection, is not useful. Medical technology has come a long way in a century and so average mortality rates have dropped for all diseases.

2019 and 2020 had particularly dangerous flu seasons and were still significantly less deadly than COVID.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#139

Post by simonbh »

cbxyp wrote: post #102

[flagged]

Do you actually look into what this document is stating? The document linked to in this article is not from the FDA, but from the group suing them for the FOIA request. This filing, and others from this group, are only allegations. This is not evidence from the FOIA process nor a statement from the FDA. Since I cannot find the original sources of these documents, I can only link to these: Docket: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21087968-txn-42021cv... Filing 1: http://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/001-Complaint-10... Filing 2: https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/020-Secon...

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#140

Post by nirvdrum »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #57
trhway wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>calling law enforcement when you find old work in the lab. MBA types. 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 situa…

You're bringing in character flaws into something that doesn't require them. Nothing is to be lost by treating the vials as live samples and having the appropriate experts deal with them. On the other hand, if you decide that there really isn't a risk -- a conclusion you have no data to support -- and you screw it up, you're going to unleash a pox on the world that is highly contagious and very few are vaccinated against. The 1978 outbreak in the UK [1] really upended many lives. Given the modern political climate in the US, I'm going to guess containment would be next to impossible.

Maybe the risk is low, but the severity is very high. If there's an outbreak, we may never get it contained again. So, follow the appropriate protocols and hopefully no one gets hurt. If it turns out they were a prank or not viable, no one gets hurt either. This has nothing to do with shirking responsibility. It's quite the opposite. Going all cowboy on the handling of the samples would be incredibly selfish. For what? The ability to tell a story of sticking it to the man?

[1] -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_smallpox_outbreak_in_the_...

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