Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by bluGill » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

jart wrote: post #133

LeoPanthera wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The rarer the disease the easier it is to get approved. Once approved you can tell doctors can use it for anything, and you can tell doctors what else it "might" work for. Doctors can then buy it for those other things, which they might do. You are supposed to study the other things, but that takes time and a lot more money (to be kind)

Note, the above is an over simplification, good enough for discussion, but not for any other use. Those who the above is useful information for already know many finer details of the above, and how it varies from country to country.

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

#162

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #152

paxys wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know what smallpox is, how it spreads, how to slow it down/prevent it, and most importantly we will have a vaccine for it in every pharmacy well before it breaks out the way covid did. The two are not at all comparable.

I don't think we can grow our smallpox vaccine stockpile that fast. We know how to make them and have the ability, but getting production to scale will take a fair amount of time.

This was one of the bottlenecks that COVID vaccines faced, as well. Researchers made COVID vaccines relatively quickly, and it took a relatively long time for mass production to ramp up.

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

#163

Post by zaptrem » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

jart wrote: post #59

pram wrote: post #27

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.

"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?

There is still the fear of accidental outbreaks from situations like OP, or biowarfare.

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

#164

Post by lazide » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

timr wrote: post #83

lazide wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smallpox is significantly less infectious, and generally requires close and extended contact with a person who is coughing and infectious or a surface recently contaminated by someone with open sores. 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 bet…

> Smallpox is significantly less infectious, and generally requires close and extended contact with a person who is coughing and infectious or a surface recently contaminated by someone with open sores. I don't know where you're getting your numbers. Current estimates for smallpox R0 are all over the place (as are the Covid ones, but I digress) and run from 1-20, with contemporary numbers as high as 6: https://pubmed…

Ah, your data is well out of date.

This isn’t hysteria, and I don’t think hysteria is called for.

If smallpox had these numbers, well, that is a different story. But smallpox has had likely thousands of years to evolve higher infectivity, and seems to have reached a local maxima that isn’t there. Covid still has time to explore options.

Measured R0 in New York for COVID was 6.4 [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.17.20104653v...] for the original strain before lockdown and masking.

Those appear to have greatly reduced the basic replication rate to around .9-1.3 or so shortly afterwards. As they are very severe countermeasures, it’s disingenuous to use the reduced replication rate ‘raw’ as no one is going to be doing them ‘naturally’.

The delta variant (B.1.617.2), now dominant in California and elsewhere, is approximately 2x more infectious than that original variant from the data I’ve found, which is limited [easiest thing I could fine here was https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/05/07/9947104...].

That would put it (in a ‘natural’ setting) at R0 being roughly 12-13. Measles is estimated to have a R0 of 12-18. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28757186/]

Outdoor infection IS less likely - this study of infected construction workers show only 1.4% of their outdoor only co-workers were infected by infected workers, where 43% of people they lived with and 26% of people they had indoor contact with while working got infected. There are many documented cases of outdoor infections, and even more where no known source could be found and all indoor or other sources were ruled out.

New variants driving up infectivity will of course drive this number up over time if infections are allowed to spread (albeit hopefully vaccination can cut it off at the knees).

What does this mean? Without a vigorous public health response, Covid will continue to spread. It may continue to spread despite a very rigorous response from authorities because the body count is going to be low enough that many people just won’t care.

If we get an unfortunate deadlier variant, then maybe that will change. But one thing appears sure - we’re past the point (if there ever was one) where there is anything easy or pleasant that is going to happen.

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

#165

Post by bee_rider » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #105

BitwiseFool wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take this as a serious analysis, but I can't help but attribute so much anti-covid vaccine mentality to the fact that Covid is NOT a visible disease, and quite frankly, it's lethality is a dice-roll. Perfectly healthy twenty-somethings can be laid-low while retirees can show no symptoms. The disease has to be taken seriously but its variability skews people's perception of it. Smallpox, on the other hand, is ab…

There's no need to fear the .gov or big pharma when it comes to smallpox because there's no need to trust them in the first place. The smallpox vaccine is old and very well proven.

I'm having trouble getting good stats on it, but it looks like there were a handful of deaths -- maybe, single or low double digits -- that could be directly attributed to the COVID vaccine.

The smallpox vaccine, if we had to vaccinate the whole country, could cause some deaths too. This pretty old paper estimates somewhere ~200, I've seen an estimate elsewhere of around ~500, can't get a good source on the second one (probably they are in the same ballpark accounting for error bars and population growth since the '60s).

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM196911272812205

Anyway, all this is to say -- there are definitely complaints to be had about big pharma, but the industry is pretty good at managing measurable risks nowadays. I don't know if 'old and well proven' is quite right. They were working with a different set of tradeoffs -- they had worse tech at the time, expectations were lower (and medicine was generally more dangerous)... but obviously, better than getting smallpox!

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

#166

Post by ziddoap » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #151

ziddoap wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just see the words "Bill Gates" and jump to your own conclusions, then call out the parent poster based on your jumped-to conclusions? The article is posted on a mainstream site and describes how Bill wants additional funding to research preventative measures against future pandemics. What is the dog whistle? Where is the sinister puppetmaster references? Where does it say Bill Gates is unleashing a pandemic?

> What is the dog whistle? The original article has nothing to do with Bill Gates, but the commenter in this thread posted this wholly unrelated article, pronouncing it "Related", without any other comment to explain the context of the linked article or how it relates to the original story. You need look no further than the other (also heavily downvoted) commenters in this thread to see who heard the dog whistle loud…

Where does the puppet master/unleashing pandemic stuff come into play?

The article of Bill Gates talking preventative measures against future pandemics (including smallpox, which funny enough is related to smallpox vials), has literally 0 conspiracy-related things in it. How can that even be a dogwhistle?

If you post a story about cancer, and I post a semi-related story of Bill talking about cancer prevention, am I also dog-whistling? Is anything that has Bill in it now a dog whistle?

Edit to add: The linked artile even has smallpox in the title. How you can say it is "wholly" unrelated is baffling.

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

#167

Post by shoto_io » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

theandrewbailey wrote: post #37

> The frozen vials "were incidentally discovered by a laboratory worker while cleaning out a freezer in a facility that conducts vaccine research in Pennsylvania" Occam's razor suggests that those were put into the freezer decades ago and forgotten, and if they were moved, no one bothered to read the labels until now.

Yeah, I agree. But Occam’s razor rarely makes a good enough story…

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

#168

Post by jart » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #161

jart wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The rarer the disease the easier it is to get approved. Once approved you can tell doctors can use it for anything, and you can tell doctors what else it "might" work for. Doctors can then buy it for those other things, which they might do. You are supposed to study the other things, but that takes time and a lot more money (to be kind) Note, the above is an over simplification, good enough for discussion, but not fo…

That's quite a regulatory hack. Thanks for explaining it to me.

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

#169

Post by lazide » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

topkai22 wrote: post #155

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.…

Smallpox is roughly as contagious as SARS-Cov2 Delta and therefore more transmossible than the original variant. However those numbers are the unmitigated numbers. Public health and other authority figures have some advantages in fighting smallpox versus SARS-Cov2. IIRC, smallpox is not infectious until the "pox" are visible on the body, greatly improving ability to screen for the disease and the vaccine traditional…

Based on what I’ve been able to find, Delta would have a ‘raw’ (without extensive countermeasures) R0 of 12-13 (original Covid was measured in NYC pre-masking and lockdowns at 6.4). Do you have cites for the other numbers you have?

Totally agree on severity (or lack thereof) being why it is spreading and thriving. Also the high asymptomatic spread helps too.

You can’t get the consistent, strong response in taking countermeasures you’d get from something more visibly horrific like Ebola.

Though there have been many cases in Africa of someone sneaking in to loot a ‘dead’ village or graveyard and starting a new outbreak when they get home. So apparently even almost certainly dying a horrible death while bleeding from every opening isn’t enough to get everyone to take it seriously.

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

#170

Post by zaptrem » Thu, Nov 18, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

poorjohnmacafee wrote: post #28

hunterb123 wrote: post #2

Related: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/bill-gates-smallp... edit: Wow downvotes for linking to an event related to small pox. I figured it was important especially the timing. How many other small pox events do you remember in recent history? It's simply an interview about smallpox that happened recently. All I said was it was related.

I understand why HN doesn't like speculation in "dirty" topics. But I wouldn't really blame the average person for wondering about this since we know that Gates & WEF held coronavirus pandemic drills a month before the outbreak happened (or by some accounts of the origins, in the same month as it happened). I think everyone's suspicions of government and individuals tied to it are extra high due to everything from th…

It's because Gates has been shouting from the rooftops about the danger of pandemics exactly like ours for years and years but was mostly ignored. Of course his org was continuing to do work related to preparing society for what they thought (and we now know) was inevitable.