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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

#211

Post by koeng »

323 wrote: post #158

The sequence of the smallpox virus is publicly available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/9627521 What sort of labs have the skills to reverse genetics it into a cowpox backbone? Are we talking 2-3 labs in the world, or basically any decent lab? Could a PhD in virology/microbiology do it?

It doesn't take that much. If you're good enough at DNA build from oligos, could probably synthesize it with less than a PhD. It is expensive though, and very unlikely that anyone would actually do it in a way that evades the surveillance systems.

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

#212

Post by tomjen3 »

foo92691 wrote: post #42
qwertox wrote: post #23

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.

Honestly I am more concerned with the transport. If I had found the samples I would consider burning down the lab.

Sorry, but the end of Smallpox is one of the greatest medical success stories ever. I am not going to be the one who reopens that particular Pandoras box.

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

#213

Post by londons_explore »

koeng wrote: post #211
323 wrote: post #158

The sequence of the smallpox virus is publicly available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/9627521 What sort of labs have the skills to reverse genetics it into a cowpox backbone? Are we talking 2-3 labs in the world, or basically any decent lab? Could a PhD in virology/microbiology do it?

It doesn't take that much. If you're good enough at DNA build from oligos, could probably synthesize it with less than a PhD. It is expensive though, and very unlikely that anyone would actually do it in a way that evades the surveillance systems.

How much harder is it than the process of building your own bacteria from a DNA sequence...? Would just tacking it into a bacterial DNA sequence and being lucky end up in replication of it?

I remember when I looked into it that about $5k of equipment scrounged from ebay and stuff being trashed from labs was probably enough for making your own bacteria.

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

#215

Post by [deleted] »

323 wrote: post #158

The sequence of the smallpox virus is publicly available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/9627521 What sort of labs have the skills to reverse genetics it into a cowpox backbone? Are we talking 2-3 labs in the world, or basically any decent lab? Could a PhD in virology/microbiology do it?

[deleted]

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

#216

Post by tomjen3 »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #196

>In the event of an outbreak, the C.D.C. said, “there is enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate every person in the United States.” We'd be lucky to get 80% uptake. I can already imagine all of the anti smallpox vaccine propaganda that would spread through FB within a day.

When those who are not vaced ends up death at 30%, and far more disfigured we won't have an issue with that vax.

Covid is deadly, but not too deadly.

At this point I am half considering if I should get one just because - and also not sure what I would say to whom to get a smallpox vaccine.

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

#217

Post by timr »

lazide wrote: post #164
timr wrote: post #83

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. 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/10.11…

> Ah, your data is well out of date.

Smallpox has been eradicated since the 1970s. There is no other data, and the data that exists doesn't support your assertion. A paper from 2001 is up to date.

Citing point estimates for SARS-CoV2 is not a rebuttal; there are many such estimates, and as I said, they're specific to time and place. The best you can do is compare distributions and look for general trends.

> 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...That would put it (in a ‘natural’ setting) at R0 being roughly 12-13

You're just making things up. You can't take an old estimate, multiply it by some arbitrary factor, and draw a conclusion from it.

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

#218

Post by shusaku »

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.

Now just imagine what you could discover cleaning your own freezer

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

#219

Post by skocznymroczny »

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.

Depends on the definition of deaths. Most people don't get tested for flu. Also, in many cases, died of covid means "had a positive test result within two weeks of death". That's ignoring the dubious reliability of PCR tests in general.

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

#220

Post by ajsnigrutin »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #65
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.

They were transported to the existing, single approved location for processing these samples before being cultured. So the risk may not have been any more than existing research at that facility.

I was always under the impressions, that they keep the samples frozen in some big "freezer", and that they don't poke them around and "play" with them... so opening an unknown vial of an unknown sample of possibly smallpox, having the sample analyzed, and all the procedures needed for that, seem (to me) more risky than just keeping the freezer running.
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